philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Virtual reality: How will it change the way you make music?

One of the best of these has to be LyraVR, which places you in a virtual environment with a palette of samples, sounds and instruments along with various controllers – a keyboard, drum pads, and the like. These tools allow you to create and record hits, notes and chords, which appear as colourful gem-like objects that hang in the air around you, and that you can move around in space to change their characteristics.

Sequences are built by drawing links between these objects, with a visible time pulse running through the linkages. It’s an absorbing and unique music-making experience, although at this stage, the lack of DAW integration may deter many professional music-makers, who’ll miss their professional synths and sample libraries.

However, The Music Room from Melbourne-based developer Chroma Coda can fulfil this wish: it provides a collection of instruments that you play in VR, and which act as MIDI controllers that can be used in conjunction with any DAW, or with a built-in, 8-track version of Bitwig Studio.

If you prefer to play decks rather than instruments, then Tribe XR is going to be of interest. Its virtual CDJ decks and mixer are conventional enough, as is the way it works with your library of tracks and tunes, and in this sense alone it’s a very inexpensive and accessible way to play with such hardware (if you already have the VR hardware, that is). It provides access to various learning tools, too, such as video and interactive tutorials, community support, and even one-on-one live instruction from professional DJs.

See the full story here: https://www.musictech.net/features/trends/vr-music-making/