Microsoft Hands-Free Sound Jam is an eye-controlled music environment for electronic loop-based performance and composition. It is designed using familiar design paradigms found in commercial music production software, which have been adapted to work well with eye control. The core interface revolves around what is known as a clip launcher, inspired by the one found in the popular digital audio workstation Ableton Live. Using the Sound Jam clip launcher, one is able to perform a piece of music by scheduling, or “launching”, small musical fragments, known as “clips”, which are automatically aligned and quantized to the next downbeat of the song. Editing capabilities are provided through an editing window, where clips can be modified or rewritten entirely. Modified musical content will automatically be loaded and saved when the application is open and closed.
Sound Jam uses the PCEye Mini via the Tobii Stream Engine API for eye tracking. Graphics are drawn using OpenGL via NanoVG, a lightweight 2d vector graphics library.
Persistent data storage is provided via SQLite. Realtime audio is achieved using RtAudio, and digital signal processing is built on top of the musical audio signal processing library Soundpipe.
Get started with Sound Jam
- Microsoft Hands-Free Sound Jam on GitHub
- Microsoft Hands-Free Sound Jam Users Guide
- Microsoft Hands-Free Sound Jam setup information