The Wub Machine

UPDATE: I turned the Wub Machine into a website. Go and remix your own tracks!

I like dubstep.

There, I said it!

That massive bassline, two-step beat and killer rhythm has some odd allure that I can’t resist - and I’m typically a fan of rock, metal and prog!

I’m also a huge fan of the Echo Nest and their brilliant Remix API. In their words, the Remix API is an “internet synthesizer” - quite true. I can send off an mp3, and get back extremely detailed beat, timbre and pitch information within seconds. Some people have already used this to make any song swing, put a donk on any song, and much, much more.

For the first SE Hack Day, I decided to use the Remix API to automagically add dubstep to any song.

Now, as you may be able to tell from the samples above, this isn’t quite ready yet. In fact, it’s extremely rough. Even the code looks horrifically ugly. (And yes, you can download it, fork it, and edit it freely - it’s open sourced on GitHub.) I have a lot of work left to make the results sound passable.

Technically, I’m not really doing anything too complicated:

I’m taking a ton of suggestions on how to improve the script - adding variables for time till drop, allowing overrides if the API mis-identifies the key or tempo, and allowing a different choice of beat, bar or tatum for sampling the original song. There’s obviously tons of work left to do, and I plan to improve it whenever I get the chance.

Let me know what you think below in the comments, leave some suggestions, and check out the code on GitHub if you’re interested!

UPDATE: I built a web interface and a very nice-looking site around the basic algorithm. Go and remix your own tracks!

P.S: When I said I like dubstep, I meant I really do like dubstep. When I’m not making my own music, I also enjoy drumming to dubstep:

 
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Kudos
 
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Kudos

Now read this

More Lessons from The Wub Machine

Four months ago, I released the Wub Machine, an online Dubstep remixing web app. It hit Reddit for a couple days, got popular on 4chan, and has since remixed nearly 24,000 songs. About a month ago, at the wonderful Music Hack Day... Continue →