On Saturday, January 18, 2014, Web Music Developers JP and Google co-hosted Web Music Hackathon #2.

"Midayappy", the mascot character for Web MIDI API, designed by g200kg

Various APIs available on browsers that have emerged from recent advances in web technology:

The idea is to create something in a single day using these materials.

Even though it was the first time, many wonderful works were created last time. You can see what happened in this blog post.

How far can the web and musical instruments be integrated? ~ Web Music Hackathon held

This time, with the cooperation of AMEI (Association of Musical Electronics Industry, a general incorporated association), Yamaha, Korg, Roland, and Crimson Technology each brought in musical instruments, and NTT Communications also provided a WebRTC environment.

The demo by Roland's Watanabe at the opening really showed the potential of this field.

When the event opened, the number of participants was over 30, exceeding the previous number, and there were also many visitors from various manufacturers and reporters (from Monthly I/O), and the venue, Google Office Hanabi, was filled with excitement.

Demo #

The hackathon began around noon, with development finishing at 4:30 p.m., followed by demo time. This time, over 20 amazing creations were produced just from presentations. The demos were streamed online, and you can view the archive, along with other photos, here.

However, the entire video is about 2 hours and 45 minutes long. It's too long, and I can't introduce every single piece, so I'll just pick out a few pieces that left a strong impression on me (which is still quite a narrow selection). (The image is linked to the start of the demo in the video.)

This is an instrument that plays the source code of CoffeeCollider created by @mohayonao in real time. The work can be found here by the CCKB Production Committee Team.

This is a Hatsune Miku voice work using eVY1 with Yamaha's new sound source NSX1. The punchline is excellent. The work is here (requires eVY1) by the Hitori Nacchatta Team.

My-hi.net is a service that allows you to leave a two-second greeting by authenticating with your Twitter account. You can hear other people's voices by hovering your mouse over them.

A work that turns a can into a MIDI instrument. by Kodama

A demo was unveiled at this hackathon showing how a 3D model of the Web MIDI API mascot character "Midayappy," designed by g200kg aka gaito, can be controlled with a MIDI controller on WebGL.

The most spectacular demo was this one. It combined a mirror ball controlled by Leap Motion, a MIDI controller, and a visualizer that changed in sync with the music. By the Light Magicians Group X Team

The runner-up was this app, which uses Leap Motion to control the volume and instruments played with gestures. The output is visualized by lighting up the pads in Ableton Push. The movement is quite cool. By mtomasz

The winning entry is this Chrome Extension that turns Google Spreadsheet into a sequencer and plays music. Note how you can express chords by using the reference function of the spreadsheet software. By hirono

summary #

In fact, about half of the participants this time were attending for the second time. This shows how much fun they had last time. Unfortunately, I couldn't attend the social gathering, but I'm sure everyone enjoyed themselves to the fullest this time as well.

We're talking about how we'd like to continue this hackathon in the future, and gradually create an environment where more musical works can be created.

For future events, please join the mailing list or Google+ community. Ryoya Kawai, who was the central planner of the previous and current events, will be able to provide you with the latest information on this field.

We look forward to your participation.