Music performance by discovering community loops

Technologies for discovering sounds in large databases can help breaking the boundary between exploration and music performance. In this paper, we present a system for exploring loops from Freesound. Sound files are grouped by their most common repetition periods, so that they can be played in sync. A graph layout algorithm is used to organize sounds in a two-dimensional plane so that loops with similar timbre are spatially close. The result is a system that can be used as a musical instrument: since sounds will always play in sync, the user can freely explore the variety of sounds uploaded by the Freesound community, while continuously producing a rhythmic music stream.