Beatsy

Beatsy is an augmented reality music visualizer for iOS that uses your music or voice to modify the world around you. Turn your wall into a giant speaker or transform a road into a rolling wave of notes. Get it for free in the App Store.

Music: The Future Past by JEREMIAH KANE

Links:

Beatsy currently features two built-in visualizers: one that vibrates a surface like a giant speaker and one that shows notes over time. You can adjust some parameters of these visualizers, such as their amplitude (how much they distort the surface). I plan on adding more visualizers in the future.

Other highlights:

If you enjoy Beatsy, be sure to tell your friends and share any cool visualizations you create!

Background

I’ve long wanted to use music to modify my reality, but couldn’t ever figure out how to do this in a convincing way. Earlier this year though, I figured out that I could use ARKit to distort real world surfaces with surprisingly convincing results. This eventually evolved into In The Walls, an iOS app that uses AR and realtime face tracking to make it look like your face is pushed out from behind the wall.

After shipping In The Walls, I decided to return to my original interest: music visualization. Believe it or not, the AR part was actually the easy part of development; I spent far more time trying to figure out and debug various audio APIs. Along the way, I also discovered that DRM was alive and well, much to Beatsy’s detriment.

DRM aside, I’m really happy with how Beatsy turned out. Music has always shaped my experience of the world. Beatsy brings that feeling to life. I still find it cool to load up different songs in the app and try placing visualizers on different surfaces. Below for example, I placed a huge visualizer out in Puget Sound during sunset, making it look like the entire surface of the water was distorting to the music.

Music: Night Beach 2.0 by Nightstop

Definitely give Beatsy a try and let me know if you have any feedback. Stay tuned for future updates too!



PS: Still looking to commission some additional visualizers for the app. See this job listing for details