Guy Dupont's Larknotes Is a Chatroulette-Style Service for Musical Collaboration
Stick the plugin in your DAW of choice and get an immediate connection to a stranger's DAW for musical collaboration or competition.
Artist and maker Guy Dupont has built a Chatroulette-style platform with a difference: instead of chatting to a stranger, it connects your digital audio workstation software to theirs so you can make beautiful music together.
"I made a Chatroulette clone that runs as a plugin inside your favorite audio software," Dupont explains of the project, which has dubbed Larknotes. "Drop it on a track and you'll be paired up with a random stranger. All the MIDI from your track will be piped into their session, and all their MIDI is sent to yours."
Andrey Ternovskiy's Chatroulette launched back in 2009 as a service to connect two randomly-selected users together for a chat session. The anonymity of the internet and the fact the service supports live video and audio feeds, however, means that users are often exposed to unexpected adult material - roughly 13 per cent of connections involve material unsuitable for children, a 2010 survey by RJMetrics revealed.
LarkNotes, by contrast, doesn't connect to your webcam; instead, it connects to your music-making software and links it to a stranger's so you can collaborate. The tool is provided as a Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS compatible VST3 or AU plugin, compatible with a range of digital audio workstation software — and is, Dupont assures us, not a joke. "It's a real plugin," the maker says. "I made it months ago and for reasons I cannot explain — never released it!"
As well as connecting real-world users, Dupont has also provided bots for the occasions where there's nobody else around. "You'll always get some music streaming," he promises. "Many of the bots are powered by [TensorFlow's] Magenta, so you'll actually get some varied(?), interesting(?), open-source tunes."
Larknotes is available for download now, and has been tested as compatible with FL Studio, Ableton Live, Logic Pro, and Reaper. "Truth be told," Dupont admits, "I have not been able to test this that much. Let me know if you have issues, but I make no promises in terms of fixes. I haven't touched this code in a while TBH."
