Year One vs Boom Lab

Hear different lyrics in the corners of your room; build melodies as you walk around your couch; hear hidden parts and build your own chords just by walking through the space around you. Year One is the first spatial album, utilizing the possibilities of augmented reality technology, by D.C. group and label TCW. Upon launching the Year One app, the different sounds and instruments of the songs will populate and begin moving through the space around you. Your movement, tracked by your smartphone, will affect which sounds you hear and change how individual effects are applied to them, making for a different listening experience each time. This final release of the album contains all eight spatial arrangements from TCW, Wall of Trophies, and N.E. Hertzberg. TCW has released a how-to guide for any musician to build their own similar app independently. Alongside the guide, TCW has begun cataloging spatial composition techniques for other musicians to use and contribute to. This guide and techniques can all be found on tcwav.com. TCW released their first spatial album, Inauguration, in early 2017 using smartphone GPS positional tracking, and released a similar guide for building spatial applications. Contact the group at tcw@tcwav.com Headphones required for proper audio spatialization.

Boom Lab is a futuristic mobile music creation app for building beats, mixing tracks, recording original sounds, and organizing project ideas on your device. Start in Beat Lab with glowing pads, BPM controls, loop recording, quantize, swing, and a collapsible mini synth keyboard. Move into DJ Lab to load two decks, blend tracks, scratch virtual vinyl, adjust deck volume, and save sample ideas back into your crate. Stem Lab tools provide the interface for vocals, drums, bass, and instrumental separation workflows as the app evolves. Boom Lab is designed around local device storage. Saved projects, sample metadata, and recorded sounds are kept on your device so you can keep working smoothly and offline. Current features include: - 4-pad beat machine - Loop recording controls - BPM, swing, and quantize controls - Collapsible mini piano synth - Landscape-style DJ mixing board - Two deck import and playback controls - Virtual vinyl scratch interaction - Sample crate for saved sounds - Original sound recorder - Stem Lab placeholder workflow - Saved project vault - .boom project export and import - Device-first offline workflow Boom Lab is free with ads. The only paid upgrade is Boom Lab Premium, which removes ads. Core creation tools are not locked behind a paywall.