I'm thrilled to share a vision that recently ignited my imagination, a vision brought to life by the limitless potential of devices like Apple's new Vision Pro. I've chosen to narrate it as a story, to better illustrate this concept. I'm eager to hear your thoughts on this topic.
As I lift the Apple Vision Pro, I'm about to step into a world where the boundaries of music and technology blur into one, a world where I can sculpt sound with my bare hands. I press the Digital Crown, and the Home View comes alive in front of my eyes. Suddenly, Ableton, my trusted digital audio workstation, isn't just a two-dimensional interface on a screen. It's a three-dimensional canvas, floating in the air before me, an infinite playground for my creativity.
The Vision Pro's pair of custom micro-OLED displays, delivering more pixels than a 4K TV to each eye, renders Ableton with stunning clarity. I see a palette of sounds to my left, each sound represented by a unique visual element — a glowing cube for a kick drum, a pulsating sphere for a bassline, a streak of light for a melody. It's like a painter's palette, but instead of colors and brushes, I have sounds and gestures at my disposal.
Using the Vision Pro's advanced array of cameras and sensors, I reach out and interact with a pulsating sphere. As I move it near the ground, the bass note seems to shift with it, the sound appearing to emanate from the floor. It's not just audio output; it's an experience of sound in three-dimensional space, enabled by the Vision Pro's hardware and spatial audio capabilities1.
Next, I reach for a streak of light, a melody that dances through the air. I trace it, shape it, curving it around the room like a sonic rainbow. With a flowing gesture, I create intricate pans, moving the melody through the space, painting an auditory scene unlike anything before. The melody springs to life, following the path of the light streak, filling the room with a cascade of notes.
I then place different instruments in specific locations, much like an orchestra conductor might arrange musicians on a stage. A violin here, a synth track there, horns in the back, each instrument occupying its own unique space in the room, and thus, in the sound field.
The Vision Pro, coupled with its spatial earphones, offers such precision that these tasks become almost second nature. The sounds are so well localized that it feels like I'm standing in the middle of a real orchestra, each instrument playing from its specific location.
This isn't just a new way to make music; it's a new way to experience it. It's immersive, it's intuitive, and it feels as natural as painting on a canvas or sculpting from clay. I'm creating sonic tapestries, weaving sound through space, and crafting auditory experiences that would be impossible on any other platform.
As I remove the Vision Pro, I am left with a sense of awe. The possibilities for music creation with such a device are only limited by our imaginations. Today, the Sonic Sculptor is a dream. But with the technology found in the Vision Pro, that dream edges ever closer to reality. This is the dawn of a new era in music creation, a future where we won't just listen to music, but we'll walk through it, touch it, reshape it, and truly immerse ourselves in it.
Okay back to reality can you vision this? What would you call it? What would be features you would want? The limit is only your imagination.
Wow. This is incredible really. It's hard to imagine this is already available to us... I've fooled around in Ableton a but, and from my own limitations, this experience sounds like it can be so much more accessible to design sound through space. I wonder if you can create a visual world to stand in and look at while you draw out music too? I imagine you can color coordinate your drums, notes, synths, etc? Can you make them dance around you through this space as you coordinate their place? I have so many questions, and now I'm so eager to experience this myself!! So amazing.