TONE LAB is a hands-on synthesizer kit providing access to digital music making.
CHALLENGE: Remove the unintuitive, feature-heavy nature of music synthesizers to uncover the essence of digital music creation.
OUTCOME: An accessible approach to a synthesizer focusing on stacking effect blocks to illustrate the creative process of digital music making.
New users understand music synthesis better when there is a linear path to follow. To create a linear path, TONE LAB features a "stack." Each layer you add to the stack uniquely modifies the music loop.
To help illustrate how Tone Lab works, I made an appearance model with LED animations. The lights cycle through a 16 step sequencer loop.
LED cycles on a model showing what Tone Lab looks like when it's being played
Appearance model process
