Why aren’t there more music-focused video instruments?

The Lounge Other Gear
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Hi everyone,

After struggling to learn Touchdesigner and realizing Resolume was beyond my budget, I started wondering why there aren’t more video tools designed like electronic instruments.

Music hardware gives us samplers, step sequencers, LFOs, envelopes and modulation. Why haven’t these ideas seen application in live visuals? Where is the visual equivalent of an Elektron box; immediate, playable and built around experimentation? I know the LZX/Sleepy Circuits have their niches, but nothing really comes close to an immediate experience that Elektron offers.

That question led us to start building our own visual instrument, sort of a video sampler/groovebox that runs in a browser. The idea is to treat video like sound: load or capture material, chop it into samples, sequence it, modulate effects and perform with it in real time.

I’m sharing this mainly to open up a discussion. We surely can’t be the only people thinking in this direction. Do you know of any instruments, software or DIY projects that take a similar music-first approach to video? And if you were designing a video groovebox, which features would feel essential?

Click here for a link to our project, hidden so that this discussion can remain neutral and open for sharing all similar tools.

If you want a reference of what I mean with a web based groovebox, you can try our current demo here: www.visuell.art

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I’m sorry, I did not want to make this post to promote my project, but to look for tools that do similar things.

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Thank you! We’ve worked non stop for the past 2 years on this, and it’s finally gotten fun enough to play that we feel confident to share it. I will shortly create a new post announcing my project, and edit the post here to make it more general. I am very interested in making this an honest thread where tools like this are listed so people can find other projects too.

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