PatchWorld 2/2 – What can you use it for?

Connected music lover community or music creation application? PatchWorld is both: it provides virtual worlds in which music enthusiasts can open up new horizons for their creativity. The project was co-created by Eduardo Fouilloux (artist and developer) and Mélodie Mousset (XR Artist), with major contributions from Gad Baruch Hinkis (musician and technologist) across Denmark, Switzerland, and Italy. (Part 2)

PatchWorld is available on Quest, Pico, and VIVEPORT.

This is the follow-up to the article Are Musicverse the future of music? by Adrien Cornelissen, and PatchWorld 1/2 – Between musical creation and virtual community, with Mélodie Mousset

M. M. – PatchWorld isn’t just another music app; at its core, it’s a space for play, invention, and collaboration, encouraging sharing and exploration. Users gather in real time to jam, create, and experiment together. They can publish their creations and remix those of others. We’re seeing a huge number of wildly inventive collaborative projects, both musical and artistic in the broadest sense. Here are the main uses.

Playing music together or solo

PatchWorld is the only VR application that lets you play music together with other people. Find everything beginners and pros want to get started right away with worlds and studios. Or jump into the Jamland area with powerful tools that make everyone sound amazing.

Advanced users will find professional studios and clubs with ready-made set-ups, including a wide range of virtual instruments, sound modules, and professional-quality effects, so they can assemble the studio of their dreams. PatchWorld supports mixed reality and is compatible with MIDI and OSC protocols plus Ableton Link, enabling seamless integration between physical and virtual instruments. PatchWorld is a true hybrid studio.

I recently interviewed a user and asked them why they use PatchWorld, and they said:: “Well cuz’ now I’m the only person in the world with a music studio in front of a black hole.” Indeed, he had created a space shuttle that orbited a giant virtual black hole. He built his music studio under the shuttle, with a direct view of the black hole; it’s very cool.

Users have released complete albums made entirely with PatchWorld, like Martin Delaney’s experimental release Aloof In The Blue. Because it’s a full audiovisual environment, users are able to make complete music videos in one go; Mowukis’ work has been showcased at the renowned Kaboom Animation Festival in the Netherlands. You can export your work directly from the app, and in addition to saving high-quality video, publish on tools like AppLab and SideQuest.

Creating worlds

Users can build their own worlds. To get started quickly, they have a collection of assets in the library and can easily import their own files (image, object, video, sound) using our web portal. PatchWorld already supports a number of formats: .jpg, .png, .avi, .mov, .mp4, mp3, .ogg, .gbl. Once a world has been created, it can be kept private or made public, solo or open to multiplayer sessions.

Making and remixing instruments and devices

The reason there are so many musical instruments in PatchWorld is that it’s basically a sandbox for creating sound machines. Each instrument in the library can be remixed to make a customized variant. Inside each device, you’ll discover easily understood electronic innards made up of components connected by cables.  Our creation tool, still in beta, has just over 200 components or “blocks,” the whole panoply needed to assemble an instrument from scratch. In addition to the audio blocks, there are also math, physics, interface elements (like knobs and faders), gestural, and graphic blocks. These blocks are PatchWorld’s technological innovation, a true spatial game engine. Block access is still in beta, as we’re redesigning it to make it easier to learn and more functional and performative.

Obviously, instrument creation is a relatively niche activity compared to exploration and play, but some of our users – like TigerMaster, with over 900 hours of creation in Patch – have become virtual luthiers with hundreds of musical instruments to their credit. Another user recently published a kind of synthesizer museum in which he presents the synthesizers and the iconic tunes for each one. There’s “Frank’s Device Island,” featuring, for example, a sample cutter, a chord player, and an “air punch.” The island is already very full, and each instrument can be copied and added to your personal library free of charge.

Record in 3D, playback, and share

The second killer feature in PatchWorld is our “ghost,” an intuitive system for recording and replaying scenes, including scenery, avatars, and performance (gesture and voice). This allows you to record voices, make loops, compose songs easily, and even create concerts and interactive theatrical stories. For example, all of PatchWorld’s interactive introductory tutorials were recorded live using this feature, without animation or motion capture. It’s a simple yet powerful system and one of PatchWorld’s signature features.

JamLand and more ways to play with friends

Inside the updated PatchWorld lobby, you can discover JamLand – five interconnected worlds perfect for connecting with friends for casual play. It’s like a virtual drum circle, full of fanciful instruments you can pick up and play as a beginner, developing your chops over time. We also have community events, shared worlds, and user-created instruments, effects, and environments. You can play in multiplayer locally, or easily find people to jam with around the world, and even create portals between worlds. Both the functionality of the tool and the available environments are constantly expanding.

You’re never far away from instruments, toys, and tools: try the underwater fluid echo, make polyrhythmic music with frying pans or the wind and rain, play drum and bass with the NO Game studio, collaborate with UK rapper Harry Shotta, and more.

Playing live music and VJ

PatchWorld enables its users to perform in front of an international community without leaving home – or integrating immersive 3D to live performance venues with sound or audiovisual performance with projection. The artist can perform live both for VR users and in front of a physical, in-person audience.

The possibility of performing as a group while being thousands of miles away gives rise to unexpected artistic associations. It’s a blend of genres and cultures, a new trend in world music.

With PatchWorld as a veritable mobile studio, the user can easily play for a physical audience with just headphones and a speaker. You’re free of the logistical constraints of moving heavy, cumbersome physical instruments and cabling.

Output sound quality enables content to be broadcast on professional equipment. Dedicated mixing blocks allow you to spatialize sound and preserve the immersive character of physical sound reinforcement.

Thanks to PatchWorld, I can practice and play at will, on instruments I’d never have access to, for lack of space, money, time, or simply because the instrument exists only in PatchWorld. It’s also a new experience of playing live; playing on the same set-up, with the same samples and the same initial settings, you let yourself be carried away by the energy of the moment, and no two lives are ever the same. We have to learn to integrate the unpredictability of the machine as if it were itself one of the members of the group, with its interpretations, its proposals, its talents, and its limits.

Ann de France, composer and performer Patchworld

We’ll soon be releasing local multiplayer, which will enable several players to perform together not only at a distance but on the same stage.

Creating interactive experiences

PatchWorld is a turnkey alternative to engines like Unity or Unreal Engine for artistic expression in VR. Thanks to our block system, you can design and build immersive, interactive experiences directly in the virtual world without the need to code. Users can produce an extremely wide range of content: interactive stories, immersive video clips, kinetic/graphic experiences, musical games. We’ve even seen a shadow theater, a robot arm that plays drums, and a ventriloquist snowman.

An ideal educational tool

The block-based VR creation system makes complex, abstract physical and mathematical principles visible, tangible, and playful. Handling blocks directly and seeing the effects in real-time makes learning fun and effective. More and more teachers are using PatchWorld in their classrooms.

Most of all, our community appreciates PatchWorld’s breadth of possibilities and the radical, collective freedom of expression that it provides.

More about PatchWorld: https://patchxr.com