Bace is a music plug-in and standalone app that transforms your voice into a drum machine.
Project
Bace
Role
Founder, CEO, Product Design, Front-end Development
Date
2022 - present
As a product designer passionate about both technology and music, my journey with Bace started in an unexpected place: on tour with my band.
Like many musicians, I’d often come up with beat ideas on the road, only to lose them before I had a chance to translate them to my DAW (digital audio workstation). Recording these ideas vocally was easy, but actually turning them into MIDI required a tedious process once I was back in the studio. That's where Bace came in—a voice-to-MIDI software that converts beatboxing into MIDI notes in real-time. Now, producers can capture beat ideas anywhere, instantly.
Bace started as an ambitious dream and has since evolved into a powerful tool for musicians and creators alike. It’s an audio plugin and desktop app that combines machine learning (ML) and digital signal processing (DSP) to translate beatboxing into accurate MIDI data—allowing musicians to get creative with their voice alone.
The core problem Bace addresses is that producers, beatmakers, and musicians often come up with rhythmic ideas away from their gear.
Traditional methods of capturing ideas require either manual transcription, which is time-consuming, or relying on memory, which is unreliable. Voice memos can be a temporary solution, but translating those recordings to MIDI is still cumbersome. We wanted to create a seamless bridge from idea to DAW.
Bace’s voice-to-midi solution captures the user’s beatboxing, converts it to MIDI data, and transmits it in real-time to their DAW. Users can immediately assign the MIDI output to any virtual instrument, producing beats on the go and reducing the steps between ideation and production.
Creating a reliable voice-to-MIDI software was a huge technical challenge.
Detecting beats from a range of vocal sounds—different voices, various types of beatboxing, and environmental noise—pushed us to our limits in design, engineering, and machine learning.
Bace faced several technical challenges in transforming vocal input into accurate, real-time MIDI data. The primary hurdle was achieving precise beat detection at near-instant speed, aiming for a latency of just 0.30 seconds between input and MIDI output—something not previously accomplished in beat-detection technology. This required developing a custom ML model trained on thousands of beatboxing samples to ensure high accuracy, even with variations in vocal intensity, timbre, and rhythm. The goal was not only speed but also capturing subtle rhythmic nuances to match the creator's intent.
Additionally, filtering noise and ambiguity in vocal input proved essential. Human voice lacks the structured clarity of traditional instruments, so distinguishing beats from background noise or unintentional sounds was crucial. To tackle this, we built custom filters and noise-canceling algorithms, allowing Bace to separate intentional beats from ambient sounds. This complex audio processing ensured that the final MIDI output was accurate, reflecting the artist’s intended rhythm with minimal interference.
After testing hundreds of iterations, we were able to overcome those technical challenges by fine-tuning our ML model.
Our DSP engineers created a groundbreaking audio processing system that detects beats with a delay of only 0.30 seconds, one of the fastest voice-to-MIDI conversions available. By training on diverse beatboxing data, our model became increasingly robust, adaptable to different accents, beatboxing styles, and musical contexts.
With the final model, Bace achieved patent-worthy technology, securing a patent that represents our unique approach to voice-to-MIDI conversion. This technology is a major leap forward in capturing and translating unstructured vocal rhythms into structured digital data, giving musicians unprecedented freedom.
Bace represents a synthesis of my passions for design, music, and technology.
By bridging the gap between vocal ideas and digital production, Bace empowers musicians to capture creativity the moment it strikes. Our work on Bace, from ideation to its patented voice-to-MIDI technology, has redefined what’s possible for artists looking to merge the spontaneity of beatboxing with the precision of digital music production. For us, it’s just the beginning of what voice-driven technology can bring to music creation.
Designing and developing a marketing site that matched the energy and excitement of the software was the last step before launching.
I used TailwindCSS for rapid styling and customization, focusing on bold, dynamic layouts that evoke a sense of rhythm and creativity. Vibrant, high-contrast colors and engaging animations brought a sense of movement, mirroring the real-time nature of Bace's voice-to-MIDI conversion. Interactive elements allowed users to preview features directly, with rhythmic transitions and hover effects that felt tactile and immediate. I prioritized a mobile-first design, ensuring that musicians on the go could seamlessly access information and get a feel for Bace’s innovation from any device. The result was an electrifying, user-friendly site that visually conveys the power and possibilities of Bace.
