Becoming a successful entrepreneur often starts with seeing a need: a problem someone has that needs to be fixed. For David Ronan, the need was for anyone to mix and master music but the problem was that of how hard it is to do this. Now his company RoEx is fixing that problem by combining signal processing ans artificial intelligence tools applied to music. It is based on his research originally as a PhD student
Musicians want to make music, though by “make music” they likely mean playing or composing music. The task of fiddling with buttons, sliders and dials on a mixing desk to balance the different tracks of music may not be a musician’s idea of what making music is really about, even though it is “making music” to a sound engineer or producer. However, mixing is now an important part of the modern process of creating professional standard music.
This is in part a result of the multitrack record revolution of the 1960s. Multitrack involves recording different parts of the music as different tracks, then combining them later, adding effects, combining them some more … George Martin with the Beatles pioneered its use for mainstream pop music in the 1960s and the Beach Boys created their unique “Pet Sounds” through this kind of multitrack recording too. Now, it is totally standard. Originally, though, recording music involved running a recording machine while a band, orchestra and/or singers did their thing together. If it wasn’t good enough they would do it all again from the beginning (and again, and again…). This is similar to the way that actors will act the same scene over and over dozens of times until the director is happy. Once happy with the take (or recording) that was basically it and they moved on to the next song to record.
With the advent of multitracking, each musician could instead play or sing their part on their own. They didn’t have to record at the same time or even be in the same place as the separate parts could be mixed together into a single whole later. Then it became the job of engineers and the producer to put it all together into a single whole. Part of this is to adjust the levels of each track so they are balanced. You want to hear the vocals, for example, and not have them drowned out by the drums. At this point the engineer can also fix mistakes, cutting in a rerecording of one small part to replace something that wasn’t played quite right. Different special effects can also be applied to different tracks (playing one track at a different speed or even backwards, with reverb or auto-tuned, for example). You can also take one singer and allow them to sing with multiple versions of themselves so that they are their own backing group, and are singing layered harmonies with themselves. One person can even play all the separate instruments as, for example, Prince often did on his recordings. The engineers and producer also put it all together and create the final sound, making the final master recording. Some musicians, like Madonna, Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift do take part in the production and engineering parts of making their records or even take over completely, so they have total control of their sound. It takes experience though and why shouldn’t everyone have that amount of creative control?
Doing all the mixing, correction and overdubbing can be laborious and takes a lot of skill, though. It can be very creative in itself too, which is why producers are often as famous as the artists they produce (think Quincy Jones or Nile Rogers, for example). However, not everyone wanting to make their own music is interested in spending their time doing laborious mixing, but if you don’t yet have the skill yourself and cant afford to pay a producer what do you do?
That was the need that David spotted. He wanted to do for music what instagram filters did for images, and make it easy for anyone to make and publish their own professional standard music. Based in part on his PhD research he developed tools that could do the mixing, leaving a musician to focus on experimenting with the sound itself.
David had spent several years leading the research team of an earlier startup he helped found called AI Music. It worked on adaptive music: music that changes based on what is happening around it, whether in the world or in a video game being played. It was later bought by Apple. This was the highlight of his career to that point and it helped cement his desire to continue to be an innovator and entrepreneur.
With the help of Queen Mary, where he did his PhD, he therefore decided to set up his new company RoEx. It provides an AI driven mixing and mastering service. You choose basic mixing options as well as have the ability to experiment with different results, so still have creative control. However, you no longer need expensive equipment, nor need to build the skills to use it. The process becomes far faster too. Mixing your music becomes much more about experimenting with the sound: the machine having taken over the laborious parts, working out the optimum way to mix different tracks and produce a professional quality master recording at the end.
David didn’t just see a need and have an idea of how to solve it, he turned it into something that people want to use by not only developing the technology, but also making sure he really understood the need. He worked with musicians and producers through a long research and development process to ensure his product really works for any musician.
– Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London
More on …
- Tech Entrepreneurship
- About RoEx [EXTERNAL]
- An interview with David Ronan [EXTERNAL]
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This blog is funded through EPSRC grant EP/W033615/1.
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