Aitokaiku’s New Music Experience App: Create Your Own Theme Song

Aitokaiku announced this week the launch of is mobile app. Calling itself the “Instagram of Music,” the app will allow users of iOS and Android phones to create their own music with the help from natural environments like sounds, movements and lights essentially allowing users to create their own theme songs. “Aitokaiku tears down the barrier to music creation and allows anyone, regardless of musical ability, to make their own music,” says the press release about the new product. A simple walk down the street could create an original one-of-kind song created by the sounds of birds, dogs barking, and passing cars.

Sample of music created from Aitokaiku can be found on YouTube including Joe Le Bon’s, “Winter Blues” which was created by a candlelight fire and “Sky is Always Blue” was recorded lakeside on a sunny day with the rays of light bouncing on the waves giving the tempo. As incredible as it sounds, Aitokaiku creates music according to mood and the environment you are in.

Based in Berlin, Germany, Aitokaiku boasts of being the first augmented music experience that uses smartphone sensors. The end result is sort of a New Age type music, but every creation is as unique as the person who created it. The song you create is the song you keep or share as much as you like. You’re actually creating royalty-free music that can be shared on Facebook.

The word “Aitokaiku” means “genuine echo” in Finnish, and the program was created by DJ Jarno Eerola aka Joe Le Bon. Eerola has been studying synthesizing movement to electronic music for some time now. As bizarre as it seems, Eerola made a few headlines back in 2014 for synthesizing the Ebola virus to music. And it is possible that you have heard this type of music before as the Aitokaiku Instant Live hardware has been used for popular hit songs, theatre productions, music concerts, movie soundtracks and even TV commercials. What started as an art project has become a new business.

“We are carrying one of the most powerful, sensitive, and personal devices ever created – today’s smartphone – with us everywhere, and it has the capacity to now only create music based on your location, mood, and the physical environment around you, but enable you to share that music that you have literally created with your friends,” said Eerola. “The Aitokaiku experience is part of a new wave of connected vibrations that people, particularly in the electronic dance music world, are enjoying, and we have now delivered the ability for anyone to create this kind of compositional music stream, from their pocket.”

Here is how it works: Aitokaiku comes with four pre-installed themes (hip hop, classical, techno, and rock) that serve as a base for your music. The theme changes the sounds that it records from your environment. The company suggests that the product would be ideal for restaurant use and shopping malls as it would match the atmosphere and mood of its patrons or filmmakers wanting to cut the cost of music.

“Music listeners are plagued by streaming music’s tyranny of choice and suffer from playlist anxiety trying to manage their personal digital music collections,” said Laurent Martin, chief revenue officer for Aitokaiku. “Aitokaiku circumvents the arms race for curated music (both algorithmic and human-curated) by creating music that reacts to the user’s environment in real time instead of trying to predict the right music for every moment.”

Preview versions of Aitokaiku are available to download for Android devices on the Aitokaiku website. Full versions of the app will be made available for both Android and iOS devices by the end of the month.

[Photo courtesy of Aitokaiku]