MMODM: Massively Multiplayer Online Drum Machine Basheer Tome Tangible Media Group MIT Media Lab 75 Amherst St. Cambridge, MA 02142 basheer@media.mit.edu Donald Derek Haddad Responsive Environments MIT Media Lab 75 Amherst St. Cambridge, MA 02142 ddh@mit.edu Tod Machover Opera of the Future MIT Media Lab 75 Amherst St. Cambridge, MA 02142 tod@media.mit.edu Joseph A. Paradiso Responsive Environments MIT Media Lab 75 Amherst St. Cambridge, MA 02142 joep@media.mit.edu ABSTRACT Twitter has provided a social platform for everyone to en- ter the previously exclusive world of the internet, enriching this online social tapestry with cultural diversity and en- abling revolutions. We believe this same tool can be used to also change the world of music creation. Thus we present MMODM, an online drum machine based on the Twitter streaming API, using tweets from around the world to cre- ate and perform musical sequences together in real time. Users anywhere can express 16-beat note sequences across 26 different instruments using plain text tweets on their fa- vorite device, in real-time. Meanwhile, users on the site it- self can use the graphical interface to locally DJ the rhythm, filters, and sequence blending. By harnessing this duo of website and Twitter network, MMODM enables a whole new scale of synchronous musi- cal collaboration between users locally, remotely, across a wide variety of computing devices, and across a variety of cultures. Author Keywords Collaborative, Synchronous, Twitter, Web, Music Interface ACM Classification H.5.3 [Information Interfaces and Presentation] Group and Organization Interfaces — Web-based interaction, H.5.3 [In- formation Interfaces and Presentation] Group and Organi- zation Interfaces — Collaborative computing, H.5.3 [Infor- mation Interfaces and Presentation] Group and Organiza- tion Interfaces — Synchronous interaction 1. INTRODUCTION Music and, increasingly, social networks are both incredibly powerful categories of tools for connecting people together and creating positive flow-like experiences. We strongly be- lieve that a more intimate overlap and connection between Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. NIME’15, May 31-June 3, 2015, Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge, LA. Copyright remains with the author(s). Figure 1: MMODM site during a live performance the two can be instrumental in better connecting even more and diverse types of people. 1.1 The Rise of Twitter Twitter usage has quickly skyrocketed since its invention back in 2006 by Jack Dorsey. Despite any negative uses of Twitter, it has also helped make a positive impact on society and has provided a variety of uses for members across the globe. During the earthquakes that took place in California, it proved to be one of the main sources of the most up to date activity of this monstrous natural disaster. There’s no better way to share information than to have a large network of friends all connected in one system, who can reply to your messages and even retweet them to others at their convenience. 1.2 Related Work The realm of technology-supported music collaboration is quite large but work in the spaces of live coding and web- based audience participation served as the most critical ref- erences in the creation of this project. The sc140 Super- Collider album [1], which curated a series of pieces written in tweet-length SuperCollider code snippets, shows at the extreme end the expressive ability of just 140 characters. Using that same programming language in a longer form, Magnusson [2] is able to live code complex, beautiful musi- cal pieces in real time. Furthermore, the LOLC collabora- tive textual performance environment [3] shows the dynamic performative musical collaboration that expert music tech- 285 Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, Baton Rouge, LA, USA, May 31-June 3, 2015