about everything hums

what it is

your photo is traced into ink lines. line height becomes pitch, position becomes timing, and the colour under each line picks its instrument — so the melody isn't about the picture, it is the picture. it plays in a loop, right here in your browser, until you stop it.

where it came from

everything hums grew out of play_music_theory by tala — a visual instrument where you draw, and it plays: a line's height is its pitch, and where it sits along the page is when it sounds.

this asks what happens when the line is already there. sound is in everything: every picture is full of edges, so every picture is already holding a tune, and the app traces it out and plays it. the look is a homage to hers too — one monospace typeface, warm paper, thin hairlines.

made by pescatios.

how to use it

pick a picture. tap the empty frame to choose a photo, gif or video — or drop one on the page. nothing to hand? or try a random artwork brings one from an open collection, credited while it's on screen.
play it. tap play, or the picture itself. a line sweeps across, every ink line it meets sounds, and the loop runs until you tap again.
shape it. the arrow menu turns the sweep — across either way, up or down, out from the centre or in. the sound menu (sunlit, twilight, open sky) sets the mood, the slider sets the tempo, and the dots add bass, drums, an arpeggio and chords from your photo's colours. the drawing stays put; only how it plays changes.
choose the instruments. the music note holds them: the app's nine, this photo's own colours, or a song — search for one, or use an audio or video file from your device. a song's instruments are picked to match what the app hears in it: close, not exact, and still being worked on.
change the view. the line button steps through the picture with its drawing, the drawing alone, then the picture alone. the frame button puts a picture, gif or video behind the drawing, and the circles beside it choose a paper instead: your photo faintly, white or black. on a laptop, the shuffle button brings a random moving background.
save and share. save keeps the picture, the sound, a video of one loop, or a 9:16 story. the link button makes a link to your hum.

what you can use

the picture: a photo, gif or video — drop it on the page or tap to choose. photos can be jpg, png, webp, gif or heic (heic opens in safari; elsewhere, save it as jpg first); videos can be mp4, mov, m4v or webm. a gif becomes a moving drawing: what moves is what sounds. a video does too — its first 8 seconds, its own sound ignored.
behind the drawing: a picture, gif or video (mp4, mov, m4v or webm); videos play muted and loop.
a song: search for one, or use an audio or video file from your device; the app listens to its sound only.

good to know

privacy: everything happens in your browser. photos, videos and files never leave your device; a song search goes to apple's music catalogue, nothing else of yours is sent.
the drawing: the line drawing comes from a small ai model running on your device; a laptop or desktop draws sharper lines than a phone.
browsers: works best in chrome or safari; on a phone very large photos and long 4k videos are slow to open.
sizes: big pictures are scaled down (2000px on a laptop, 1280px on a phone); a moving gif keeps up to 48 frames.
saving: the picture (png), the sound (wav), or a video of one loop (mp4 or webm, about 1080px wide, also as a 9:16 story); artworks and backgrounds keep their credit in what you save.
sharing: a link carries the drawing and its settings, never your photo; moving hums can't be shared by link yet, and a song's instruments don't travel with the link.

credits

instrument samples: the Versilian Community Sample Library and VSCO 2 Community Edition by Versilian Studios, and Karoryfer Samples' Shinyguitar and Black and Green Guitars — all CC0.
random artworks: public-domain, CC0 and CC BY 4.0 works from The Met, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Rijksmuseum, the National Gallery of Art, the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK), the Library of Congress, USGS, ESA/Webb, ESA/Hubble, ESO, Blender Studio and Wikimedia Commons, and living artists' own CC0 releases. each one is credited while it's on screen.
moving backgrounds: film loops from NASA, the National Park Service and Wikimedia Commons contributors — public domain or CC0. the painted ones are made by the app, from your picture's colours.
line drawing: small line-drawing models, running on your device with ONNX Runtime Web (Microsoft, MIT).
gif decoding: omggif by Dean McNamee (MIT).
song search: apple's music catalogue; song previews provided courtesy of iTunes.
inspired by: play_music_theory by tala.