Rockin the world with Thounds

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I actually had to make a new article category to capture the coolness of this great new web application. It pretty much gets a tick in the box for each of the criteria on the “Super Cool WebApp” checklist (which admittedly I am only just formally noting down now).

So what is Thounds? Well read on…

What is Thounds?
Well firstly, it’s a silly word that I’m not a big fan of. It doesn’t do the site or what they are trying to achieve any justice, but like others before them the folks at thounds have come up with a great idea and any domain name that would have been any good is taken so they have ended up with thounds.com (well that’s my opinion at least).

In a nutshell, Thounds is a collaborative recording interface, simple enough, but looking at the tour very powerful. Now it’s been a while since I’ve used any of the recording gear I have around the place, but I have to say this enthuses me to do so. I wouldn’t need to though, obviously any microphone plugged into your computer will do the job, but if you have good kit you may as well use it right?

Using Thounds
Using thounds is a simple as throwing on some headphones (simply to prevent audio leakage), and then hitting the record button on a little flash widget they have on the site. The widget includes the useful ability to have a metronome playing in the background (note this gets a little screwy on linux – I had a funk rhythm section going instead of a steady beat) which will keep you in time for your loop you are recording.

Now I would say, thounds is targeted at capturing musical ideas and making the collaboration part of creating music fun and enjoyable. If you are a pro muso I think you will get value out of it, but for more serious online music creation I would probably recommend you check out something like Indaba instead.

Why Super Cool?
Why is thounds super cool? Well in my very recently formulated super cool checklist it gets a tick in every box (for now at least):

• It does one thing, and one thing very well (see Apple)
• It attempts to engage all people through a clever idea – it gives people a sense of being something bigger (clever tour video captures this nicely).
• It has a low “barrier to entry”. While something like Indaba is brilliant in both its technical execution and presentation, it doesn’t hit people where they are at, and give them one simple thing to get started with. Thounds does that.

Anyway, just my thoughts, recommend you go check it out and make up your own mind. I’m going to see if I can get time to grab the guitar out between coding and have a play on there – feel free to look me up