ORO Visual Music

Find Your Zone

1-2-3-ORO

The best way to learn how to use ORO is to just dive in.  Open the app, touch the screen and you'll be a creating amazing compositions in seconds!  Here's a primer to get you going:

At this point, jump in and play!  We've eliminated the FAILURE PARADIGM from ORO.  Play another Instrument, and another! You can use six at a time in any ORO.  

The tools:

LOOP: start/stop the loop
TICK: a metronome
RECORD: share your jam

The CLEAR controls:

ALL: clear the whole canvas
LAST: undo your last touch
INST: clear the currently selected instrument

Once you're rocking, you might want to swap out one of your six instruments.  No problem!  Select it on the left and then hit "INST" in the Clear controls. Now you can choose any of the other Instruments. FREEDOM!

We use Everyplay.com as a sharing platform so you can unleash your ORO videos into the world.  Sign up for a free account and you'll be interacting with the ORO community and sharing to Facebook in no time!

Our Story: How We Got Here

The name ORO comes from Ouroboros, the ancient symbol of a snake eating its own tail.  It represents cycles of creativity and these cycles are everywhere in the ORO ethos.  Both in the app itself, where the cycles of a looping canvas foster infinite creation,  and also in the story behind the app.

It started in the early 90s, when two of ORO's founders were in a Virginia-based touring band called Everything.  In the wee hours of the morning the band's guitar player, Steve Van Dam, drew the short straw and got saddled with the overnight driving shift after a gig in Atlanta.   He was the only one awake and to make sure he stayed that way, Steve listened to the trippiest stuff he could find on late-night AM radio.

That night, buzzing up Interstate 77 with a head full of caffeine and lords know what else, an endless industrial-alien groove bleeding from the stereo, Steve became hypnotized by the passing visuals: the starbursts of oncoming headlights, the billboard images tracking by, the staccato road markers and visually percussive white lines.  In that psuedo-psychedelic frame of mind he imagined being able to control all of the light and color and music, to compose an audio-visual experience with these strange elements.

That genesis moment was during the Clinton administration.  Fast-forward half a decade and Everything hit the big time with their breakout single, Hooch.  In a whirlwind, they landed on the top of the charts, started touring internationally, and their catchy song started showing up everywhere.  

But before the world could get to know the band behind the hit –*BAM*– their label was a victim of record industry consolidation and their contract was cut.  

One-hit wonders.

Skip forward a few more years and the world met the iPhone.  Touch screens had arrived and Steve's late-night idea started dancing in his head.  Now the vision expanded as this new technology was disrupting everything we'd come to know about content consumption and creation.  

This notion of a visual music experience... it could translate to live performance... it could introduce new ways for people to interact with the music they love... it could open up new business models for working musicians, artisans and entrepreneurs of the digital age.

He got together with his old bandmate, Craig Honeycutt,  ever hardwired for music and innovation, and they launched Light The Music, the company behind ORO.  Now ORO is circulating in the world and making waves.  Their next big adventure is beginning, but really it was always there, just taking its time to circle back around.  Ouroboros.

Download ORO now at the iTunes App Store and see what all the fuss is about.  And let them know what you think.