Interview with Ge Wang of Smule

Jonah: What first gave you the idea to use computers as instruments in an orchestra?

Ge: Wow thats a great question that I certainly can’t take credit for that as an idea. I would credit that idea to two people, Dan Truman and Perry Cook.  Both professors at Princeton. In 1999 Dan made this crazy speaker array that was essentially the heart of a traditional Violin’s components which would be a fingerboard, a bow, as  well as a bridge, and the sound.  And then he used basically sensor software and speakers and put it back together. Then what it looks like is a big ball of speakers that he would actually have in front of him and perform with a sensor automated bow and a computer to synthesize the sounds as it interprets the movements.  He asked what it would be like to have an army of people playing these speaker arrays and thats where he got the idea of a computer orchestra.  So in short, it was not fully my idea but I was around for it.

 

Jonah: What brought you to starting Smule with Jeff Smith?

Ge: Well from my point of view when we started talking about Smule in April 2008 I was literally under a lot of crazy pressure helping to start the Stanford laptop orchestra and trying to finish up on my PHD at Princeton.  That combination was doing a number on my schedule, sanity so if co-founding a company at that point certainly was not in my playbook at the time.  The thing that really changed my mind was the iPhone, the SDK, and the App Store together. I think its truly something of an inflection point in terms of computing because when you look at the iPhone, its so much more then a phone.  Its got multi-touch, microphone input, speaker output, a powerful CPU that rivals machines years ago, a graphics processing unit.  Ontop of that it’s got GPS location and its always connected to the internet.  And all of those are packed into this tiny device which I can put in my pocket and then take it out and use it pretty much anytime, anywhere.  And to me it doesn’t seem like a miniturized computer, its its own thing.  So in April 2008 Jeff Smith and I talked about this and a lot of ideas and we decided to try it in the summer of 2008.  

Jonah: Was the original plan to make iPhone apps that are heavily sound and network integrated?

Ge: You know to tell the truth when starting Smule we didn’t know what we were going to do.  We still don’t.  The golden quote that has been adopted by many of us is, “If we knew what we were doing, it would not be research.” It is the “Smulean” way.  

Jonah: When you sat down and thought about Ocarina, was blowing into the microphone the clear path you wanted to take?

Ge: Pretty much. 

Archimage: If you were not to do sound based apps what type of apps would you do?

Ge: I think apps that really explore the potential platform.  When I think about that for us I think apps that really allow you to be expressive, if not musically and sonically expressive and to be creative.

Jonah: If you could work for any other development team, what would it be?

Ge: I’d probably be catching up on sleep or be working for iSleep/iEat/Cornholio inc.

Jonah: This ones for The Mule, what would your life be like without the Smulean presence?

The Mule: Hahaha, well thats an interesting question, I think I’m actually here because my life was somewhat similar to how it is now.  I think the reason Ge and Jeff decided to call me up one day late last summer was possibly because I’m just goofy, crazy, and wear crazy clothes all the time