LoopLens: Supporting Search as Creation in Loop-Based Music Composition

TL;DR

LoopLens is a novel tool that visualizes search results in loop-based music composition, supporting creative exploration and assembly, especially for users with limited musical vocabulary.

Contribution

It introduces LoopLens, a visual and interactive system that enhances search as a creative process in music composition, addressing the gap in existing creativity support tools.

Findings

Experts exploit narrow loop sets using multimodal cues.

Novices rely on audio impressions and broad exploration.

Design implications for vocabulary-independent discovery.

Abstract

Creativity support tools (CSTs) typically frame search as information retrieval, yet in practices like electronic dance music production, search serves as a creative medium for collage-style composition. To address this gap, we present LoopLens, a research probe for loop-based music composition that visualizes audio search results to support creative foraging and assembling. We evaluated LoopLens in a within-subject user study with 16 participants of diverse musical domain expertise, performing both open-ended (divergent) and goal-directed (convergent) tasks. Our results reveal a clear behavioral split: participants with domain expertise leveraged multimodal cues to quickly exploit a narrow set of loops, while those without domain knowledge relied primarily on audio impressions, engaging in broad exploration often constrained by limited musical vocabulary for query formulation. This behavioral dichotomy provides a new lens for understanding the balance between exploration and exploitation in creative search and offers clear design implications for supporting vocabulary-independent discovery in future CSTs.