We’re jazzed to share something new with you today. We just unveiled Scan Band, our first Snapchat lens that turns everyday objects into playful, playable musical instruments.

Watch Scan Band in action

Watch Scan Band in action

On your phone, follow this link, or open Snapchat and point your camera at the Snapcode below. Press and hold on the yellow square to scan it. The Scan Band lens will appear in your Lens Carousel.

Link to Scan Band

Now you can point your smartphone camera at things around you – like plants, pets, and food – to reveal colorful stickers that you can place in 3D space. Play these virtual sound objects by tapping on the screen, reaching out with a finger, or moving your whole body in front of the camera. Once you’ve composed a scene, you can share it with Snapchat friends or download it to post wherever you like.

Try scanning an orange and play it like a guitar. Tap a flower that sounds like a synth. Set a bunch of banana drums on the floor for your friend to trip on.

We didn’t just make Scan Band for musicians – we made it for dancers, comedians, mimes, pranksters, yogis, foodies, cheerleaders, karate kids, levitationists, and anyone who wants to toss a splash of sound into their afternoon.

• Scan your coffee cup to reveal the origami mug
  
• Tap on any sticker as it appears to add it to your scene
• Press and hold a sticker to select between guitar, synth, piano, drums, bass, and strings
• When only your hand is in the frame, Scan Band will track your index finger
• When a full body is in the frame it will track ankles and wrists
• You can also scan pictures of things (try an image of a dragon)
• Scan Band will also see two-dimensional people (point the lens at Rick and/or Morty)

At Artiphon, we love the idea that musical instruments can be ephemeral, virtual, and immediately playable. We want everyone to have fun with music. It’s why we created Orba and INSTRUMENT 1, and it’s what inspired us to design and develop Scan Band.

The fact is, we all experience the world in multisensory ways, and Augmented Reality has huge potential to translate our imaginations into multimedia expression.

AR also represents the possibility to go beyond traditional notions of who gets to play music, to shed outdated ideas about skill and mastery, and to inspire people to be creative in the little moments of their everyday lives.

We’ve been working on AR Music in secret for the past several years. When Snap asked us if we wanted to work with their latest AR and Machine Learning tools, we knew it was the right moment.

Snapchat is a social media app, but it also sits atop some of the industry’s most advanced Augmented Reality tech. Snap featured Artiphon and Scan Band at this year’s Snap Partner Summit as an example of what’s possible with emerging AR technologies.

By collaborating with Snap we were able to build Scan Band in a unique way, and now it’s free for Snapchat’s 280 million daily users and anyone who wants to download it.  

Scan Band is an experiment in something new. Tell us what you think! Write us at contact@artiphon.com.