Get off the grid.

The line on the front of this site was typed on the third day, at 2:59 in the afternoon, two days before the site's address was bought.

I want the tagline of this software to be 'Get off the grid' — The goal of this general effort is to remove the constraints of being 'perfect' and just getting ideas out. WaveLoop is the first shippable artifact of this vision and direction.

Elijah · Feb 24, 2:59 pm

The grid.

The grid is bars, beats and a click. In these apps the clock is your hands. A loop is as long as you played it. The tape runs at the speed you set, and what goes onto it stays the way you played it.

The idea goes back to 2010 and a practice he still keeps: one hour, one beat, start to finish. The longer story has that part.

That night he said what the tape is for.

The purpose of this is to create an immediate and permanent scratchpad. Forcing the creator to consider the signal going in before they record. Training the ear.

Elijah · Feb 24, 9:34 pm

What the line asks.

Every app in the family is held to it.

• You are playing within seconds of opening it.
• Your timing is kept exactly as you played it.
• It is where you left it when you come back.

The lines that joined it.

On October 13 the headline on the front page started to turn. Get off the grid now shares the spot with four more, all his. Two arrived that morning, in one message:

where BPM is more of a suggestion

Elijah · Oct 13

its in the key of Feel

Elijah · Oct 13

One came off the record of the first week, and has a chapter of its own. The last he wrote later that day:

Where constraint becomes freedom to create.

Elijah · Oct 13

That one is the borrowed tape machine again, eight months on.

And there is the one beside his name, which is the whole thing in two sentences:

These are the tools I want. Escape the grid.

Elijah · on the front page