TAO.Audio

TAO Audio — an evolving medium for sound, space, and expression.

Expressive digital instruments, performances, and environments that connect sound, visuals, interaction, and space.

Custom instruments. Live performance across devices. Works experienced as music, visual systems, interactive installations, and spatial environments.

Built by a musician, TAO Audio explores new relationships between sound, visuals, interaction, and space.

A different approach

Most creative tools separate sound, visuals, interaction, and space into different systems.

TAO Audio treats them as parts of the same expressive environment.

TAO Audio has been used to build custom digital instruments, collaborative live performances, generative visual systems, and multichannel spatial works — all from one common foundation.

Digital instruments

Custom digital instruments that live across devices, controllers, and physical interfaces.

TAO supports custom hardware, expressive control surfaces, alternative tunings, configurable sound engines and audio effects, and networked performance — without requiring traditional DAW workflows.

  • Digital keytars
  • Percussion controllers
  • Touch interfaces
  • Alternative tuning systems
  • Configurable sound engines & audio effects
  • Browser instruments
  • Custom embedded devices
A TAO Audio digital keytar
Digital keytar — a custom networked performance instrument.

Performances

TAO is built for live performance.

Multiple performers can participate from connected devices across a local network, creating shared musical experiences that are responsive, expressive, and immediate.

Performances can combine sound, visuals, interaction, and spatial behaviors within the same system.

Performances can be live, recorded, replayed, or transformed while preserving the expressive relationships between sound, visuals, interaction, and space.

Environments & installations

TAO extends beyond instruments.

The same systems used for performance can power interactive environments, installations, visual works, spatial audio experiences, and experimental media projects.

Sound, visuals, interaction, and space become different expressions of the same underlying work.

WebXR rendering of a TAO Audio performance
Minor Flicker Chirp — WebXR rendering of a live performance.

Beyond audio recording

TAO Audio records performances as expressive events and system state — not just audio.

A recorded work can be replayed, reinterpreted, visualized, rendered to audio, or experienced through future renderers, while preserving the intent of the original performance.

Current status

TAO Audio is under active development. The current focus is on:

  • Digital instruments
  • Networked performance
  • Alternative tuning systems
  • Event-based recording and playback
  • Audio and visual renderers
  • Spatial and interactive environments

New instruments, performances, and environments are added regularly as the platform continues to evolve.

Explore

Interested in experimental instruments, alternative musical systems, interactive media, spatial audio, visual performance, or expressive environments?

Follow along as TAO Audio continues to grow — recent performances, recordings, and photos live in the Showcase.

For more information, contact: info[at]tao[dot]audio

TAO.Audio — Showcase

Performances and Featured Works

Selected instruments, performances, environments, and works in progress created with TAO Audio.

Featured works

TAO.Audio — About

About TAO Audio.

A platform for creating expressive instruments, performances, and environments.

What is TAO Audio?

TAO Audio spans custom hardware instruments, the firmware that gives them expressive control, and the software platform that connects them into performances and environments.

At its core is a system for capturing the expressive intent of a performance — notes, gestures, tunings, relationships, and interactions rather than only the resulting audio. Captured works support dynamic and variable rendering and re-rendering into many media and formats: audio, visual elements, interactions, and generative artistic forms.

Performances, once captured, continually find new forms.

Why does it exist?

Most digital works become fixed once they are recorded or exported. TAO Audio explores a different possibility: works that can continue to evolve, be reinterpreted, and be experienced through new instruments, renderers, environments, and forms of interaction over time.

Who is behind it?

TAO Audio is built by RJ Tripp — musician, digital instrument maker, and software engineer.

The platform grows out of a practice that treats instrument building, performance, and systems design as one continuous activity: instruments worth playing, performances worth keeping, and a system that lets those performances be re-imagined over time.

RJ Tripp with a TAO Audio digital keytar

For more information, contact: info[at]tao[dot]audio