Composer devises audio storage system for music professionals

An score of piano music is open and shows a piece of music which has been annotated in pencil all over.

Composer devises audio storage system for music professionals

6 September 2022

Canadian composer Alex Liberatore graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston Massachusetts before becoming a freelance composer, working on films, tv shows, video games, and short animations. Recent commissions include the Netflix series ‘The Greatest Events of World War II in Colour’ and US horror film ‘Student Body’.

He returned to education in 2019 to study for a master’s degree in Advanced Music Technology at UWL. 

I have always been fascinated by the role technology plays in music,” he says. “Taking a break from composition gave me time to reflect on how I do my job, which gave me the idea for Musidex.”

Westmont Enterprise Hub is UWL’s ideation, innovation and incubation centre, supporting those ambitious entrepreneurs from both within the university and the local community to grow their ideas and bring them to market.

Westmont Enterprise Hub

The Westmont Enterprise Hub offers support and resources for thinkers, innovators and entrepreneurs to connect and grow their ideas, from concept to reality.

Alex Liberatore is stood infront of a poster that says 'a digital scrapbook for composers and song writers'. Alex is wearing a patterned button up shirt and maroon trousers.

Composers study each other’s music, saving snippets to their computer alongside their own work. Looking at the data saved on his hard drive from eight years of compositions, Alex decided that he needed a highly searchable storage system to allow him to better exploit it for the future.

He began to develop his idea in 2020, joining the Westmont Enterprise Hub during the Covid-19 lockdown.

I began with a very basic outline – the minimum viable product (MVP) of what it could be,” he says. “I imagined it as an extension of the composer’s brain.”

From there, Alex developed and tested Musidex with support from programmers. Westmont Hub brought in experts to test it and then other composers were invited to try it. It is now ready to be rolled out commercially.

A pair of hands turning dials on a mixing desk in a music studio

Initially, Musidex was aimed at composers, but Alex is also targeting recording studios and record labels.

Studios often back up recordings to hard drives or tape which eventually fail, so we have created a cloud-based version,”

Alex says, adding that Musidex can easily be customised if specific functions are required.

The Westmont Hub made me feel very well supported during the development process,” he continues. “They are great at mentoring you and it was nice to have their support on a personal level. There hasn’t been a question that they haven’t been able to find an answer to.”

A male student working on a computer by a sound desk

With regard to competing solutions, Alex says he is often asked why not just use Dropbox.

Dropbox is good for short-term projects,” he explains. “But it is not designed to look for something you did or saved years ago. With Musidex, you can tag your uploads in detail to help you easily find very specific data.”

Find out more about Musidex