Indian developer Sandeep Ranade won the Apple Design Award for his ‘NaadSadhana’ app. The engineer stated that he could not believe it.
Apple describes NaadSadhana as an “all-in-one, studio-quality music app that helps musicians of all genres and any expertise perform and publish their music without boundaries.”
Indian developer wins Apple design award
NaadSadhana win the award at WWDC 2021
In 2019, when Sandeep Ranade attended the Worldwide Developer Conference in California. And he saw the kinds of apps winning at the Apple Design Awards. He put off the idea of one of his own apps winning anything of the sort.
However, now, the Pune-based developer-singer-songwriter is sitting with one of these awards. That is for his Artificial Intelligence Indian Classical music app NaadSadhana. “I haven’t slept since they announced the award on June 10,” laughs Sandeep over the phone.
During the first week of June, as Worldwide Developer Conference 2021 kicked off. Above all, the finalists for the Apple Design Awards were announced, his AI Classical Music app was featured in the Innovation category and Riot Games’ League of Legends: Wild Rift.
It has been a week of disbelief and happiness for Sandeep. A musician of the Mewati Gharana and a disciple of the late Pandit Jasraj, having been taught by Shobha Abhyankar and Anjali Joglekar-Ponkshe.
Read WWDC 2021 event for you.
In the same week, AR Rahman commended Sandeep’s viral song ‘Na Corona Karo.’ Also, he later congratulated Sandeep on his Design Award via his official Instagram page.
Have you ever tried the NaadSadhana award-winning app?
A developer stood out for Indians from 12 awards that Apple announced at the annual developer conference WWDC on Friday. An Indian developer’s app for Hindustani Classical Music was felicitated with the Design Award. A software engineer named Sandeep Ranade is behind the app ‘NaadSadhana,’ which was honored under the Innovation category.
Read Apple is making a buzz in the market.
The app had initially started as a platform to practice classical music. However, it has expanded to more genres like semi-Classical. Also, Hindustani classical, Light / Bollywood, Devotional, Western, Carnatic, and Fusion.
NaadSadhana uses Artificial Intelligence and Core ML to help musicians by assisting them in improvising a vocal line. It gives immediate feedback on the accuracy of notes and makes a backing track that matches in real-time.
Sandeep Ranade
“Imagine an app that can play music like an expert, respond to your music intelligently, creatively, and aesthetically, record and mix multiple tracks, and even guide your notes and tempo.NaadSadhana helps musicians make magic by using artificial intelligence, neuroscience, learning theory, digital signal processing, and novel research… In my song ‘Na Corona Karo,’ NaadSadhana accompanied me on 10 instruments, in real-time,”
Visual and graphics, interaction, delight and fun, inclusivity, and social impact were some of the other categories of the awards. “Winners in this category provide a state-of-the-art experience through the novel use of Apple technologies that set them apart in their genre,” Apple said.
The Bottom Line
NaadSadhana saw a new chapter of changes when Sandeep decided to rewrite the app from scratch using SwiftUI about six months ago. He waited till the software matured a bit before starting. “It allowed me to work much faster and at a greater scale. I released two taals for ghazal singers: a ghazal Dadra and ghazal keherwa.
Also, which requires a new level of AI,” he explains, “There were already 30 to 40 pieces of AI for each of these instruments. Still, I needed a conductor-level Artificial Intelligence to ensure these instruments played well together even when you turn everything on.”
During the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, people upskilling and wanting to dive into cultural arts were using NaadSadhana for tuning.
Above all, it is creating music as instruments are expensive. The timing was serendipitous as Sandeep released the new build of the app with all these features two days before Apple announced the finalists for the Design Awards.
