Groove Pizza

Choose a pizza special or place your own toppings. Listen to the pattern, move one beat, and hear what changes. Try a triangle, a square or a pattern of your own.

Groove Pizza is a circular rhythm app for creative music making and learning! It connects music creation with math concepts like shapes, angles, and patterns. Debuted at the U.S. Department of Education in 2016, it has received acclaim from the Washington Post, USA Today, and Julian Lennon.

Use pizza "specials," shapes, and toppings to craft grooves. Export as audio or MIDI, or share to Soundtrap, Noteflight, or Flat.io. Explore more via the Flat.io blog.

Groove Pizza was commissioned for the launch of Herbie Hancock's Math Science Music Initiative in conjunction with International Jazz Day in April 2016.

Read NYU’s 2016 launch announcement

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Accessible Groove Pizza

Explore Accessible Groove Pizza, a research prototype with keyboard controls, built-in speech, sonification and selectable color palettes. Its profile includes the current launch link, research credits and testing limits.

Groove Pizzeria

Explore polyrhythms with Groove Pizzeria, developed by Tyler Bisson as an NYU master’s thesis project. More info here.

Thesis: Bisson, Tyler J. (2018). Groove Pizzeria: Designing a Circular Step Sequencer for Polyrhythm and Polymeter. Master of Music in Music Technology, NYU Steinhardt, November 26, 2018. Advisor: Dr. Alex Ruthmann.

Read Tyler Bisson’s thesis (PDF, 89 pages, 1.2 MB). The original PDF is preserved unchanged.

Drum Pizza — Ethan Hein’s independent experiment

Ethan Hein’s independent, vibe-coded Drum Pizza explores four drum layers, triplets and custom WAV or MP3 sounds. Its playful character recalls the early prototypes before Groove Pizza’s formal 2016 Herbie Hancock Math Science Music launch.

Try Ethan Hein’s Drum Pizza ↗

An independent prototype maintained by its creator. For more experiments and our Scratch roots, explore Vibe Coding and the developing Community Remixes showcase.

Inspired by Ethan Hein’s NYU thesis work, documented in his 2013 Designing the Drum Loop thesis presentation on SlideShare (18 slides), Groove Pizza was co-developed with Adam November. Original development began in 2015, launching with support from MathScienceMusic.org in 2016.

Credits: Ethan Hein, Adam November, Alex Ruthmann (Concepts); Diana Castro (Design); Kevin Irlen (Software Architecture); Matthew Kaney (Creative Coding); Seth Hillinger (Backend); Marijke Jorritsma, Angela Lau, Harshini Karunaratne, Matt McLean (Testing); Asyrique Thevendran, Jamie Ehrenfeld, Jason Sigal (Support).