The Garage

Most museum visits are spent looking. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame wanted a room where visitors could pick up a guitar and make some noise of their own.

The challenge

The Garage was meant to feel like the place where bands start: real instruments, real amps, friends crammed into a small room. Visitors can learn to play, jam together, design merch for their band, and check out gear from the museum's collection.

Early prototypes taught the team the most important rule. Anything that felt like a video game cheapened it. No light-up keys, no Guitar Hero notes, no AutoTune. The technology had to stay out of the way of the music.

What we built

We built the interactives behind the learn-to-play stations, the jam room, and Brand Your Band.

• Learn-to-play stations run on Unity. Behind each one, SendMidi, PedalBoard, and Reaper switch between software instruments and effects, so every guitar, bass, and keyboard sounds the way it should.
• The jam room captures sessions with OBS and a custom Python app.
• Brand Your Band lets visitors name their band and design a logo on a touchscreen. An industrial label printer turns the logo into two free stickers on the spot, and a custom Printful integration lets fans order print-on-demand merch with it. Unity, Python, and a WordPress site tie it together.

The result

The Garage opened to the public in July 2019, filling the museum's entire second floor. About 50,000 people came through in its first six weeks, and 97 percent said it met or beat their expectations. It also earned the highest visitor rating of any Rock Hall exhibition since the museum started measuring in 2014.

Ben Nyx is the secret weapon when it comes to delivering on all things Rock Hall tech. He is a Swiss Army knife – a true master in hardware, software, programming, and solution engineering. Ben is the rare hybrid as he is truly gifted in creating both captivating virtual and nonvirtual experiences. What do we say around here when we need a complex technology fix? “Call Ben.”