Melodics reinvents music learning with interactive design

Melodics isn’t your average music-learning app. Since 2014, it’s taught people how to play MIDI keyboards, pad controllers, and drums (both electronic and acoustic) — but not through repetitive practice drills. 

Instead, they reinvented music learning through animation and interactivity. Players connect their instruments directly to the app using USB adapters or by calibrating the sounds of their acoustic kit, and the app evaluates their rhythm and accuracy in real time. 

Think Guitar Hero, but for real instruments. 

But before Melodics could create a mobile experience, they needed to move away from the limitations of their old tech stack. They wanted fast, flexible design software that matched their high-energy, game-like interface. That’s when Rive joined the band. 

The problem: Static interfaces fell flat

Melodics started as desktop software for Windows and Mac. Back then, their interactive visuals required heavy C++ coding, slowing development and limiting creativity. Updating animations was painful, slow, and prone to off-key results. 

“When we started rebuilding the app for iOS with React, we knew we wanted more flexibility and speed,” says Mario Altvater, senior product designer at Melodics. “C++ was great for performance, but UI updates were torture. We needed a tool that fit our new React-based frontend and let us iterate quickly.”

They needed a better solution — one that could handle:

• Responsive layouts for multiple devices

• Interactive animations synced to music

• Fast iteration cycles to respond to user feedback

The solution: Animations that respond to the beat

Mario discovered Rive on Product Hunt and was immediately drawn to its State Machine, a visual logic system that makes animations interactive.

“I’m a UX designer, not an animator or game designer,” Mario says. “But Rive’s State Machine made it easy to set up animations that react to user input. I could create designs, hand them off to developers, and know they’d behave exactly as expected.”

Melodics used Rive to: 

• Sync animations with sound. Rive Events allowed animations to trigger alongside audio, keeping visuals perfectly in time with the music. 

• Simplify onboarding. The app opens with a playful animation that introduces learners to the product while overlaying React-based buttons.

• Teach technique through motion. Short animations show learners how to hold drumsticks, adjust their seats, or position their hands. These visuals were much easier to update than video tutorials. 

Melodics makes Rive animations part of the lessons. “They make learning feel less intimidating and more like a game,” Mario says. “We use streaks, stars, and progress levels to motivate learners. And because Rive is scalable, we can keep improving the animations without starting from scratch.”

The process: An iterative feedback loop

Melodics’ team started by designing vector-based assets in Adobe Illustrator and Figma, which were imported into Rive for animation. Using the State Machine, they created animations broken into small, tweakable components. 

Next, the Melodics team tested Rive in their onboarding flow, blending Rive animations with React-based buttons. Early results were promising, so they expanded its use to core features like their curriculum via the Guided Path and mini-tutorials that demonstrate proper drumming posture and hand positioning — skills that are hard to explain with static images. 

Even better, Rive lets Melodics update those mini-tutorials based on user feedback without costly reshoots.

“Videos are static. If we need to fix something, we must reshoot the entire scene,” Mario explains. “With Rive, we just update the animation. It’s faster, cheaper, and more scalable.”

Mario adds, “We built animations once and reused them everywhere. Rive’s nested artboards let us test layouts and scale graphics without redoing the work.” 

Rive Layouts helped them quickly animate different screen sizes. “We used to hack together constraints just to get text and graphics to fit,” Mario says. “With Rive’s Layouts feature, we now have the ultimate time-saver. Animations scale seamlessly, whether learners practice on an iPad, a phone, or a desktop computer.”

Melodics’ secret weapon is the seamless feedback loop between MIDI data and Rive animations. 

Each animation was connected to MIDI inputs, allowing Rive to react dynamically as learners played. “We feed MIDI data directly into Rive’s State Machine,” Mario explains. “When learners hit the right notes, the animations respond instantly. It’s a feedback loop between MIDI input, Rive animations, and the state machine — and it runs so smoothly.”

Here’s how that process works:

1. Lessons play back MIDI notes in real time. 

2. Rive animations respond instantly via the State Machine.

3. User inputs trigger animations, providing visual feedback on accuracy and timing.

“It feels responsive because it is,” says Mario. “The State Machine syncs perfectly with user inputs and Audio Events, creating a rhythm game-like experience.”

The results: Collaboration strikes a chord

Mario tells us Rive helped his team bridge the gap between designers and developers, describing it as a contract between teams. Developers no longer have to guess timing or transitions. 

He adds, “I’d define values in the state machine that the developer could manipulate via the runtime in code, and Rive would react automatically. That lets us work separately but stay aligned.” 

Rive’s Share feature further streamlined collaboration. Mario sent interactive previews through Slack and developers tested them instantly. Animations could be updated without rebuilding the entire app. 

“Rive changed the way we think about our design workflow,” says Mario. “We can build complex and lively interfaces without slowing down development. We were able to recreate the design of a key screen in our play experience within hours (instead of days). 500+ lines of UI code, referencing SVGs and doing all sorts of math are now 2 Rive files with a handful of inputs.”

Looking ahead: A harmonious workflow

With Rive’s recent Layouts announcement, they’re already planning more interactive features and richer animations. 

“We can finally tackle more complex interfaces,” says Mario. “Rive’s features put it in a whole new league.”

For teams juggling design and development, Rive makes it easier to create, iterate, and scale. Just ask Melodics: with over one million downloads and counting, they’ve turned practice into play — and play into progress. 

Don’t let static designs mess up your rhythm. Amp up your app with Rive where every interaction hits the right note.