I am going to be presenting the work I did for the Flash Synthesizer at the Audio Engineers Society convention this weekend in NYC. I excited for my second visit to this mother of all music nerds convention. I'm also excited to visit the mother of me (Haven't seen the parents since I moved to Cali)...
You can read my awesome abstract here (I'm at the bottom of the page).
It looks like I'll be the last one to go in the 9am-noon Sunday session.
Are you going to be there? If so, come by and give me a high five!
10.03.2007
The Secret Files!
Ok, I haven't been trying to keep these secret, I just wanted to make them elegant and beautifully coded but I never achieved this lofty goal. The people need their Flash synthesizer!
You can download the .zip of my project here
You can download the .zip of my project here
8.04.2007
Great Write Up of Splice
Peter Kirn from the awesome site createdigitalmusic.com just did a great write up on Splice (per my suggestion :-P ) and you can read it here: http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/08/03/interview-how-splicecom-has-taken-music-real-audio-processing-to-the-web/#more-2391
Plus I think I got a little shout out for my stupid mistake of calling Bram de Jong Bram Cohen (the creator of BitTorrent). D'oh! :
"I know I get confused a lot with Bram Bos (of Hammerhead fame) and just now I read somewhere that my last name was Cohen (of Bittorrent fame!), but no!!!"
Plus I think I got a little shout out for my stupid mistake of calling Bram de Jong Bram Cohen (the creator of BitTorrent). D'oh! :
"I know I get confused a lot with Bram Bos (of Hammerhead fame) and just now I read somewhere that my last name was Cohen (of Bittorrent fame!), but no!!!"
7.30.2007
But First, Some News!
I had the pleasure of meeting Wendell Davis, the CEO of Splice Music a few weeks back and he showed me the preview of the new SpliceMusic.com, which has since been quietly pushed live for all to see. When writing my thesis, I thought it would be amazing to create a synthesizer, sequencer, and DSP effects within a Flash site (a la Garageband) although I knew that something like this would take me years to do on my own...
Wendell had a similar thought and brought together the reigning geniuses of Flash and audio coding, Andre Michelle and Bram Cohen, respectively, to create the next generation of Splice. Well, they hit this one so far out of the park it’s ridiculous. The new Splice has a gorgeous interface, an audio engine that performs as well as any desktop based audio app, a synthesizer, some DSP effects that are cooler than some desktop plug-ins I've seen, and of course features the web 2.0 ability to share and collaborate. I was also told that they have an API to allow others to create their own effects, etc. and add them to the site – I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
In very related news, Andre Michelle and Joa Ebert generously released the source code to their AS3 audio library on code.google.com/p/popforge. Once I get through my current wave of busyness I am going to sit down and dissect the code to learn from the Great Master and of course see all the things I could have done better in my thesis...
Wendell had a similar thought and brought together the reigning geniuses of Flash and audio coding, Andre Michelle and Bram Cohen, respectively, to create the next generation of Splice. Well, they hit this one so far out of the park it’s ridiculous. The new Splice has a gorgeous interface, an audio engine that performs as well as any desktop based audio app, a synthesizer, some DSP effects that are cooler than some desktop plug-ins I've seen, and of course features the web 2.0 ability to share and collaborate. I was also told that they have an API to allow others to create their own effects, etc. and add them to the site – I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
In very related news, Andre Michelle and Joa Ebert generously released the source code to their AS3 audio library on code.google.com/p/popforge. Once I get through my current wave of busyness I am going to sit down and dissect the code to learn from the Great Master and of course see all the things I could have done better in my thesis...
¿Donde Estoy?
It’s been, well, a few weeks since I started this site and made my first few posts. Since then, I’ve been busy finishing grad school at NYU, doing a bunch of freelance jobs, moving out to LA, working on a book about corn, and doing tons of miscellaneous other things...
But I’m back! And inspired by the fact that I’ve been selected to give a lecture about my thesis at the 123rd annual Audio Engineers’ Society (AES) convention (at the Javits Center in NYC in October), it’s time to make some updates and drop some wisdom! If you're in NYC and feel like being a massive nerd from October 5-8th, let me know! (or just heckle me)
But I’m back! And inspired by the fact that I’ve been selected to give a lecture about my thesis at the 123rd annual Audio Engineers’ Society (AES) convention (at the Javits Center in NYC in October), it’s time to make some updates and drop some wisdom! If you're in NYC and feel like being a massive nerd from October 5-8th, let me know! (or just heckle me)
5.02.2007
So here’s what I did
I created a simple synthesizer which at this point is more proof-of-concept than super-awesome synthesizer. I should have Reason 4.0: Flash ready next week :-P
Before explaining how I made this and where to go from here, it’s probably a good idea to first meet the synth:
You can choose between four sound waves (sine, square, triangle and saw) or white noise from the top buttons. The “Amplitude” slider controls the amplitude of the wave and “Pitch” controls the frequency. “Moogcut” controls the frequency cutoff of the sound and “Moogres” controls the resonance.
The visualizer (which I’ll also explain in a later post) can show the sound in either the frequency (”freq”) or time (”wave”) domains. For those not familiar with the nature of audio synthesis, a lot can be learned by looking at how the visual representation of sound is changed by just messing with the sliders. For example, the odd partials (octave multiples of sound’s fundamental frequency) of the square wave come out very nicely in the frequency domain representation. As you lower the cutoff frequency value, the amplitudes of the higher partials accordingly decrease. Cool!!!!
The number in the lower left corner of the synth is the current frame rate of your Flash player. If it is below around 30-ish, chances are the sound will come out a bit choppy because the computer isn’t filling the audio buffer fast enough. Quitting other apps, closing other brower windows and buying that new MacBook Pro you’ve been dreaming about may all help it run faster and smoother.
The source code for this is coming soon. I just need to clean up my code, install Flash CS3 (I developed this with the Flash 9 AS 3 preview) and make sure everything still works...
Before explaining how I made this and where to go from here, it’s probably a good idea to first meet the synth:
You can choose between four sound waves (sine, square, triangle and saw) or white noise from the top buttons. The “Amplitude” slider controls the amplitude of the wave and “Pitch” controls the frequency. “Moogcut” controls the frequency cutoff of the sound and “Moogres” controls the resonance.
The visualizer (which I’ll also explain in a later post) can show the sound in either the frequency (”freq”) or time (”wave”) domains. For those not familiar with the nature of audio synthesis, a lot can be learned by looking at how the visual representation of sound is changed by just messing with the sliders. For example, the odd partials (octave multiples of sound’s fundamental frequency) of the square wave come out very nicely in the frequency domain representation. As you lower the cutoff frequency value, the amplitudes of the higher partials accordingly decrease. Cool!!!!
The number in the lower left corner of the synth is the current frame rate of your Flash player. If it is below around 30-ish, chances are the sound will come out a bit choppy because the computer isn’t filling the audio buffer fast enough. Quitting other apps, closing other brower windows and buying that new MacBook Pro you’ve been dreaming about may all help it run faster and smoother.
The source code for this is coming soon. I just need to clean up my code, install Flash CS3 (I developed this with the Flash 9 AS 3 preview) and make sure everything still works...
4.23.2007
Big Props to These Guys
Before I start talking about what I’ve done, full props and giant high-fives must be given to Andre Michele and FlashCodersBrighton
I knew I wanted to investigate the deep potential of audio with Flash 9 and ActionScript 3 but it was Andre Michelle’s ridiculous experiments in the “labs” section of his site – lab.andre-michelle.com – which showed me that Flash really was up to the task of audio synthesis and processing.
Just a 12 hour drive away from Mr. Michelle’s secret underground Flash lair in Berlin, Germany, a group of coders who call themselves FlashCodersBrighton figured out how to code ActionScript 3 to generate audio and very kindly posted their code and explanations online. This code has been invaluable in my understanding of how audio can be generated and manipulated in Flash and is the base upon which I’ve built my code.
Dankeschön, Andre!
Cheers, FlashCodersBrighton mates!
I knew I wanted to investigate the deep potential of audio with Flash 9 and ActionScript 3 but it was Andre Michelle’s ridiculous experiments in the “labs” section of his site – lab.andre-michelle.com – which showed me that Flash really was up to the task of audio synthesis and processing.
Just a 12 hour drive away from Mr. Michelle’s secret underground Flash lair in Berlin, Germany, a group of coders who call themselves FlashCodersBrighton figured out how to code ActionScript 3 to generate audio and very kindly posted their code and explanations online. This code has been invaluable in my understanding of how audio can be generated and manipulated in Flash and is the base upon which I’ve built my code.
Dankeschön, Andre!
Cheers, FlashCodersBrighton mates!
¿que?
Yo! I’m Jordan, a soon-to-be Alumnus of NYU’s bodacious Music Technology Master’s program, and going against everything I’ve ever said about blogs, I’ve decided to start my very own. But since I won't be writing about how I’m better than you because I know some indie band you don’t, I don’t think that makes me a hypocrite...
My Master’s thesis, “Advanced Audio Visualization and Synthesis with Flash 9 and ActionScript 3.0,” explains how to hack the new ActionScript 3.0 language into enabling realtime audio synthesis, processing, and visualization within any Flash 9 player. Since Flash is on more than 98% of all computers in the world, I think this is just the beginning of very significant wave of powerful audio applications on the web.
My purpose of starting this blog is to save my thesis from the lonely and dusty life of the NYU Bobst library and spread the knowledge I’ve gained in my 2 years getting my Master’s in Music Technology and the many months I’ve spent researching and working on my thesis.
I want to help others get started working their own audio projects in Flash 9 and contribute to developing the medium so it can one day become a legitimate way of making or manipulating music.
I also plan to continue experimenting and developing audio applications with Flash CS3 and will to use this site to showcase my own projects.
Lastly, people are going to (and already have) come up with some mindblowingly cool Flash CS3 audio applications and I‘m going to to post some good examples and perhaps try to figure out how they did what they did.
Questions, examples of crazy-cool Flash audio things, or funny curse words in obsolete languages can be sent here: grandmasterflashcs3@gmail.com
My Master’s thesis, “Advanced Audio Visualization and Synthesis with Flash 9 and ActionScript 3.0,” explains how to hack the new ActionScript 3.0 language into enabling realtime audio synthesis, processing, and visualization within any Flash 9 player. Since Flash is on more than 98% of all computers in the world, I think this is just the beginning of very significant wave of powerful audio applications on the web.
My purpose of starting this blog is to save my thesis from the lonely and dusty life of the NYU Bobst library and spread the knowledge I’ve gained in my 2 years getting my Master’s in Music Technology and the many months I’ve spent researching and working on my thesis.
I want to help others get started working their own audio projects in Flash 9 and contribute to developing the medium so it can one day become a legitimate way of making or manipulating music.
I also plan to continue experimenting and developing audio applications with Flash CS3 and will to use this site to showcase my own projects.
Lastly, people are going to (and already have) come up with some mindblowingly cool Flash CS3 audio applications and I‘m going to to post some good examples and perhaps try to figure out how they did what they did.
Questions, examples of crazy-cool Flash audio things, or funny curse words in obsolete languages can be sent here: grandmasterflashcs3@gmail.com
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