(You can drag each node and switch off the wander behaviour to create your own compositions).
At Flash on the Beach this year, I had the privilege of seeing Andre Michelle speak. It was great to hear him explain some of his fantastic work behind audiotool and to see and hear some more of his audio experiments.
He also introduced Tonfall, which is an open source AS3 framework designed to get people started with Audio programming in Flash. From the horses mouth; “Tonfall introduces only a vague design of an audio engine and is rather focussed on readability and simplicity than performance optimizations”.
I know that I’m not alone in feeling inspired by what Andre has done for the Flash platform, particularly when it comes to audio, yet lack the knowledge he has invested so much time and hard work in acquiring. The fact that he’s now sharing it with the ret of us for free was more than enough impetus to have a crack at it myself.
So this is my first test with the framework, which although not extensively documented (at the time of writing), was quite easy to pick up and get going with.
This sequencer is based around physical nodes, which connect to produce a variety of tones. There are two types of node, a neuron and a receptor, which are connected by synapses (apologies for the trite analogies). Neurons fire periodically, and if within a certain proximity of a receptor, this message is sent at a fixed speed along the bridging synapse. When the message arrives, the receptor is activated and responds by queuing it’s individual tone within the audio engine. Each receptor owns a randomly assigned note, and each neuron a randomly assigned octave; therefor a receptor will play it’s note in several different octaves depending on which neuron causes it to fire.
The download includes the builds of Tonfall by Andre Michelle and Minimal Comps by Keith Peters that I’m using.
Download: Particle Sequencer
Wicked cool work. I’ll bet you spent as much time testing as developing. I know when I’m working on things like this I start testing and end up laying with it way too long. But it’s fun work.
Really great. What a cool idea. I would like it if I could throw neurons around and add a little bit more chaos to the thing. When are you publishing this as an Air app so I might have it on my Android phone?
As soon as possible! Been thinking about that, though it will need some performance optimisations…
Oh, sheit!!! This is so DOPE!!!! I Could play with it for hours!!! :D
Thanks for posting, man! :)
As soon as possible! Been thinking about that, though it will need some performance optimisations…
Filanly! This is just what I was looking for.
Armin can go F*** himself. This is “State of trance” at it best.
thanks for this inspirational website.
Thanks, it’s very helpful for me.
http://www.as3tutorial.com is very helpful for beginners.
That is incredible.
Hi, your project is really great!
But… how I can test it? Do you have a .fla file? Thanks!
Ok, now it works and it was very simply. But in AbstractApplication class stage is null.. can you tell me why? If I comment this:
/* stage.scaleMode
….
1000.0; */
and this:
/* spectrum.x = ( stage.stageWidth – spectrum.width ) >> 1;
spectrum.y = ( stage.stageHeight – spectrum.height ) >> 1; */
all works correcty. Thanks for your support.
If you like and if you can you can see my .fla file and the modified AbstractApplication class.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5071919/ParticleSequencer.zip
Have you thought about bringing this to iOS/appstore? It’d make a great ipad/iphone app. I’d love to try and (help) port it.
I have indeed! I think it would be a great port, though I’m not experienced with Objective-C and don’t have the time to learn on the job yet. I was thinking of using Cinder or OpenFrameworks but that would still need to be integrated properly. If you’re interested then drop me an email – would love some expert help when it comes to the app part! :)
I wish I saw your comment sooner (I thought I’d be notified of a response) since I actually spent some time having a go at porting this. :) I’d like to talk to you though, but I can’t seem to find your contact info (email) anywhere on your blog. Can you let me know how to best contact you through email so we can chat about this? :D Looking for to it!
boys, you have already, but you certainly know it ;), a very good app on iPad/iPhone called “Aura Flux” which does the job… check http://www.higefive.com/apps/flux/….
but the design is just … a bit … not good ;)… not good at all
it could be effectively nice to have yours ported there ;)…
anyway, it’a an excellent work.
I’m actually thinking about a similar project including maybe a homemade touchtable, or playing with touchOSC, an iPad, and a flash /air application
will let you know
Yeah Aural Flux is somewhat similar, but not quite the same in terms of final output and method.
Check back though because we’re pretty far along on the port and we’ll be announcing it within the next couple weeks. We’re going for something more generative/simpler than Aural Flux I think. Both are great though! :)
Hey Erik,
Yeah, I friend pointed that out to me when I posted this on Facebook! It’s a lovely app and a similar mechanic in terms of the nodes, though as Seth says we’re working on making this much more intuitive and quick / easy to explore, plus I think in all it’s a fundamentally (as well as stylistically) different concept.
We’ll keep you posted on the launch! :)
Your app sounds really interesting. Seeing this on a huge platform like a multitouch table would be amazing. Keep us in the loop on that too!
why don’t you port it to PlayBook? It’s made in flash so you’re pretty much done already : ) if you get it in in time (March 31) you get a free PlayBook. My gess is someone already ported though, just changed the interface a bit … http://www.playbookdaily.com/2011/02/11/blackberry-playbook-music-app-pulsr-available-in-app-world/
I can’t explore source files, when i ally Main or GUI to a *.fla, it find a lot of error… :(