Sine synthesizer with PureMVC

By admin | Published: July 20, 2009
Screenshot

Screenshot

The past weeks I’ve been learning PureMVC. It had been on my mind for some time, and now that a project (a pianoroll type MIDI editor) became too complicated and the lack of structure took the fun out of programming I figured it was time for a nice new clean framework.

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Posted in ActionScript | 5 Comments

Step sequencer / drum machine

By admin | Published: June 14, 2009
Part of the sequencer

Part of the sequencer

Here is a basic step sequencer for creating rhythms. The sounds it plays are small MP3 files. Short sound clips of drum noises, blips and plings. So it’s more a sample player than a drum synth. But the main thing is that it loads and plays rhythm patterns and that the patterns can easily be edited. That’s what I wanted to do here.

It plays patterns in the same way FL Studio (FruityLoops) does. There’s twelve tracks that each play their own sound and each track has sixteen steps that can be switched on or off by clicking the step buttons.

Besides that the volume of each step can be changed by holding the “1″ (one) key on the computer keyboard while dragging the mouse up or down on the step button. The blue rectangle on the step will change in height to indicate the volume level.

The image of the waveform on the left of each track can be clicked to play the sound. And there are four patterns. Switch between them with the ’1′ to ’4′ buttons at the bottom.

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Posted in ActionScript | 9 Comments

MIDI and XML for a drum machine

By admin | Published: June 1, 2009

As a next project I want to make a simple drum machine. Several tracks that each play a different drum sample and each track has sixteen steps. Just like a Roland 808 or the main step sequencer in FruityLoops. It’s nothing complicated but it made me think about how to store the patterns the drum machine plays.

MIDI

MIDI

I’d like to put in an XML file all the information about how many patterns there are, how many tracks, which sound plays when and so on. But I want to keep the file as flexible as possible. It must be easy to later change the length of a pattern to 32 tracks, to add melodic patterns, notes of different length, filter settings… Whatever I need I want to be able to include in the file.

Then it occurred to me that such a file already exist: MIDI!

MIDI has been around since 1982, and today still is one of the main formats for music. Besides channels, notes and timing it can hold all kinds of extra settings as “Control Change” values or “System Exclusive” messages. Very general and flexible and just what I need. Only, MIDI is no XML. And Flash can’t read MIDI files. So I googled MIDI and XML and found I’m not the first to need MIDI in an XML form.

As far as I’ve been able to find two standards exist to format MIDI as XML:

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Posted in MIDI, XML | 2 Comments

Slicer with waveform display

By admin | Published: May 10, 2009
slicer with waveform display

Slicer with waveform display

This slicer works the same as the previous one. Only difference is that is uses eight slices instead of sixteen.

The new stuff is in the interface: Waveforms to see what’s playing. And nicer to look at as well.

To use this app you can click the buttons as before to select a slice to play, and now you will see the waveform change to represent the slice.

The second way to change the slices is to click and drag on the waveforms itself. Drag up for later slices and down for earlier ones. Drag all the way down for an empty slice and silence. Read More »

Posted in ActionScript | 1 Comment

A basic slicer

By admin | Published: May 8, 2009
Part of the slicer

Part of the slicer

This is it! The first one: A slicer.

It loads and plays an MP3 file. But not only that. It divides the file in sixteen equal parts and you can change the order in which the parts are played.

When it’s loaded the slicer plays all the parts in the right order. Part 1, 2, 3 and up until part 16. With the buttons you can change the order and for example play part 4, then 3, 11, 8 and so on. With the right MP3 loop this will create all kinds of interesting rhythmic variations.

It works best if the MP3 file is a short piece of music with a steady rhythm that loops seamlessly (so the start and end of the sound fit together exactly). Then every slice has a little bit of rhythm in it. Just one or two sounds like a kick or snare drum.

Best to check it out for yourself. I will put the actual SWF files on the ‘Read more’ pages of the posts, so they won’t all be playing at the same time and use up each other’s CPU cycles. Read More »

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A blog on Flash and audio

By admin | Published: May 7, 2009

Oh yes! Finally I have my own blog.

I’ve had this www.hisschemoller.com domain for years, but didn’t really have any use for it. I just got it because it was there – my own name as a dot com. Better get it before someone else does. Especially before one of those companies get it that buy domain names just to sell them for a profit. “Get some money out of those Hisschemöllers” they might think. That’s not how the internet should work.

Now I have a use: The past months I’ve been getting more and more into programming audio stuff with Flash. Small experiments with sound, music, samples etcetera. I’ll post those Flash files here. And the sources as well if I come up with anything good. I learned a lot from other blogs, so now I can do something in return.

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