Granular Synthesiser

A great granular synthesis demo from Ehsan Ziya (aka Ātour). It works very well on a multi-touch device too, so try it on an iOS device, or Chrome on an Android tablet.

The Viability of the Web Browser as a Computer Music Platform

Lonce Wyse and Srikumar Subramanian have written this academic paper for the influential Computer Music Journal. They discuss the web browser as a computer music platform, with particular emphasis on the Web Audio API. It’s not a tutorial per-se, but it covers a lot of ground and attempts to answer some common questions about performance and scalability. A very interesting read if you have the time. Chris Rogers, the original developer of the Web Audio API and former editor of the W3C specification is thanked for technical input in the acknowledgments, so you know you’re getting detailed, accurate information.

-The Viability of the Web Browser as a Computer Music Platform

WebkitGTK enables Web Audio

WebkitGTK, the version of the webkit browser engine with a GTK frontend, has shipped with Web Audio API support. An interesting development for Linux users, it may also allow the development of webkit-based audio applications on Linux.

A brief history of sampling

A quick but entertaining video looking at the history of sampling - reusing short snippets of audio to create new sounds and music.

Programming analog synthesizers

A lot of the power of the Web Audio API lies in knowing how to connect the various building blocks together to create interesting sounds. As developers, we can take a lot of inspiration from the “programmers” of traditional analogue synthesisers. Here’s two inspiring links. In the first, Ethan Winer, shows us how to create sounds using soft/analogue synths. Topics include oscillators, ADSR envelope generators, filters, LFOs, and more. It’s a nice touch to show the waveforms being generated.

The second link contains the owner’s manual for the classic ARP 2500 modular synthesiser. Part 2 of the manual in particular has a number of example patches - see if you can recreate them using the Web Audio API.