Issue 53
Recreating phone sounds with Web Audio
A fantastic recreation of analogue and digital phone sounds including the UK dial tone and ringback tone, as well as the DTMF “touch tones”. I love how Ed Ball deconstructs the theory and physics of these sounds and then builds them up again using Web Audio nodes and techniques. The embedded Codepen demos are a great touch too.
The Indian Drone Instrument: Version 2
Back in 2014, Indian Drone was one of the first generators featured on this website. At that time, synthetic oscillators were used to recreate the distinctive sound of the Indian tanpura (or tambura). That sound became quite popular for meditation sessions.
Two years later, I am recreating the same sound, but this time from acoustic samples − sounds acquired from the real instrument.
2nd Annual Web Audio Conference - registration now open
Registration is now open for the next Web Audio Conference at Georgia Tech in Atlanta on April 4-6 2016.
Bringing your code to the streets
Ruth John built a mobile video projecting platform using three.js, a small projector, a MIDI controller and the Web MIDI API. She then went out on the streets of Bristol and lit up the evening sky with her creations. The article on 24ways has the code and more details about the project.
2Decks: HTML5 DJ App
2Decks is described as “the world’s first HTML5 DJ App”. It certainly has an impressive feature set, and the team have spent a lot of time on the beat matching, syncing and cueing features. It also has support for a wide variety of hardware mixers that emit MIDI events. There’s a public demo, and you can sign up for the beta.
Jam3 Web Audio Gotchas
The Jam3 audio player is an attempt to find a work-around for a number of “gotchas” when playing audio using the Web Audio API particularly on mobile operating systems. If your application needs audio playback support, I think it’d be wise to start use this player and to contribute to the collective wisdom building up around some of the gnarlier edges of browser support for Web Audio.
Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers
A great selection of clever ways to get you out of a creative rut, to help you find inspiration or to re-focus on the basics when making music. And, as @andrewn says “remove the word ‘music’, it applies to anything creative.”
Open source effects pedal with Web Audio patch auditioning
The OWL is an open source, programmable effects pedal made for guitarists, musicians, hackers and programmers alike. Users can program their own effects or download ready-made patches from a growing online patch library. The patch library now supports cross compiling the effects that a user writes using FAUST, Puredata or C++ to Javascript and the Web Audio API so that they can be auditioned in the browser before uploading them to the pedal.
The whole project is fully open source from software to hardware, and funded by kickstarter. The link below has an example patch, clicking on the “test” tab and hitting “start” auditions the patch in the browser.
Watch Daedelus compare the TR-808 and TR-8
I enjoyed this video of producer Daedelus comparing the TR-808 drum machine with Roland’s newer TR-8. While obviously a bit of a promotional piece for Roland’s gear, his comments on the less tangible features of the 808’s interface, it’s style and unpredictability were a reminder to consider these elements in our own web-based projects.
Techno made entirely with physical, mechanical objects
Spin, spin, spin. Clang, clang, clang. Bloop, bloop, bloop.