flash instruments

[Gokhan]

hi guys

we are doing a website for a music composer as a university project

i was wondering how we would create in flash mx some music instruments that people could play and after a certain amount of mouse actions etc would play back there composition ??

also to stop this from just being a portfolio site has anyone got any cool ideas we could in-copoerate ???

for my degree's sake

interactive media my ass

 

[Gokhan]

k

nobody ???

 

[emorydunn]

Although this sounds like a REALLY cool idea- I tink it would be cool eye candy, but not be practical. I think it could be done well, if you had sheet music that was clicked on to play the clip- becuase many people who want to listen the the music do not want to have to try and find the right pattern of "hot-spots", they just want to click on something and hear the song. But if you still want to incorperate instraments, you could have some instaments playing along with the song, that would be very cool.

Or if you were hell bent on having the user play the instament, seek inspiration in Zelda: when you want to play a song, you play out the first few notes and the rest of the song is played. You would need to have little colored dots on the strings, where when the user would move the mouse over or click on them to create a note, when the right pattern in played the song would start.

Hope this helps.

 

[Gokhan]

k

cool that sounds really good (zelda hmm) the reason why i am even doing this ,is for university as they dont want a plain jane html site ! they want interactivity wow but the client is very happy

but if anyone could give some technical tips of how this would be done in flash that would be great

thanks

 

[iGav]

Well... you'd be better off building it in Director for a start, it offers ridiculously precise, realtime control of audio... with an almost infinite amount of virtual tracks.

So yeah... sound toys, these were really popular in the mid/late '90's and early '00's, and were frequently distributed on Creative Review CD-ROM's, so it might be worth seeing if your local Uni Library has copies of these.

I'd definitely advise that you try and source some of the following for research purposes though;

• Coldcut - Let Us Play! As that featured an interactive sound toy, that was groundbreaking for it's time.

• Afro Celt Soundsystem - Volume 2: Release Featured a really clever and intuitive sequencer that allowed the user to assemble their own Afro Celt songs by using samples, it automatically sync'd them too.

• Antirom's - Fruitpencer Was a simple 'fruit based' (think like a one armed band type of thing) sequencer that assigned indiviual sounds to specific fruits, and the fruits could be changed creating simple songs, the temp could be changed too.

• Speaking of Antirom, you could do worse than track down their 'Antirom CD-ROM' from 1995, though your best bet is seeing if your Uni library has a copy as they're uber-rare.

• Tomato One, Two, 3 Are well worth tracking down, especially the
latter, that had some interesting interactivity and use of sounds on it.

Tomato Interactive, also produced a really fresh website for Mitsubishi Motors in 2000 I think it was, but I can't remember the URL off the top of my head, but I'll have a tommy gander in some old design mags and I'll let you know.

It might be worth trawlling through Fabrica's site, as they used to have a section devoted to innovative little sound toys.

There's plenty more, but my memory's a little fuzzy.

 

[Gokhan]

k

igav you are a credit to these forums thanks soo much ill look in to what i can get my hands on from your post and let ya know and yes one of my lecturers did say use director

 

[iGav]

igav you are a credit to these forums thanks soo much ill look in to what i can get my hands on from your post and let ya know and yes one of my lecturers did say use director

Have you got access to a machine with OS 9 installed? or at least one with 'Classic'?

 

[iGav]

That Mitsubishi website is no longer live, though the homepage is archived. Tokitoki

Have you tried Benettonplay! Toybox?

On the Fabrica site, do a search in 'Interactive', leaving the other fields blank, you should find a couple of cool sound toy type things in there.

Maybe try Daniel Browns Play-Create too.

I've managed to find digital copies of the Afro Celt Soundsystem, Antirom's Fruitquencer, a Fabrica Toy, and Tomato 3... as well as a couple of other things that might be able to inspire you in my archive (though they're all OS 9 so you'll need to be able to run 'Classic' to play with them), if you PM me your email, I'll YouSendIt them to you.

G

 

[neut]

Maybe these tutorials will help ... Flash 5

peace | neut

 

[Gokhan]

k

yeah i can run classic if need be so ill check that stuff out and ill pm you my email thanks soooo much again