MixBolt - Web Audio Turntables

MixBolt is a DJ app in your browser. Featuring two virtual decks, and time stretching, it’s a powerful tool already.

I couldn’t see any features for headphone cuing using Web Audio’s multi-channel support, but I have seen @cwilso demo something like that using his demo DJ application, WubWubWub, so I’m sure MixBolt will be able to add that later.

SuperCollider-inspired live coding environments

If DJ-ing isn’t your thing, but you’d still like to perform music using your browser, maybe these two SuperCollider-inspired coding environments are what you need.

The first, flocking.js, allows you to create sounds by declaring how individual blocks, or “unit generators”, are connected using JSON. In many ways it’s similar to how the Web Audio API works, but flocking provides some higher-level building blocks, and under the hood, uses the Web Audio ScriptProcessorNode to handle the sound output.

Timbre.js is a similar-looking library, but allows the musician to write JavaScript directly to create sounds. Again, ScriptProcessorNode is being used where supported, but a flash fallback is available for other browsers.

/via Dan Stowell (@mclduk)

Programming for Musicians

If all this talk of coding environments for musicians has you scratching your head, a recently-started Coursera course might be the ticket. In “Introduction to Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists”, Ajay Kapur from the California Institute of Arts is teaching programming using ChucK, the audio processing environment. Although not web-based I’m sure a lot of the principles taught in the course will be transferrable to the web and Web Audio.

Understanding the FFT

At the heart of digital music and signal processing is a mathematical technique known as the Fast Fourier Transform. From additive synthesis, to digital filtering, knowledge of the FFT is invaluable in understanding some of the literature you may come across. In this post, Aatish Bhatia gives a great, graphical introduction

Build a real synth

Sick of computers all together? Maybe it’s time to break out the soldering iron and make your own synthesier!

Befaco run workshops on building synthesisers, including one in London in December.

Ray Wilson, author of “Make: Analog Synthesizers - A modern approach to old-school synthesis” is offering a webinar on synthesiser applications for the TL07X op-amp

And if all that sounds too hard, Korg have recently announced a snap-together, open source synthesiser kit, which looks like a lot of fun.