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[Lukas]

Hi.

I surf the web a lot, read different articles, forums, Twitter-Feeds, Facebooks etc. etc.
When I'm not surfin' the web and am on my Computer anyway I usually write documents/articles, chat with friends, or compose lenghty forum-posts. 


And I noticed a thing: When not listening to my iTunes/lastFM I quickly begin to feel unsatisfied/bored when surfing or doing not overly demanding other things.
On the flipside: If I listen to music while on the computer I can hardly concentrate *properly* on actual articles or anything related.
It's just hard to really read and soak up the information - and even worse: write things that make at least a bit of sense.

In addition to that I love music a lot so I always feel bad for simply letting all the good albums float around instead of really concentrating on them. I mean... they are something musicians crafted with a lot of passion and I just let their work drop around a bit.


I noticed that a lot of my friends had the same problem and listening to actual ambient-music-CDs didn't help that much either. There's not that much great ambient music I could listen to for hours + it kind of wears out after 10+ cycles.


Which then lead me to a (I guess/hope) quite interesting concept/idea:
What about a flash/java-based application running in a browser that simply generates moody, ambient music?

How it could work:
- The application would basically be a modular synth with a number of sound samples, some sound-generators (that play/trigger the samples) and (of course) some effect-processors (reverb, delay, phaser, octaver this kind of stuff).
- This modular synth should run endlessly playing certain sound-samples and shorter/longer loops and slowly changing the sound samples that are used, the effect-parameters and so on. This should of course happen fairly randomly.
- This should lead to the creation of a continous, deep, moody soundscape to please the reader's/writer's/surfer's ears. 

About the accesibility:
- The user would have to go to a certain URL to access the browser (which should pop up right on the first page).
- The website should be really clean. Maybe with some ads (to finance the webspace or something like that) since the page would simply hang around in the background for most of the time anyway.
- The applet should have some simple parameters the user can change in order to build the soundscape he wants.
- There could be some presets (like... imagine... "Rain forest, Lake Shore, The Sea, Electric Pulse, 8bit Chiptune Noise") etc. etc.)
- In addition to the presets there should be some context-related paramters like:
   (For "Rain Forest": [Volume],  [Density of the Forest] (Reverb-values), [Presence of Animals] (loudness and frequency of sound samples)
    For "Electric Pulse":  [Volume], [Speed] (speed of the pulse and connected reverb/echo), [Character] (Equalizer for the Pulse/Distortion)
    etc. etc.)

I guess this could be really cool and also quite popular since it seems that many internet people out there might want something moody to listen to everywhere, anytime.

The possibilities of extension are pretty endless btw... imagine the wealth of presets and parameters that could be generated... and additional features that could be added... like... a "create your own preset and share it with your friends" tool, that lets users use their own samples and some given effects etc. to create new soundscapes.


What do you guys think? Any ideas/suggestions? Maybe even some flash/java/related-coders with some audio-knowledge that might be interested in a collaboration?

-
BaronCid

[Lukas]

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

Just found this on the forums (linked by Shoo).

That's a small step in the direction this Browser-Based Music Generator could be heading.

It's great fun and people are actually loving it.

[John Nesky]

Audio processing requires a lot of CPU. Flash is slower than Java. Flash is still fast enough for AudioTool. But Flash allocates less processor time to itself when it is not visible, in order to reduce the effect of Flash advertisements bringing your computer to it's knees when you open a lot of tabs. So maybe Flash isn't a good platform for background music.

Watch out for feature creep. Make something that works before you make something extensible.

I don't know much about computer music.

[qubodup]

What about a flash/java-based application running in a browser that simply generates moody, ambient music?

I don't see why it has to be in-browser. Why not let such a generator play in the background?

If you install pd, you can try out the Lost in Translation umm... sound scape generator. Maybe it's something you'd like.

[Strom]

Several months ago I tried to build some something like this , as a software synth (non - browser based) what I found was that it was complex to do produce multiple tones of varing frequency. Might get the code out and have a look again 

[Bod]

It's a really funky idea. There are similar kinds of things on the iPhone and I know it's not an original idea, such things have been cropping up for years although usually with some form of user interaction. I say if you can manage it then go for it! It'd be great!

There's an online radio station somewhere that is playing a piece of music that won't finish until 2074 or something and never plays the same thing twice. It's not quite listenable though... I'll see if I can't dig up the link.

EDIT: Longplayer. Here we go. Not the most tuneful thing in the world but it's currently been playing for over 9 years. Might have some slight relevance. You might find something useful in the 'How it works' section.

[Lukas]

Wow!

Nice posts!

Please keep posting your progress. :D