Flash Sequencer anybody

[Wookiee]

Hi - I'm trying to develop a sequencer in flash 5 based around six tracks each with sixteen boxes that the user can 'paint' sound loops into. As I need to have control over each sound individually, each sound has to be its own movie clip. However, when using tell target to trigger these sounds, I cannot get any decent level of synchronisation? Anyone got any advice or decent links?

Cheers,
Wookiee

http://www.newmediacollective.com

[mindplay]

To my knowledge, this is impossible. The only solution I can think of (perhaps) is to have a Java applet running in the browser, and have the Flash animation control the applet through a JavaScript ... or something!

Timing is miserable in Flash, and there doesn't seem to be much anybody can do about it.

[Wookiee]

Originally posted by mindplay
To my knowledge, this is impossible. The only solution I can think of (perhaps) is to have a Java applet running in the browser, and have the Flash animation control the applet through a JavaScript ... or something!

Timing is miserable in Flash, and there doesn't seem to be much anybody can do about it.

Cheers buddy - is there not anything I can do using sound objects? I dunno how to implement them, but it kinda looks like its my last hope.

Cheers,
W

http://www.newmediacollective.com

[awolfe]

it most certainly is impossible I tried to do essentially the same thing, and no matter what we did it never worked.

[SubKloda]

Hi there,
I've been toying with the idea of a sequencer as well (but as i only started using flash 2 weeks ago, it'll take me a while)...
Anyway, i did a movie that shows how to control different sound objects independently (if you like, please vote )...
http://www.flashkit.com/movies/_Soun...42/index.shtml
It's not really a sequencer, but it's a start.... you can set the volume (i'll be adding panning controls and sound envelopes when i can be bothered) of 4 different sounds (attached to 4MCs)... i tried messing around with it so you could choose different sounds, like a shared sound library.....couldn't get it to work
also tried setting up a smart clip, so i could reuse the the MC..... also to no avail... I believe this is due to my lack of flash knowledge more than anything else, but i agree that sound & timing in flash leaves a lot to be desired (and it's something that macromedia should definitely address in their next version, like being able to play sound clips at different rates, or at least have a TIMER object (as i can't be bothered messing with the date object)...

but what i was thinking was maybe having a movie clip with a layer for each track (so when you start the clip, it should start the sounds at the same time, and if the clips are the same size you should get some decent timing).

as for the sequencer... the only way i can think of to acheive this is to have an array for each track, where you'd have the name of the sound to be played and/or volume & panning instructions. Then have a function to parse the array, which would attach the appropriate sound object and set it's properties.

but even this would have problems with timing, as you'd have to call this function from a MC frame.....(unless you used a layer with a blank syncronised sound to force the MC to keep up or something).

sorry if this reply is a bit long, but i'm very interested in trying to do something about this, as it'd save people having to have their audio as huge clips, which would mean faster movie loading times (plus i've got nothing else to do ).

Hope this has given people a few ideas.......
Andy

P.S. if anyone sorts this out, please let me know (as i'll have to find something else to do ).

[Wookiee]

Cheers Sub - I'm gonna try n get onto macromedia's tech support, cos they really ought to sort out their sound handling - in theory it shouldn't be too different to the way they handle graphics - you should be able to write/script an entire composition out of the tiniest sound clips.... but I guess that's a long way off... If I come up with anything I'll let U know...

W.

[Snowfox]

Hmmm, but what if you made every sample of equal length ?
I don't know if it's possible, but if you could somehow put a sound clip in a level and could turn that on and off individualy (thus per layer), it should theoretically be synchronized, right ?

Flash wasn't intended to be a soundmachine anyways, but a vector based animation program
It's pretty cool though.
Amon Tobin has a killer mixer on his site.

http://www.ninjatune.net/ninja/artists/amontobin

Robert

[Wookiee]

I kind of need to have each sound as its own symbol ideally, so I can give it labels for each beat to enable the user to put in parts of the loop or the whole loop if they want - ambitious I know, but you've got to try and push the boundaries aintcha? the hi-res mixers R cool tho, seen the Finley Quaye one, n the one at Soulbath? you can get to em via http://www.hi-res.net.

Cheers,
W

[Snowfox]

Hmmm ... I've been pondering the structure, but it seems like you'll need some sort of trigger mechanism at the beginning of the loop, so that whenever you click a certain instrument so to say, it waits until the loop ends and when the loop starts again throws the new instrument in. Does that sound logical ?

When you can do something like this, it will always be synchronized, I think.

Robert

[SubKloda]

Originally posted by Snowfox
Hmmm, but what if you made every sample of equal length ?
I don't know if it's possible, but if you could somehow put a sound clip in a level and could turn that on and off individualy (thus per layer), it should theoretically be synchronized, right ?

That's what i had to do for my prog..... but it's not ideal as you end up with lots of whitespace.

Flash wasn't intended to be a soundmachine anyways, but a vector based animation program
Robert

very true .... but if you're rubbish at drawing, like me, then messing around with sound is the only thing to do.....

[Snowfox]

Subkloda (nice wordplay!),

Whitespace ??? I don't know what you mean, but as I see it, there's not much whitespace ...

I can't draw really good as well ... I mostly stick to static HTML and ASP. But I like Flash

I've been fooling around with it, but haven't really gone very far as I would want to.

Robert

[SubKloda]

Originally posted by Snowfox
Whitespace ??? I don't know what you mean, but as I see it, there's not much whitespace ...

what i mean by whitespace is sampled silence...

eg. for my thing, the kick drum plays @ beat 1, and the hihat @ beat 3... so to get to (almost) be in time i have to put 2 beats of silence in front of the hihat....
I could have used the delay property of the play function but, i wouldn't have been sure of the timing...

((it's a pity there's no offsets for sound, eg, play a sample from half way through, as this might make things a bit easier.)-ignore this, i was being stoopid)
[Edited by SubKloda on 11-01-2000 at 03:01 PM]

[Wookiee]

Subkloda - how have you used your sound objects - I've looked through your code and not been able to suss out where the sound file is referred to. Maybe I've missed summink daft, but if U could let us know (I haven't used sound objects or shared libraries before - I'm still new to Flash 5), that'd be cool,

Thanks in advance,

W.

http://www.newmediacollective.com

[SubKloda]

to be completely honest........i'm not quite sure , as i'm new to flash5 myself....
But i think it helps setting the target for the sound object, ie. s=new sound(_root.soundMC)

and then to mess around with the object, use _root.soundMC.s
....
...
..
.
I've been trying to fathom sound objects and actionscript from the help files but i think the documentation is really sparse...

sorry, just re-read your question.. do you mean the actual sound sample?
if so then what you have to do is:
import the sound
togo the properties....linkage....export symbol and give the sound a name which you use in the attachSound...

If not then i'll go through my movie, suss out for myself what's happening , and try and let you know (i'm trying to get my smart clip thing to work at the moment, as this would simplify things and in theory you'd be able to change the sounds at run-time, but it's having none of it )

BTW, just thinking a bit more about your sequencer idea...
have you tried having six sound objects (track1-track6), then for each of your 16 blocks, you could attach whatever sound to a track and play them using _root.track#.play()
For timing, trying using a silent stream sound attached to a layer

[SleepyBE]

there are a few things that could through the sync off.

number one being the tempo/bpm of the loops you are using. if all the loops you use are of a different tempo, there is no way they will ever sync together. dead space at the end of your sound files creates problems as well. you need to make sure your sounds will loop perfectly/seemlessly in order to keep in sync. also, the audio frequency quality of the sound you imported has an effect too. if it's not set to a basic multiple of 11mhz then flash will resample it to fit one. this can also change the length of the sound file, which would effect the tempo.

sorry if these sound a bit basic, but this are very common problems when trying to sync sound. length of a sound file really has no effect on its ability to sync with other sound files.

aslo, there is a given delay from when the user clicks a button, to when the sound starts. i think it just takes a little practice with the "sequencer" to learn it's internal delay. the one at ninjatune.net has a half step delay. if you start the loop on the second half of the last beat right before the new measure starts, it'll sync perfectly.
[Edited by SleepyBE on 11-01-2000 at 06:37 PM]

[SubKloda]

yup, very valid points..... but with some sort of sequencer you could create your loops using one-shot samples

[SleepyBE]

ya i see what you're saying. but instead of having just a single kick drum sample loop over and over, why not try to figure out a way to build a punch in/punch out sort of interface. where you'd have say 16 slots for the kick drum sample, and u can press down a slot, and it would play the kick drum at that time. same goes for the other percussion n stuff. you could make those little ins/outs triggers, which would give a true/false value to a variable, and maybe have it set up so that it's inside the movie and each frame it checks a different column on the interface to see which sounds are switched on, and which sounds are switched off. this way, instead of the user having to click a button at the right time, they'd just press a button to input the sound at that time in the measure.

about the sound object stop(); function: i was under the assumption that when u asign the stop function to a specific sound (ie _root.a.stop() it would stop just that sound. i was working on something tonight (before the fla file became corrupt) using that method and it would stop all the sounds, not just a. any ideas? is there anything u can do when you try to load your fla file and it says "unexpected format" other than starting over? i have the swf file still...

[Snowfox]

Ninjatune isn't really synched ...
You can turn on any sample at any time, so it can sound really stupid trust me. And another thing is that the Ninjatune mixer can't handle all the samples at once.
I believe it's about 6 channels and then it suppresses some sounds.

Oh yeah, why would you like to seperate the kickdrum and the snaredrum anyway ??? You can better make a whole rhythm section and build the rest around that, I think

Robert

[Wookiee]

that's the kind of thing I'm after Sleepy, but as somebody said, the documentation for using sound objects is pretty slim - the hi-res 'sequencers' work ok, but they're not really very complex - I'm gonna give it a shot, but if anyones got any detailed sound objects tutorials or source files that would be ace.

ps anyone to to http://www.mobilesdisco.com?

[SubKloda]

Originally posted by SleepyBE
about the sound object stop(); function: i was under the assumption that when u asign the stop function to a specific sound (ie _root.a.stop() it would stop just that sound. i was working on something tonight (before the fla file became corrupt) using that method and it would stop all the sounds, not just a. any ideas? is there anything u can do when you try to load your fla file and it says "unexpected format" other than starting over? i have the swf file still...

i think you have to have your sound object in a separate movie clip or target it (s=new Sound(_root.soundMC))... cos if you have a sound object attached to the main timeline then it controls all the sound objects (kinda like a master volume control ).... then to turn off the individual sound you'd use _root.soundMC.s.stop().