Generating A Tone Article Over At VoyagingMind

I quickly put together a little tutorial on how to generate and play a synthesised tone using the HTML Audio tag. Ok it only show how to generate a simple sine wave and play it. The goal was to provide a simplest possible example to get people started.

He is the link to it

Cancelling The Synth Project

I was just about to start another iteration or two of the synthesis program I have been dabbling with and started pondering the app. I have realised that my enthusiasm for sound synthesis had inspired me to make a clone of PureData for the web. My enthusiasm made me think that everyone else would want to use it as well and perhaps I could make a microbusiness out of it.

It occurred to me yesterday that this is probably not going to be the case. PureData has a huge amount of work put into it which would quite literally take years to recreate using my free time. Also my interested audience are going to be the PureData users and they are probably not going to switch without a lot of shoving.

When I first started the code I wanted to target the more general user, The sort of person looking for a unique explosion sound  but not that interested in the finer points of sound generation. I had some idea how you could overlay the PureData approach with a UI that could be used by more general users but it was going to be a lot of work.

If I really want to solve the problem of people wanting unique explosion sounds or the splatter of rain, or blood, on window screens I should really write a program to do that, a bit like this one. Start by solving the problem I want to solve rather than writing a platform with which I can solve the problem. If as I solve the problem and a platform emerges that would be beneficial to users then it would be fun expose it otherwise it is a waste of time.

So with all this in mind I am going to cancel the synth app I have been working on and when I find time to fit it in I am going to work on an app that solves my hypothetical users requirement rather than trying to create a platform.

I don't view this as a bad thing as I am trying to get a little more focused ready for a new set of goals in the new year. I also managed to develop a reasonable amount of javascript code some of which will be reusable.

Iteration 22, setting the frequency of the tone.

Seems like a productive weekend here. I got another evening of coding in. Tonight I sorted out the rendering of nodes so they update with the change of wave form.

I also added the ability to change the frequency of the tone generated. that does lead to the question should I also display the frequency in the glyph. The name of the wave form is in some way redundant as the shape of the wave form tells you that information. It would be better to display the frequency as that is important information.

After that I am not sure what is on the list next. Part of me want to flesh out the Wave Form generator with more forms, like a pulse, triangle and so on but on the other hand that feels like I am heading deep into one type of node when I should be working towards allowing others. I also have not yet added a proper event system and without one of them having an undo command is going to be quite a bit of work, adding one in not trivial once the code base grows.

Iteration 19 adding some different wave forms

Instead of trying to think of catchy titles I have just decided to put the iteration number and the thing I have added this iteration. Iterations are small so not much will be added each iteration.

So the main feature for this iteration is you can now set the wave form of the signal generated. To do this click on the Wave form icon and use the drop down menu that appears to change the wave form from to either a saw tooth or a square wave.

I don't yet update the icon to reflect the changes. A task for another night and as the is just a play thing at the moment I don't mind publishing it when this is going on.

I also fixed a bug where pages did no load the first time. It was a school boy python typing mistake and strangely I did not notice until a few days ago.

I am also not going to link to the app in each blog entry instead I plan to add it to the side bar, just over there I think :)

Iteration 18, moving the icons

Another small update for iteration 18. You can now select and more the icons about the canvas. Err well now much else to say really. The connecting lines overlap the icons if  you shift them around in the wrong way.

It is pretty simple to put a solution in for the case with just one connector being used as an input but I prefer to wait until I have icons with more than on connector as input.

I also worked on build related stuff. Well when I say build it was more about writing a script that minified my JavaScript files using the google closure compiler thing. Pretty simple to use and worth getting in place straight away. The rest of the evening I plan on getting all my new JavaScript version of this app into subversion as at the moment it just sits on my desktop in a non backed up way. I think that is all the "admin" stuff out of the way and then I can just keep on turning out iterations for a while.

After the couple of weeks I have had it feels good to actually push out an new iteration even if it is a small one. With re-writing the app and many of my evening being consumed with other stuff it feel like I have not added anything new to it for some time.