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For those interested in audio in Flash–and audio generally–here are some interesting links concerning the work of Andre Michelle from Cologne; he seems to be the Flash audio guru.

http://lab.andre-michelle.com is his ‘lab’. This has links to his code experiments, often in the form of audio toys.

Michelle is also, I think, the lead developer on http://audiotool.com , which musicians may well appreciate. Is it accurate to describe this as ‘online mini Reason’? I don’t know if you’ve used Reason, but you might have heard of it. Reason has lots of different virtual musical devices and effects in it that can be hooked together in various ways. And also can be hooked up to keyboards in various ways. I *think* Reason is mainly a MIDI tool. I’m not sure if MIDI is involved in http://audiotool.com . And I don’t know how easy it is to hook Michelle’s piece to MIDI keyboards. Reason is used by serious digital keyboardists quite extensively. AudioTool.com is a loop-based compositional piece, and is also a ‘patch piece’ in that you can patch synth and drum and effects boxes together. There are online video tutorials at youtube (search for ‘audiotool’).

I’m learning Flash. The tool I’ve been using for my stuff, Director, is going the way of the Dodo bird, unfortunately. So I’m trying to learn ActionScript 3, which is the Flash programming language.

Flash audio capabilities are more extensive than in Director. It provides quite granular access to the audio, down to the level of the individual sample. So it’s possible to build stuff that reacts to the sound or changes the sound or stuff where you build the sound yourself. It also provides such granular access to, say, microphone input. Which makes possible creating pieces that react to live bands. Both visually and sonically.

Slow going, of course, for me, but I’m slowly starting to be at least not totally befuddled by ActionScript.

I bought 3 books on ActionScript. Tomes. Like 1000 pages each. ‘Essential ActionScript 3.0′ by Colin Moock doesn’t say a word about audio. It’s just on OOP (object-oriented programming) in JavaScript, and the core concepts of  ActionScript. Though it has good stuff on text in ActionScript. The  ‘ActionScript 3.0 Bible’ has good chapters on interesting stuff like audio and video.

Slow going, all of it, and much more to deal with such as the ssssslllllloooooooowwwwwwwwww Flash scripting and debugging environment, but I’m starting to find it interesting as opposed to impenetrable and befuddling.

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