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Ok, so splicemusic is currently a bust. It rellyed too much on the "innovative part" and treated people like ragdolls (that's why so many left ). But let's get to the point. The other day a friend presented me this :
I always liked the germans, and this is one of the many reasons.
It's still beta but it's as promissing as hell .. much more that splice promissed really and the instruments are fucking amazing and mind that it's beta.
a few other things are that it's in flash and java. They confronted the same thing as splice did, but for some reason their application works better than the splice one. But they admit :
" Hobnox
Calculating digital music is a great performance impact on current computer systems, especially when running those in a browser. We use Flash, cause it is the most distributed browser plugin worldwide, but it has its downsizes. The current Flash Plugin version does not support dynamic audio creation of any kind.
That hasn't kept us from trying it. The sound capabilities of Flash haven't changed since version 6. Simply put you may encounter not the best Audio Playback we would like to offer. Flash is fast enough to compute the audio stream, but isn't capable to send it to the sound card properly. For the time, we are waiting for Adobe (the Flash manufacturer company) to fix this, we developed a Java application, running invisible in addition to the main application providing a better Audio Output. That is not what we like to have.
So we decided to start a campaign forcing Adobe to be aware of the need to have better sound features within Flash soon.
ADOBE - MAKE SOME NOISE! "
Check out their tools and let's talk about it.
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Hobnox
Nice find Todd. Looks like a well organised place, theres a bit of a language barrier but its not rocket science to work out. Some of the vids and tunes are really well made and produced. Ill investigate even further when ive done my daily routines..Nice work Sherlock..
Java and Flash
Yeah, any find that allows for you to be able to hear what you are working on will be a plus. The site looks a little intimidating at first glance. Also being beta I wonder if they are planning on charging for use of their tools in the future. Not that it would be a bad thing necessarily because it depends on what they are planning on helping with beyond just tools. This also brings me back to the, do we really need online tools to create good music in order to share it with each other? this has been nagging me from the very get go. I see more kiddie level end results on splice than I have ever seen of a more musical accomplishment from the like of us users here. I don't believe any of us would require an online sequencer to accomplish our finished work?
When my programmer and I discussed the possibility of an online sequencer. We both realized the downside of flash, it being a third party development issue. We looked into Java, but Java does not have the Multimedia Libraries that would make it possible currently. It would take a team of programmers and a lot of cash to create such libraries.
Finding loops on line seems to be the real candy here. Everybody's tunes start with someone else's loops or their own creation on splice for the most part. So if your music requires someone else's loops just go download them into your own sequencer?
It's just not the same is it? I also found the attraction to splice sequencer cool and convenient. You are out there scratching your head for ideas amongst a group of other people sharing some of their ideas and walla you draft one up and mix it a little and bam you have an imediate working prototype of your sound idea, right?
My programmer and I got stuck with both of these downside on both development platforms. We met again and I came up with an idea to use the Jamacool Lab file browser which is ajax/ Javascript. With this area we would then just drag the file over into a plugin module box that would automatically be imported into the Audacity Sequencer as a project. You would then import some of your own stuff and then upload that into the Jamacool lab folder for others to use your mix and the cycle would just continue. All of this would be done through a plugin of some kind to interface the two areas. My programmer worked on this for another month and a half and then wrote back saying he could not do it and thanks but no thanks. Personally I believe if I had money to give him he probably could have pulled it off. We are talking about a lot of money when it comes to paying programmers. I offered him 50% ownership of all of the sites income generation. Problem with that is, on a new site it takes time and a lot of users plus a lot of unique visitors before you can get advertisers to start generating any income from a site. I guess he didn't want to wait that long.
I wonder also about sites that use flash. What I think happens is that the files that need to be imported or rendered into the flash sequencer are tasking the main loop holding server too much. When the site grows it's user base to a certain level performance hits occur. when the performance hits occur the PC that the user is using has no real advantage even if it is a killer PC. This hit ratio probably is hard to pin point because of the various routing that is used from various Internet Service Providers world wide. Just one slow route could kill that whole render process.
It's too bad that my programmer bailed because their would have been no doubt about grabbing a larger user base to attract advertisers with such a tool. This is why these sites are doing this to begin with. What you have to watch out for is not the tools but what do they try to do for you as a musician as far a supporting and promoting your work, that is if you are serious about your music and care about that kind of thing.
Groove On!!!
actually
well what i was interested in was actually the collab part of that site. it said you can work with other people .. or i read wrong...
anyway .. i am interested in Live Online Collaborations, that's what i am looking for. Let's say we have this app and it syncs through internet. We start making some drums .. change things bla bla bla .. it automatically updates for all users
more like an online band . :)
Audio Stream
Once you get hooked up to a small group it would be like an audio stream. Drummer would be track 1, bas track two and guitar track 3 etc and a little chat window so someone could tell the lead guitarist to shut up already. Ha lol sounds like a great idea. Maybe with very fast servers and small groups perhaps.
Groove On!!!
nope
maybe for you guys would
but like i said, i don't play no instruments, so i need a sequencer interface :)
don't know why it's so hard to do .. think of it like a game adapt a MMO with audio tools :P
java good ,flash bad
Adobe Flash 9 auto loads a cleaner program that can screw up other programs that were designed for older flash based programs. I found out the hard way with splice. Why do you need any sequencer on line ,I would rather download a track and be able to edit it with my own software. Splice's sequencer was lame and I hated waiting for everything to load up on dailup . Email me a track is the way that works best for me .
Sounds Good
Like an ps2 or xbox network , I get it it's just not ideal for the amount of time sensitive data render that high quality audio would require. Most music on game systems are handled after buffering and processed within the game player it self. We would be tweaking large amounts of time lined data from multiple sources simultaneously. I think maybe in the future this could be accomplished and maybe it already is. Imagine the money that would be required to develop such a system. It could probably be done using peer to peer connections where we all become a cluster that would render as one but allow each to have his own space for work. This would be like a render farm. This gives me an idea. If you have a graphic app and use the old version of Dyne it will automatically connect other systems on the network and combine them to use all processors to render the large graphic. It would be cool to be able to multi user into this kind of system on any PC to interact with that process. This could just as well be an audio program too I would Imagine. Good idea. There would still be internet based routing issues to deal with but they would be negligible. This is all just food for thought, it would take a team of programmers to accomplish such a task. There is a site that does something like this already but i cant recall the name of the site . It's been a few years since I ran into the site , I found it in a Magazine on Music, memory fails me at the moment.
Groove On!!!
missing the point
you are thinking other things
i am not reffering to audio wave transfer via internet, so i'll explain a little deeper my idea.
Let's say we have this application, 3 users ( Todd, Idisidi, IGTB for example ) open it up, and connect through internet, all good until now.
This application has it's own sequencer, plugins ( Vsti why not ? ) that are defaults ( customs allowed only if others have aswell ). Idisidi loads a plugin for bass and starts playing notes too make something up, then he makes a bass pattern ( midi one ) , now the program transfers to the others to load that certain plugin in the sequencer and the midi data for it. IGTB and Todd see the bass, write on chat their thoughts and then IGTB loads a plugin for guitar .. and makes a groove that's uploaded aswell to other users. Todd makes the beats and so on. Midi information over the net isn't that complicated and doesn't require huge amounts of data to be sent .. because it's only 3-4 kb. When midi is received , the program renders audio using PC specs , so no drawbacks of using flash or java or anything else.
Voice chat could be implemented, and other features , but the upper part is the basic.
This is my idea and thoughts of an ideal program.
Online Music App?
Given that all music data is transferred vectorized (MIDI) would indeed allow rather realtime cooperations (especially when users are inet connected highspeed via DSL or at least ISDN).
The client app could receive track header infos for initializing the plugin and then render MIDI streams to playable WAVs - maybe via VSTi. I'm barely experienced in this sector but I think it's technically viable (not talking about sequencer complexity here, it's just the way of transferring and evaluating data). Plugin configuration and MIDI data could be embedded in an appropriate (extendable) protocol, e.g. based on XML or even binary formatted. So far, so good.
Looking at the above, we have to keep 2 things in mind:
- A user has to produce notes through MIDI interface, usually a keyboard. I don't have a keyboard; even I basically know how to play melodies and build chords, I'm not about to obtain one. I happen to possess a guitar with MIDI adapter (Roland) which is nice to play around for special effects, but it has its quirks as well; so it's rarely used. The only acceptable way for me would be using a tool like NoteWorthy where notes can be set by mouseclick and edited in various ways (copy/paste, changing key, tempo, etc).
- Resulting sounds depend on the plugin's (rendering algorithm) quality. During draft version development of a song I don't mind any artificial sounds. But when it comes to editing and mastering a release version, I want to listen to original piano/guitar tracks. And most important for me: vocals. Aside from decent piano/guitar-plugings being memory monsters, there's no alternative for real human voices.
I'm agreeing with Todd in case of Techno/Electronica/Industrial style music, which absolutely needs crystal clear accuracy and a pretty touch of artificiality.
On the other hand there's a lot of styles like Blues, Swing, Soul or Jazz (heyho Tommy!) sourcing their magic from authenticy of human playing and improvisation. They're surely standing to benefit from computer generated elements, but actually their secret is nonlinearity.
Furthermore we gotta face the fact that such an app isn't available yet. Even we'd find a way for development - whether by paid/benevolent externs or by ourselves (theoretically I might give it a try by coding in VisualBasic), there's still a certain amount of time to bridge until convenient usability.
In the first instance I suppose everybody will produce a couple of clips and upload them to Jamacast lab folders. Then everybody downloads them to have a check in local sequencers (e.g. Reaper). As soon as release versions are being compiled, they'll be uploaded and discussed/rated.
Not having installed any (local) sequencer, I'll solely create sound clips. Anyway, I'll listen to other's draft versions to get an impression of progress.
Well, that's what I see so far, concerning Project II.
haha
well .. for Live performers the tool is allready available and really powerful lol
it's called Voice chat , or skype :P it has good audio quality :P and you can record using all sorts of stuff what you do :P