One thing I would like to point out is that even with html5, I will be using flash to stream the movies and music on my sites. Many people have questioned my logic about this and I will reply here as I see the situation. Firstly, html5 and JS have been pushed as the ‘solution’ to problems that most users do not even recognise – notably that Flash is a relatively closed format compared to the open standards of html. While I completely agree that this is a major restriction with the Flash format, the actual swf that you see embedded on sites are based on completely open standards and html5 now even has an embed tag designed specifically for compliant embedding of plugins like flash.

So what does this mean for you the end user?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing! Like stated above, your end users do not necessarily care about how you have implemented the technology, only about how the technology integrates with their own experience. Or in poetic terms :

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magicArthur C. Clarke

My users want a complete and simple solution that just works! So, I hear you ask, why are you still using flash now that html5 is becoming popular? Well, that is a very unusual question, probably influenced by a certain Apple enthusiast. Html5 is a semantic markup language. Html5 itself does not play audio, nor movies, it is only the guide that tell your browser that the page you are viewing contains media types. This is a huge deal in the slow moving world of the internet as it finally allows media types to be accessible to screen readers and the new markup allows pages to be ‘read’ by SEO spiders. All in all, html5 brings a range of features that improves readabilty and interoperability and ironically is a perfect compliment for flash!

Why Flash still?

Politics aside, flash is a lightweight toolkit that has specialised since 1998 in streaming multimedia and interaction. It originally was developed for 46mhz machines and is perfect for the internet and lower powered devices. There seems to be some dispute about the performance of flash and as a result, you will hear many people saying that, "flash is dead" and is to be replaced by html5 which according to these people, uses less memory and demands fewer resources. The reality is very different. I ported my actionscript media player library to javascript (I had to remove much of the functionality such as preloading, cross fading and seamless playback) and after a few simple benchmarks, I discovered that the JS and html5 used more memory, a larger memory cache, was slower on playback and used a greater volume of computer resources. All in all, there are no benefits favouring html5 and JS over flash at this moment in time. Flash has has 10 years of development and has evolved systematically with the internet – it is the single best way of delivering multimedia on the internet today. That comment may make me unpopular in today’s zeitgeist, what with flash being systematically denied on the iPad (even though flash apps are sold in the iStore) but the reality of the situation is far from obviously clear cut. I am still working on my simple JS framework for audio to fallback back on if flash is not available with my close friend Vincent Roman, former developer for Last.fm. If you feel like you have something to say, leave me a comment!

Synaesthetic Binaural Bassline Generator

Move fun that trying to create colour palettes, here is a sound palette creator. By using colours as the basis for sounds, this tool creates harmonic, and sometimes inharmonic basslines that modulate together to form a powerful binaural beat, and a series of grooving basslines.

A colour wheel is designed so that harmonic colour palettes can be easily found by placing the colours at set spacings around the wheel. The only real difference between sound and light is the speed and shape of the waveform, something that this instrument helps to bring back together. I was thinking of calling this kind of tool a synaesthesizer!

Sound Wheel

Instructions for use :

Double Click to add a new note and form a chord
Click anywhere black to remove a node (or right click)

Use the following keys to :
Z – Increase Intonation Range
X – Decrease Intonation Range
M – Change the next note’s Timbre
N – Change the next Timbre
UP – Move child chords closer to the centre
DOWN – Move child chords away from centre
LEFT – Change Variable Intonation (Microtonality Mode)
RIGHT – Change Variable Intonation (Microtonality Mode)

Open the Sound Wheel in a new window

Places talking about the SoundWheel :

• CNet
• Wired
• Think Design
• Elephant Candy

Surround Sound Chillage

Ever feel you just need a bit of harmony in your day, a few moments of clarity and calm? Find yourself battling with noise? Now you can relax online with the 3D Buddha Machine! Load it up and click until happy… if you feel it is too loud, scroll the mouse wheel.

What is it?

Based on the world famous Buddha Machine by FM3 (Zhang Jian and Christiaan Virant), this is an authentic online replica. Coded using the incredible Papervision libraries and my own personal Media Framework, the Buddha Machine 3D features all 9 original sounds from each the Buddha Machine I and II – kindly released under creative commons. Thanks to the magic of the internet, Christiaan popped by to offer his support. Thanks!
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What does it do?

Put on some headphones, click to find the sound for you, use the mouse wheel to set your volume, and relax. If you need a portable version, consider buying the original product – it fits in your pocket!

How does it work?

The Audio system reacts to the position of the 3D object, decided by the mouse, and considers one face as a speaker. As the object rotates this pans and fades the audio according to the trigonometry formulated from the angle between the user and the normal of the speaker faced plane. The volume is also reactive to clipped faces, and by that I mean speakers that are pointing away from the user, the further a speaker turns away from the user, the less it can be heard.

Sounds are loaded as mp3s from an xspf playlist and streamed, whilst the next track is pre-fetched to prevent gaps and loading delays when changing sounds.

How was it made?

I decided to avoid Flash entirely and instead use the free FLEX compiler from the Adobe site. This was mainly to see how using the FLEX compiler affects the size and performance of swf files compared to compiling through Flash, but also to see if I could avoid non OSS software. Process wise, using this development system, along with swc files for symbols, it is possible to create amazing web apps absolutely free of charge. As I am saving up for the next Flash, but in the meantime this lets me test out new features in the player right now! I see a synthesizer on the horizon next

Once you perfect your workflow, and don’t mind creating libraries of swc files, this is probably the most integrated and fastest method for Flash development. There are many tweaks and hacks that you have to apply to the commandline if you want to use a preloader, or don’t need all the FLEX libraries, or want to set a player target version, but thankfully, my development system of choice, FlashDevelop, has all of these as options preset in the GUI.

On the negative side, using the FLEX compiler does seem to add quite a few extra bytes to the runtime code, so at least consider a preloader!

Check it out

Buddha Machine 3D I.

Space Mix

Tracklisting

1. Mr Fingers – Stars
2. Jeff Wayne – War of the Worlds
3. NASA – Symphony of the Planets 2
4. Vangelis – Blade Runner Blues
5. Arthur C. Clarke – Interview
6. Cybotron – Clear
7. Geinoh Yamashirogumi – Dolls’ Polyphony – Akira OST
8. Procul Harlem – Strangers in Space
9. John Carpenter – Darkstar OST
10. 2001 -  HAL 9000 (Excerpt)
11. NASA – Symphony of the Planets 4
12. Jeff Noon – Needle in the Groove
13. Ceephax Acid Crew – Northern Spirit
14. The Vulcans – Journey into Space
15. Sun Ra – Journey Through the Outer Darkness (part I)
16. Ry Cooder – El U.F.O Cayó
17. NASA – Symphony of the Planets 5
18. DJ Spooky – Twighlight Fugue
19. Sun Ra – Journey Through the Outer Darkness (part II)
20. Baby Mammoth - Moonburn
21. Marshall Chess – Interview
22. Kevin J Anderson – Hidden Empire
23. Symarip – Skinhead Moonstomp
24. Cowboy Bebop OST – Radio Free Mars Talk 1
25. Mike Ladd – Starship Nigga
26. Sun Ra – Journey Through the Outer Darkness (part III)
27. ESG – UFO
28. William Shatner – Rocket Man
29. The Time & Space Machine – The Trip
30. Death in Vegas – Neptune City (Concrete Funk Mix)
31. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Heart of Gold
32. The Halle Orchestra – Mars, the Bringer of War
33. Jerry Goldsmith – Metropia – Logan’s Run OST
34. Lonnie Liston Smith – Floating through Space
35. Kraftwerk – Spacelab
36. Dark City (Excerpt)
37. The Seatbelts – Cats on Mars (DMX Crew Remix)
38. Aliens (Excerpt)
39. RZA – Afro Droid Showdown II (Rap Suite)
40. Echospace – First Point of Aries
41. Killah Priest – Temple of the Mental
42. Scientist & Prince Jammy – Storming the Death Star
43. Basic Channel – Mutism
44. BBC Recordings – Daleks
45. Kool Keith – I’m Seeeing Robots
46. NASA – Symphony of the Planets 1
47. Brian Eno – Stars
48. Langley Schools Project – Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft
49. Acid Mother Temples - Ange mzcanique de saturn
50. NASA – Original Moon Recordings
51. Farm Fresh – Space
52. NASA – Symphony of the Planets 3
53. David Bowie – Space Oddity
54. Cowboy Bebop OST – Radio Free Mars talk 7
55. Stereolab – Space Moth
56. Kevin J Anderson – The Ashes of the World
57. She Satelites – No Satellites
58. Anti-Pop Consortium – Tron Man Speaks
59. BattleStar Galactica (Excerpt)
60. Silver Apples – Oscillations
61. Add (N) to (X) – Robot New York
62. Alec Empire – Dreaming is a Form of Astrotravel
63. Cabaret Voltaire – Earthshaker
64. Brave New World –  Saga of the Seven Suns
65. Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra - Also Sprach Zarathustra
66. Sun Ra – Journey Through the Outer Darkness (part IV)

Renegade Web Radio

Bored of the charts? Looking for sounds to keep you occupied? Look no longer with music and mixes from around the world in one simple interface – combining a podcast, blog and mix aggregator – held together with AJAX magic

check it out
nomadradio.fm

Features

• Cross Fading between tracks
• Prefetching of the next track so that there aren’t any gaps between songs
• A fast visualiser that reacts onbeat as well as to the frequencies
• Saved volume and a rotary dial
• AJAX backend so that you can browse around without losing audio
• Flash <-> Javascript bi-communication

Get involved and send over your mixes!

Attention Deficit Collage

Tracklisting

1. Sam Cooke – Love Me
2. Nusrat Fateh Alleh Khan – Taa Dem
3. Zdzisław Piernik & Piotr Zabrodzki – Reorganizacja
4. Sahib Shihab – Om Mani Padme Hum
5. Shizuo – Sweat
6. New Strangers – Duelin’ Banjos
7. Cobra Killer – Lambretta Does it Better
8. The Fucking Champs – Lost
9. Tom Waits – Everything Goes To Hell Anyway
10. Gustav Holst – Uranus
11. Brathanki – Brathanki w Dyskotece
12. Scout Niblet – It’s All For You
13. DJ Scotch Egg – No Beats
14. Ilmaa Virtaa – Paavoharju
15. Бабслэй (Babslei) – Dear Sun
16. Jeff Mills – The Hacker
17. Kongar Ool Ondar – Fast Words
18. Aphex Twin – Didgeredoo
19. The Magic IDs – Loopstück
20. Nicolette – Nervous
21. Rachmaninov – Flight of the Bumblebees
22. NASA – Symphony of the Planets
23. Broke’n'English – Machester Shit
24. Jim Backus & Dennis Farnon – Magoo in HiFi
25. The Perceptionists – Let’s Move
26. Gene Coleman & Raed Yassin – A Funny Day in Moore
27. Es – Maailmankaari i
28. Chailla Babu OST – Pyar Chaiye Keh Paisa
29. Die Like A Dog Quartet – Little Birds have Fast Hearts
30. Dwayne Sodahberk – Partying Without Inhibition and Dignity
31. The Bug! vs The Rootsman – Killer feat. He Man
32. C-Mone – Stan Bak
33. Goretex – Earth Rot
34. Reefer Madness – Opening Fanfare
35. Betty Davis – This is It
36. Incredible Bongo Band – In A Gadda Da Vida
37. William S. Burroughs – Kill The Badger
38. Praxis – Animal Behaviour
39. Alarm Will Sound – Logon Rock Witch
40. DethKlok – ThunderHorse
41. Charles Bukowski – The Strongest of the Strange
42. The Andrew Sisters – Sabre Dance

Ever evolving portfolio

Hi, my name is Zen. Ths is my website full of stuff. Feel free to have a browse around some of the things I have done, and don’t forget about the media player at the top. Read how the site was made by following the blog posts.

introducing a new way to enjoy music!

Mix your favourite music blogs with your social bookmarks, add streaming radio and folksonomy… integrate with new music web services plus the latest web trends and what do you get…?

What is it?

A fancy new website that collects your favourite music blogs, MP3s and net playlists into one universally accessible site. Read about music, discover new music, and listen to & download the latest songs based on your web-based bookmarks and the social bookmarks of thousands.

What does it do?

The use of a social bookmarking service allows you to bookmark practically any music service. You can save simple RSS or ATOM feeds from your favourite music blog, your XSPF playlists, even M3U radiostreams! The volume of music services is growing by the day, so you can aggregate all your favourite music from sites such as Imeem, IJig, The Hype Machine, BlogDigger or any blog from the thousands collected on el.bo.ws.

Furthermore, if you use last.fm webservices – which I highly recommend – you can save your recently played songs, find out which songs you already have in your collection and get advice on music that you would like but just haven’t yet heard.

How does it work?

The channels are saved in your favourite online social bookmark collection. If you don’t have one, look no further than Del.icio.us…

Simply save the RSS feed from your favourite music blog using the tag mp3blogfeed and your music-blog will be automatically available to everybody in the world on the home page with the most recent at the top. If you prefer to only see your own bookmarks, simply enter your del.icio.us username in the settings box, or if you are using another service, the correct RSS URL.

Playlists are automatically saved onto your hard disk as shared flash-cookies along with such useful things as volume and the last page you visited – dive back in from where you started!

Technical details

Written entirely from the ground up in actionscript 2 – no components, no templates.
Uses Shared Local Objects to save xspf playlist, volume and recent browsing history.
Features javascript data api to allow bookmarking and the emailing of blog links.
Uses your existing social bookmarking services – imports RSS, XML & OPML.
Intelligent caching of data and pre-empting of user desired information.

Features a scrolling data window with mousewheel input, inertia and variable speed scrolling.

Note : This project has been discontinued due to lack of time thanks to my new job as the head of flash at Last.fm!

music meet art / east meets west

A fascinating hybrid of electro J-Pop and classical cello, the Stereo Art project is still in its early phase, but thanks to many live performances, the word is spreading!

As the idea is to combine music & art, I was commissioned to put together a clean but ‘scribbled’ style Flash website to show off the music and display live news. The end result is a scruffy but-not-too-shabby gallery and news reader all wrapped round a live music streamer. The design process was refreshingly quick with this project…After five minutes of sketch ideas, Producer Pop lifts up the most basic looking sketch and finalised,

Less is more! … Complete! and so within a short space of sketching (and a few months of actionscript coding!) the site was launched and began picking up popularity

Technical details

Full Screen 100% actionscript 2 – no components, no templates. Uses Shared Local Objects to save volume. Imports web services from Flickr and Blogger.com. Intelligent gallery module with thumbnail zoom and comments. Designed as a widget to be entirely embeddable into any site with just three lines of html.

If you want to check out the Western J-Pop sounds, see it here!

Ajax Multimedia webshop!

Dripping with high-tech features, this new music label offers free previews, podcasts and chances to buy digital songs or vinyl! This one stop site will cater for all your eclectic dance needs. Don’t forget about the secret button!

This new music label that cut its teeth releasing party vinyl has gone digital with a fresh new music website and shop!

Play music whilst shopping for music, previewing any track live. That was the main objective… well that along with high quality music delivery using Web2.0 features such as podcasting and rss feeds.

With a stark graphic style by Vacant Design we needed some strong visual animations as cue points for actions. The Flash-based music player is autonomous and animated as it loads an artist’s playlist or swaps between songs. For those not of a nervous disposition, there is always the secret hyper mode (*top dial on the left) if you find it too tame.

Speaking of the music player, let me mention a few unique features:

• automatic saving of your volume preference for when you come visit us again
• communicates with the artists’ pages so that songs can be selected outside of the music player
• wholly animated to reflect the party music is playing with regards to the volume
• super secret party mode for fast processors

If you would like to attend any events, join the mailing list and check out the news and live pages.

Technical details

⊗ ActionScript 2.0 Custom music player code with intelligent internal music database.

⊗ Flash mx compatible with ActionScript animated GUI.

⊗ Music Player loads XML, RSS and XSPF playlists from the netcast.

⊗ Javascript html music controls and feedback – communicating between flash and html.

⊗ On-the-fly xpsf and xml (atom or RSS) playlist creation with scraped coverart

⊗ Based on the Opensource CMS WordPress. Yes really!

⊗ SEO super optimised with analytical software to determine most important records.

⊗ All Artists and channels have relevant RSS and ATOM feeds.

⊗ AJAX page requests into dynamic html.

⊗ Down-gradeable to simple html shop.