The FleX Sound Café

Implementation

Concept

What is Freesound Music?

Implementation

Built of sounds shared by a world-wide alliance of sound creatives – the “Freesound” community.

Presentation

Takes listening sensations from there one step further - powered by FleX.

Contribution

Suitable for environmental, entertainment, artistic, and educational deployments.

Freesound Music

Introduction into the usage of the Freesound Music portal and related pages.

Which browser to use, how to arrange windows, what to access, etc.

Sound Park

Tutorial for the creation of a first Sound Trip using the Freesound Workbench.

Hot path through sound selection, assembly rules and page generation.

Publishing

Explanation of further publishing and recording possibilities for Sound Trips.

Standard set of sound page creation, tips and tricks + extended possibilities.

Library

Overview about further information resources.

Freesound Music

Implementation

FleX Deployment

General concept

Freesound Music

Realization of a prototype, proof of concept

Introduction

Freesound Music is built of sounds that are shared by a world-wide alliance of sound

creatives – the “Freesound” community (see Freesound website).

Freesound Music takes listening sensations from there one step further by applying two

basic methods:

Organizing the sounds according to common musical experiences (4 basic

recognition areas “Melody”, “Rhythm”, “Harmony”, “Effects”, and phenotypical

sound classifications, as realized in the Workbench)

Realizing a new concept of flexible linkage between the sounds which leads to new

sound combinations and new musical metrics (interactive Hypersound functionality

utilized by easy-to-use web page assembly, and supported by multi-media ASP

technology)

Freesound Music is suitable for environmental, entertainment, artistic, and educational

deployments. It is freely available (online and offline), but must be used in accordance

with Creative Commons License protection rules.

Technology

The technology behind the implementation of Freesound Music can be outlined as

follows:

Resources

Sounds

Free available sounds are the foundation of Freesound Music. They are created

with any kind of standard audio recording and processing equipment.

Freesound Music sounds are being shared online through the Freesound

site which serves as a kind of online sound portal, repository, and much more

(see Freesound site for further information).

Streamers

Animated Sounds

Animated Sounds are the building blocks for Freesound Music Sound Pages that

can be interactively used for Freesound Music creation.

Animated Sounds are realized as Adobe Shockwave applets that can be

accessed through the Internet.

The use of Animated Sounds is described in the Animated Sounds Online Help.

Playgrounds

Sound Pages

Animated Sounds are assembled into standard Internet browser pages as the

Adobe Shockwave lingo scripting technology suggests. See next "Setup"

chapter for specific conditions of browser usage.

Hypersounds

In order to utilize a maximum of flexibility for interactive musical use, Animated Sounds

are linked with each other, thus behaving as a kind of local musical network. These

relationship is also called "Hypersound" since links from sound to sound can be

executed such as "Hypertext" links with text.

Freesound Music

Pieces

Freesound pieces can be interactively played using Freesound Sound Pages.

While playing, the resulting music can be recorded within the Sound Page

environment.

Distribution

All Sound Pages are obtaining the Animated Sound resources from the

Freesound Music portal server. The pages may be local copies that are distributed

freely between friends, or copies that are directly accessed from the server.

Setup

The current implementation of the Freesound Music Project is represented by a specific

prototype. Although it complies to freely available standards and applications, it cannot

be freely used across various platforms and product versions.

In order to assure the best performance possible, the following requirements should be

considered to be able to fully enjoy the Freesound Music project:

Sounds Online

Freesound Site

The Freesound site itself should work fine on any standard platform and browser

type. For further information refer to the relevant section at the Freesound site.

Portal

Freesound Music Portal with Read-only Access

The Freesound Music Portal can work on various standard platforms and browser

versions for the purpose of obtaining written information, and standard static media

such as graphics and mp3 sounds. Short file names (8 characters limitation) are

not supported.

Read-only

However, Animated Sounds and related features can only be operated when using

Internet Explorer which covers the central part of the Freesound Music project.

Other browsers do not comply to the full functional scope that is offered by the

Adobe Shockwave Lingo scripting technology.

Most convenient and tested environment for performing Sound Pages with the

Animated Sounds is described in the following section.

Recommendation

Recommended Environment for the Freesound Music Portal

Platform

Computer: High performance for real-time/multimedia use, at least Pentium M.

OS: Windows XP Professional, SP 2

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519

Screen Resolution: 1024 x 768

Browser

Most recommended Browser: Maxthon Internet Browser (based on Internet Explorer)

Version: 1.5.2.21 (free available)

Download: http://go.maxthon.com, find 1.5.2build21_msetup.zip

Local Download Here

File Size: 4.79 MB

Description: Maxthon Internet Browser software is a powerful tabbed browser

with a highly customizable interface. It is based on the Internet Explorer

browser engine (your most likely current web browser) which means that

what works in the IE browser will work the same in Maxthon tabbed browser

with many additional efficient features.

Multimedia

Browser Plug-in: Adobe Shockwave Player

Version: Shockwave 10.1.3.018

Download: http://www.adobe.com

Local Download Here

File Size: 2,726 K

Setup tip: When you see the animation playing below the labeled box, then

your installation was successful.

Considerations

How does the Portal perform on my computer?

Applets

There is no installation required to drive the Adobe Macromedia applets,

e.g., no client needs to be downloaded and to be installed.

All executable resources will be accessed through the server. This is also

valid for the FleX Publisher (see below) that will be downloaded for execution.

Warnings

You will get warnings when executing the FleX Publisher since it is a regular

executable file. You need to allow the FleX Publisher to execute in order to be

able to create your own Sound Trips.

The Shockwave applications that are included in the Portal and in its adjacent

application pages (Workbench, Sound Trips) creating and maintaining text

files on your computers (like cookies) while you are operating. These text files

are automatically stored in two locations like the following:

Cookies Location

Sound Page control:

C:\Documents and Settings\<your name>\Application Data\Macromedia

\Shockwave Player\Prefs\Q93Z43LF

FleX Publisher control

C:\Documents and Settings\<your name>\Application Data\Macromedia

\Director MX 2004\FleXPublisher\Prefs\

Clipboard

While the Portal or related Sound Pages are active (open in a browser), the

Clipboard is used by Shockwave functions and cannot be used for other

applications. If you need to use the Clipboard, close first the Portal and all open

Sound Pages.

Performance

The Freesound Music Portal and its related Sound Pages demanding high

and permanent computing power. You should close other performance consuming

programs and applications before executing sound pages. Since the current

version is a prototype implementation only, you must be aware of rarely possible

browser window freezes and other malfunctions that are usually simple recovered

by restarting the relevant pages or applications.

Sound Channels

The Animated Sounds play is restricted to a concurrent play of 8 stereo channels.

However, much more Animated Sounds can be loaded at once (for example, visit

the "Matrix" project that opens 88 Animated Sounds concurrently). This allows a very

flexible selection and switch ability of sounds. To support this flexibility, the 8 sound

channels are assigned dynamically. Sound channel display and fixed assignment

of the channels are possible as well (see below for more information).

Internal Download

Some Internet related operations may require heavy download time. However, those

downloads will be stored in the browsers' cache for later use allowing much

faster performance. Please execute Animated Sounds only after they are fully

downloaded. For further information visit the information about Animated Sounds:

Animated Sounds Introduction

Animated Sounds Tutorial

Navigation

The Freesound Music portal consists of 4 areas that can be navigated one after

the other (full page navigation) or simultaneously (tiled page navigation).

Full Page Navigation

12. Page Indicator

7. Link to CC License

11. Link to Workbench

10. Link to Page Info

6. Link to Freesound

8. Link to Portal Help