music. in Flash, Premiere and SoundBooth

here’s 4 ways of using music in flash.

1)
it’s quite easy to add music to Flash.
just use the Sound-object and it will work like this:

music in Flash version 01

the music is started and stopped using the start and stop-buttons.
(and as this is just a experiment, the music can be started even though it already plays)

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2)
but how about a version using sharedObject.
this means that Flash now can remember stuff about the music and use this.
i. e. the music plays if the user was listening to the music the last time he was on the site.

music in Flash version 2

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3)
this versions uses the sharedObject to remeber how far the user was in the music the last time he visited the site. the sharedObejct makes sure that the music will not start over from the start at the next visit, but play on from the point on which the user left the page on the last visit.

is used to define the position of the music, and a setInterval-function keeps updating the sharedObject on how much of the music is played.

this works, and it’s cool.
but there is one thing…
i. e. if the user had closed the site after the music had played 14 seconds on the last visit, the music will start from the 14th second and play until the end.
but then it would again start the music from the 14th second and play until the end. over and over again..

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4)
so to solve this problem I used this:

this means that the music will be played from the position it was exited at the last visit.
and now I no longer want the music to loop, instead I want this:

this means that when the short version of the music has stopped, it will trigger a function that starts the music from the start and then loops this full version instead
this way the sharedObejct is only used to define how much of the music is to be played the first time.

music in Flash version 4

(the numbers in this Flash shows how much of the music is played… in milliseconds)

bonus-info: the track in these examples is a loop from the track Casettesingle from the album “Transparent things” with Fujiya & Miyagi.

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a couple of years ago Simon Grevsen and I filmed a concert for the Hawkeye and Hoe Band.
we filmed this track twice in one night and from the 4 angles we created this video in Premiere.

the filming was great fun and making the video a nice challenge. the video is still worth a laugh

check out the concert video with Hawkeye and Hoe band here

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having used Cool Edit Pro for all my editing audio and creating music for almost 3 years, I was very sad when the program was now longer for sale. recently I tried editing 2 tracks in SoundBooth instead and I must admit I liked it a lot. just playing around in SoundBooth I made these 2 tracks:

jazzy track made in SoundBooth
electronic track made in SoundBooth

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ActionScript 3.0 has made visualizing music much easier.
in ActionScript 2.0 it was a mess reading the music, and then visualizing it. and I could only manage doing it, if I knew the music in advance.

but with ActionScript 3.0 and the use of ByteArray, SoundMixer.computeSpectrum and readFloat visualizing music is no longer a pain.. AND it can be done runtime – this means that any piece of music can be visualized.
in the examples below an electro-loop is visualized – at first as a line and secondly as a box:

music visualized in Flash – as a line
music visualized in Flash – as a box