Flash Audio

Build a MIDI Synth with Flash

by Martin Wilde

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Introduction

The recent departure of both the Beatnik Player and the Microsoft DirectMusic Player from the web audio browser space has dealt a serious blow to web media development and presentation.  What once seemed commonplace - the ability to synchronize the playback of graphics with MIDI files in your Internet browser - is no longer possible.  For all the hype surrounding the remaining web audio technologies out there, a recent survey of the field by the Interactive Audio Special Interest Group (due out soon www.iasig.org) reveals no ready-provider for these missing services.  This leaves the field of web audio in the proverbial lurch, at least in this area.

But is there nothing to do about this situation?  Isn’t there some way to re-create those services within the scope of any of the remaining web multimedia players?  The answer, fellow web audio practitioner, is a hearty and qualified, ‘Yes!’  In this article I will show how to build a MIDI software synthesizer in Flash.  Try the example below which is a MIDI version of the Peanuts song converted to SWF and played by Flash.

Note that Flash plays the actual MIDI data and discrete samples for the song rather than a single MP3 and that there are no other players involved.

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