Officially Temporary Closed
November 17th, 2011
Over the last months I was watching myself surfing to my own blog hoping that I have written something new. I have not. The last months were filled with a lot of work in serving new technologies. Joa did quite a job on moving Audiotool to various platforms and there was not much time for new experiments or research. Besides providing general information and conference dates - talking about new stuff was the actual reason for this blog. However moving to new technologies means rewriting existing code to other languages. I could talk about the current situation as a developer. It might not be the easiest time, but even it was easy to target the only reasonable platform Flash in the past, the new options and possibilities are very promising.
To make it short: I'll be back - probably in a different format than a blog.
And still there are Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Audiotool for your entertainment.
Thanks for reading since 2005!
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Flashforum Konferenz 2011
March 23rd, 2011
Nur noch wenige Tage bis zur Flashforum Konferenz in Köln. Es gibt auch noch einige freie Plätze in meinem deutschsprachigen Workshop Audio Code Clash. Ausserdem sponsert Audiotool wieder eine erstklassige Party in neuer Location. Lasst euch das nicht entgehen. Ich freue mich drauf.
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Geeky By Nature
March 22nd, 2011
Just a couple of days left to the excitement of the year. John Davey, well known as organizer of Flash on the beach has setup Geeky By Nature in New York and I am happy to present my latest stuff as well as Audiotool 2.0.
If you do not have a ticket yet - you should run.
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Audiotool Radio
February 11th, 2011
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When I was 25
February 10th, 2011
Before I started programming in 1998, I was completely into electronic dance music (formerly called Techno). I produced hours of tracks stored on digital audio tapes. Few weeks ago I bought a DAT-Player on ebay and now I am traveling back into the years 1995-1997. Most productions are just crap. Two tracks caught my attention though, since they were on an unlabeled DAT. I guess they must be from 1997. At least they sound like that time. Still like them, so I uploaded them on SoundCloud.
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FITC Amsterdam 2011 Workshop
February 8th, 2011
FITC Amsterdam 2011 is just around the corner!
I am happy to announce another Audio Code Clash Workshop, where I am teaching to work with Tonfall, an open-source library to create all kind of music and sound creations. Furthermore I will talk about sound creation and music in Flash in my session Pulsatile Crackle. Do not miss it. I won't! See you in Amsterdam.
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Construction of a Steiner Chain
December 14th, 2010
The Steiner chain is a set of circles inside an outer circle, where all circles are touching their neighbor in a single point. Naturally the first version within Flash is already made by Mario Klingemann in 2002 to create some nice artwork. He also has a AS3 version in his libs.
My version is rather optimized for runtime purpose, does not create objects in runtime.
Press UP/DOWN to add/remove circles to the steiner chain.
Press RIGHT/LEFT to adjust the rotation speed.
Ensure keyboard focus (Click once in the Flash movie)
View this page in Romanian by courtesy of azoft.
More references
Wiki | Wolfram
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Pulsate now available on iTunes
December 12th, 2010
Pulsate was initially written for Flash
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808Chunk – Hello World (First Audiotool Album)
December 10th, 2010
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Tonfall WAV-IO
November 14th, 2010
Tonfall has a new feature called WAV-IO. It reads and writes audio data in wav-format.
Decoding a WAV results in the flash.media.Sound data format 44.1Khz,Stereo,32bit (float).
You can play it with the dynamic Sound API. Encoding can be done by simply passing the data you created in SAMPLE_DATA_EVENT to the encoder after specifying the target wav-format. You have to finalize the encoder after writing. Both processes are on the fly - processing block by block. They do not have to be processed in a single Flashplayer frame time.
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Drawing circles with Pixelbender
October 19th, 2010
I am not sure, if this makes any sense at all, but if you ever need to draw antialiased circles in Pixelbender, here is a quite simple solution. I had the idea after watching Mario Klingemanns and Ralph Hauwerts sessions at Flash on the Beach. They were talking about the bad idea of using conditions like if/else in Pixelbender shaders. So this solution runs without any branches and makes just use of built-in functions min/max.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Audiotool 1.1 Ping Pong has been shipped
July 16th, 2010
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FITC 2010 San Francisco
June 28th, 2010
This years amazing Flashbelt 2010 has just ended and the next great conference is appearing at the horizon. FITC 2010 is landing in San Francisco in August and according to its schedule it will be an outstanding one. I am personally looking forward to meet Yugo Nakamura in person, the guy that makes me actually starting with Flash more than 10 years ago.
My session this time is called Pulsatile Crackle and will combine audio synthesis with physic simulations. And of course I give you a quick overview of what our cute baby Audiotool is already capable of. Never forget: Audio is the next big thing in Flash
Early bird price for this event ends Friday July 2nd, so get your tickets NOW. and use the code 'andre-michelle' for an extra 10% off!
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Flashbelt 2010 coming soon!
May 9th, 2010
One of my favorite conferences is just 5 weeks away and I am already excited to travel to Minneapolis for the fourth time. Dave Schroeder is always a very caring host, which makes Flashbelt a very social and special conference. I especially look forward to the parties where I suppose Keston Westdal to make live - music at one evening. They are amazing!
If you don't have your ticket yet and are able to take a trip to Minneapolis, do not hesitate!
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Flash on the Beach – Audio Workshop Sold Out!
May 3rd, 2010
John told me today that my workshop Audio Code Clash is already sold out! Great!
This will be some conference and I will also have my session Pulsatile Crackle!
I am really excited about all this. If you don't have tickets yet, go sack them quickly. I am pretty sure, that they are leaving John's hands right away.
Also, John was asking me how I find myself being Marilynized.
Ah! That's it! Marilynized! Hell yes, I like that ;) That's what makes FOTB so special, right?
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Flash on the Beach 2010 – Introducing Workshop on Audio
April 20th, 2010
Workshop Audio Code Clash
I am sure, attendees will learn a lot more than I can usually cover in my sessions.
Besides the workshop, I will show some pretty nice stuff on audio and physics called "Pulsatile Crackle".
See you at Flash on the beach.
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Playback MP3-Loop (gapless)
April 9th, 2010
This is one of the most frequently asked question in my inbox.
Is it possible to loop MP3 without gaps?
Yes, but to answer the question I like to explain, why gap-less MP3 looping was actually not possible before Flash10 (Except for Flash-IDE encoded MP3 or ugly hacks). Read the rest of this entry »
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Audiotool 1.0 (Firestarter)
March 24th, 2010
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Tonematrix got 3000 comments
March 22nd, 2010
ToneMatrix amazing ride still amazes me. Every day I receive a lot of comments and emails and I really appreciate the feedback.
But listen: In Audiotool 1.0 (Public on Thursday!) you can also control the Pulverisateur (our new synthesizer) with the simple user-interface from the ToneMatrix. It is fun!
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Audiotool 1.0 (sound preview)
February 4th, 2010
We are coming closer to the release. Still a long todo-list, but I see light. While developing the last months, I sometimes completely forgot, what we are actually building. This morning I decided to play around for half an hour to test the usability, sounding and performance. Despite the new complex features like the sequencer and zoom-able desktop the performance seems to be outstanding.
So here is D'n'B at 175bpm, composed with two audio loops (heavily spliced), 303, two instances of our new synthesizer that I love and some effect devices.
Estimated release date early march 2010.
Audiotool - Audio Performance Test by André Michelle
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ZwanzigZehn – TwentyTen
January 2nd, 2010
Happy new year everybody!
This will be a big year for me and the Audiotool team. After a long time of research, refactoring, conception, politics, rethinking and building frameworks of any kind, we will finally launch V1.0. We also expect to update the application in a more frequent manner 2010 since we are safe on core technologies as far as the Flashplayer is capable of. Flash is indeed the most widespread browser plugin, but actually the worst choice for a music application. You decide soon - if we did the necessary magic. In any case I hope, that the project will be a success so Adobe feels the need to enhance the Sound API in Flash11 again (Vorbis, Latency, Midi,..).
Thanks to:
Joa Ebert, Kai-Philipp Schöllmann, Alan Ross, Andre Stubbe, Philipp Granzin, Axel Philipsenburg and to all organizing forces beyond us. You guys are simply amazing!
I have never been so busy and occupied by a project in my coding life. I am sorry for all the unanswered emails and the lack of posts on my blog in 2009.
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Bloom
December 1st, 2009
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AS3 Failure?
August 8th, 2009
Intro
According to the posts from Joa Ebert and Nicolas Cannasse I put my personal opinion on stack. Starting with Flash4 I see the long run of Actionscript for 10 years. It became truly a serious language since then. Back at the time, where no type-safe programming was possible and Actionscript errors were caught silently by the virtual machine, it was a pain in the ass to debug and create bigger projects. I was used to that, so I never complained the situation. I had no experience in other languages which features would make me jealous. Everything I have ever wanted were new features, new possibilities to create graphics and deal with sound. So every new Flash version extended my tool kit and I spent a lot of fun-time with the new toys. The only thing that annoyed me was that Actionscript was the slowest language thinkable. That has changed 2005 with Actionscript 3.0, which I am very thankful for. Actionscript 3.0 came with some stunning new features like dealing with bytes on the lowest level, manipulating the display-list in runtime without destroying the DisplayObjects and the fastest language in the Flashplayer since then. And with Flash10, my dream of dynamic audio programming came true, after ringing the bell.
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Flash on tap, Flashbelt and a tiny insight of the states
June 16th, 2009
Coming back from two weeks of traveling through the states with my co-worker Alan Ross. Starting in Boston, we attended Flash on Tap, where I spoke about Digital Audio Signal Processing in Flash10. FOT was great and the beer-tastings were delightful. A lot of local breweries shown up to present their beers. Cheers! Looking forward for next year. Thanks to Chris, Rebecca and the rest of the team!
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Eclipse plugins you need
May 13th, 2009
Catchy title, worth to consider. While working on the AudioTool, we are continuously searching for better workflows. Joa Ebert has written two plugins for Eclipse that helps us a lot to deal with such a huge project.
To make it clear: I don't love Eclipse. It is still a love-hate relationship and I am often fighting against its philosophy. So far, nothing comparable platform-independent in sight.
MetaLaunch (free)
If your project consists of a bunch of SWCs, you often want to compile them first and your application afterward. Use MetaLaunch to launch several Eclipse launchers from a list.
PBDT - PixelBender Development Tool (free)
Adobe PixelBender Toolkit is not event worth to consider as a code editor, I am afraid. PBDT instead supports semantic highlightning and basic refactoring for your PixelBender shader source code. It even compiles your code in the background. This gives you a very nice workflow in developing shaders.
FDT - Flash Development Tool
Not to forget the sophisticated Actionscript development tool by powerflasher. People often think, you need to be an expert in Actionscript to get benefit from it and still prefer to use the Flash IDE. On the contrary, using FDT helps you learning AS3 with tons of useful features.
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Karplus-Strong Algorithm
February 27th, 2009
At FITC Amsterdam I demoed my first and fairly simple implementation of a Karplus-Strong implementation. Together with KP, we were able to enhance it to sound more like a real guitar. I think, the result is already quite impressive, considering spending just a few hours. At some point I cannot hear a difference to a real guitar. This is even more impressive when you think of how it is accomplished.
A simple low-pass filtered feedback in a short delay line with the length of one period of the target frequency and some white noise do the first impression of a plugged string in common. For a guitar you need more tweaking, randomizing parameters and adding the guitar body resonance to get it more realistic. But the basic is done with an algorithm, discovered 1978!
I really like the elegance of the circuit. You basically bring in chaos (white noise contains all frequencies) and the system is going to stable itself and produces a nice waveform, perfectly suggesting a plugged string.
Naturally we are already planning an AudioTool plugin for synthesizing different guitars. But I am worried about the footprint of the algorithm. I stumbled over this comment which pointed out that the Karplus-Strong algorithm is patented. That is tough. At the time being this algorithm was a great accomplishment! But now where even Flash is able to playback code-generated audio data, I would think that someone may stumble over this method even by accident. It is better to commit our lawyer with this issue, but as the comment says, it is a really good example how bad code-patents are.
Listen and picture it for yourself. (Check the CPU!)
The implementation has a static set, but gives you some control on how the guitar is played. Nothing really magic. Definitely it would be a perfect addition to the AudioTool.
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FITC Amsterdam Source Codes
February 25th, 2009
Still in Amsterdam, but enough time for my flight back to Germany to post the source codes from my session. Good conference! But what is up in Amsterdam at night? Ralph Hauwert did everything yesterday to get us in another location after the official FITC party was closed. However we messed up in different directions, where KP & I decided to head back to our hotels. Late enough, fair enough.
Now check out the sources. | And/or check the AudioTool itself.
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A damn good reason to get an IPhone
February 21st, 2009
Mike Janney - Audiorealism ported his amazing TB-303 emulation to the IPhone.
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Boing Bumm Tschak!
February 4th, 2009
Long time no update. Long time being sick. I even had to cancel Adobe MAX and FITC Tokyo last week to cure my persistent cold. What a bummer! I am sorry for those who were looking forward to see my session. That sucks. I hope to get another chance to come to Japan in time.
Anyway I am getting back to work and I am looking forward now to FITC Amsterdam.
Btw: Have you seen this?
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Flash on the Beach – Miami!
December 11th, 2008
John Davey already revealed it at FOTB08. The next Flash on the Beach conference will be taking place in Miami. FOTB has always been one of my favorite conference and I am happy to attend as a speaker as well. You guess the subject - Audio in Flash 10. We are making great progress on the next AudioTool update. We will have collaboration features, a brand new sequencer unit to automate everything and finally you will be able to save your project and remix other user stuff. And much more...
Thank you John for your effort in making FOTB everytime a little bit better - which seems hard if attending just the current!
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Adobe MAX AudioSamples
November 22nd, 2008
As promised here are the class files I used in my session about audio programming in Flashplayer 10. They are already embedded in a FDT project, but you might have different SDK locations. There should be no problem to compile them in Flash CS4 or Flex as well. Good luck!
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Fur like renderings
October 29th, 2008
About 2 years ago I created a little SWF that generated cute little 'fur balls'. I didn't pay a lot of attention on this, moved to other stuff and lost it anywhere on a backup disk (not recovered yet). There was so much to discover in Actionscript 3.0 these days!
Last weekend I remembered and did some tests. It is actually quite simple. Move a lot of (millions!) particles and trace their path with a color. I am pretty sure, that software like Maya or several Photoshop plugins can do this as well. And probably much faster! Most of those tests below required hours of rendering. Anyway, I like the outcome of these three so far.
Flash Logo
Hobnox Logo
My Pixel counterpart
Make sure to watch them in 100%
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Sound API changes – Calming down
October 21st, 2008
There is actually nothing to add, but probably a better explanation is necessary to comprehend, why I was so disturbed of Adobes latest changes in the Sound API. I just want to make clear that I am not interested in spending time in fighting rather enhancing.
Read more at Adobe, make some noise.
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