I’ve been thinking alot about making a soundbased installation in Adobe Flash, using sensors and switches, and I’ve gotten around to making a few small eksperiments/prototypes as research, which I’m planning to share on this site later.
But I also found this old experiment I wrote in Flash 5 (!) and wanted to share it. It is a visual sequenzer (*) / sound toy that lets you drag icons onto a «soundstage», each icon representing a sample. As you press play a line starts moving vertically, and as the line hits one of the icons, the corresponding sound is played. You can also click, drag and hold an icon, and move it on top of the moving line to trigger the sound. There are two types of sounds. The yellow icons trigger different «wet finger on glass» sounds, and the greywhite icons trigger sonar ping sounds.
Open Source
The code is pretty old, and there are WAY better ways of making something like this with AS3, but still, here is the source code (fla) for it (it also includes the samples, which you are free to use in any way you like).
I still think it is a pretty nice little project, but I am toying with the idea of replacing the click and drag with a webcam mounted in the ceiling, and letting people moving around on the floor trigger the sounds. I have quite a lot to learn before I can make something like that, but I’ll get there!
* Ok, so I guess it is a stretch to call this a sequenzer, but I wanted to create a fun, easy and interesting way to generate a sound collage.
