I think it would be a great idea for Flash to support MIDI. As you
point out, major advantages over wav and mp3 are the tiny file size
and the potential for allowing Flash to create music dynamically,
even interactively. The biggest drawback (which you also recognized)
is lack of quality control -- somewhat akin to using system fonts
with which there's no guarantee of consistent text layout, only with
MIDI the synthesizers in most sound cards are cheesy to say the
least. Whatever happened to Beatnik, which used a MIDI-like command
set to control small sound fonts consisting of real, not synthesized, sounds?
It might also be of interest to readers here that MIDI can be used
for more than the creation, reproduction, and scoring of music. It
has been used for controlling robots and similar applications. Not
sure how much of that has been done, but it might offer a new,
ready-made interface for Flash to communicate with peripheral hardware.
Back when Flash sound was truly terrible (version 3) I built a site
(http://www.silent-music.com) for a pianist who accompanies silent
films. I used an 11 Kb MIDI file in a hidden frame to replace about
100Kb of very poor-sounding ADPCM in Flash. Once Flash supported MP3
compression, we redid the site with real recordings, but the MIDI
version was not bad -- better-sounding than the ADPCM that Flash 3 used.
- Marc Hoffman
At 10:00 AM 12/6/2005, you wrote:
The Flash Player has evolved through the ages to provide the most needed
functionality. Through each version there have always remained a few common
goals. What I have found is that:
Flash is small -- from the player itself to the swf file format to the
assets it is optimized to load, focus has been placed on small file sizes
(this of course is not as apparent in many websites that are heavy in
multimedia)
Flash supports standards -- the player supports many web and multimedia
formats standard in the industry, such as jpg, mp3 and xml
Flash is interactive -- the players greatest strength is the dynamic
behavoir through ActionScript to allow user interactivity
MIDI, a music standard format that most computers support today, fits all of
these categories (like a glove). In fact there's an opensource project
being developed to allow MIDI through Flash, though it requires an
additional download and install to the user apart from the Flash Player
itself (seen at osflash.org)
I'd like to take a poll. Do you think MIDI should be included in the Flash
Player? Why or why not? I want both votes and opinions as I'll organize
the results and send them off to "Adobe, formerly known as
Macromedia<http://www.macromedia.com>".
Please respond with some sort of opinion whether it's pro or con. I'll list
the pros/cons I can think of below (you don't have to read the rest of this
email if you already have your opinion).
A little more on MIDI:
MIDI is a standard music format (some will argue that it's the
onlystandard) that represents pitches and instruments to be played as
a song.
It's extremely small, being the vector of music, and has to be interpreted
by a users soundcard. Almost all computers these days support standard
MIDI, though it sounds synthesized (especially on the voice and string
instruments). Some soundcards or additional software transform the common
MIDI into amazing orchestrations, but most users don't have this advanced
playback.
MIDI pros:
can be generated dynamically and played through a sequencer to allow
complete on-the-fly customization of sound.
very small in filesize
supported by almost all soundcards
numerous applications for the creation of MIDI songs (many are free)
it's a standard that has been around for a long time (so there is a lot of
support for it)
a small implementation (wouldn't increase the Flash Player size by more than
50K)
MIDI cons:
most people will have a more synthesized sound
user experience isn't guarenteed to be consistant (for those with higher
quality soundcards)
as with all advancements, could make it really easy for developers to have
annoying sounds playing on their sites ;)
In short, if the Flash Player had a midi sequencer built in it would allow
developers to create lightweight interactive music applications, such as this
sheet music rendering application <http://mediarain.com/musicrain> or music
creation applications. It could also allow users to experience a website
that contained sound effects or decent background music at very little
bandwidth cost. Formerly know as Macromedia has always been good about
listening to the developer community and will surely make efforts to build
the features we need, if we tell them. This is your forum.
Tyler
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