Awesome
musical.js
musical.js: a tiny library with a sequencing WebAudio synthesizer that supports ABC notation.
Listen to a little demo here. musical.js can be used as a standalone script, a require.js AMD module, or as a node.js module. This code has no dependencies other than the HTML5 WebAudio API, and it minifies down to about 17K.
Originally designed as part of jQuery-turtle.
Three main functions in the API:
-
instrument = new Instrument([timbre])makes an instrument. Timbre is optional and defaults to a boring square wave sound. Timbre may be a WebAudio oscillator wave type ("square", "sine", "sawtooth", "triangle"), or a "piano" wave shape that is coded in this libarary. It may also specify (as object properties) gain (generally 0-1), attack (seconds for initial attack), decay (seconds for 1/e decay), sustain (amplitude of sustain), release (seconds for silence after release), cutoff (frequency of a lowapss filter), cutfollow (multiple of main frequency to add to lowpass cutoff), and detune (relative frequency of a second detuned oscillator); these allow basic subtractive analog synthesis. Timbre can be changed later using instrument.setTimbre. See an example below. -
instrument.tone(frequency [,volume, duration, delay, timbre, origin])plays a single tone for a little while. Frequency may be specified as a positive number (in Hz) or a negative integer (a midi note number), or a pitch string like '^C,' (ABC notation for a pitch). Other arguments are optional:volumedefaults to 1,durationdefaults to 10 seconds,delaydefaults to zero (play right now), andtimbredefaults to null, which applies the instrument's default timbre.origindefaults to null and is visible in the record passed to the event listener in order to support visual feedback by highlighting corresponding objects on the user interface. -
instrument.play(abcnotation)plays a song as expressed in ABC notation, as can be found on the web. See examples below. -
There is also a
silence()method andgetTimbre()andsetTimbre()for changing an instrument's sound. To listen to sequenced notes as they occur in realtime, listen to events withon('noteon', cb)andon('noteoff', cb). Theinstrument.offmethod unregisters a listener.
If used as a require.js or node module, then Instrument will be
a member of the package. For example, after you do
musical = require('musical'); then you can
var ins = new musical.Instrument();.