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Gallery: Audiotool lets you make music using your browser
I can't exactly make up my mind whether Audiotool is a toy or a serious tool but one thing is for sure -- it is not lacking in ambition. It is a Flash-based music creation tool which uses real-world devices as metaphors. In simpler terms, it's a huge canvas you can throw gizmos on and interconnect them. A "gizmo" (that's not how they call it) can be a drum machine, a synth, an effect, or any of a number of other musical instruments or effects boxes.
If that sounds complex, it's because it really is. I tried playing with it and couldn't really accomplish anything, but maybe my utter lack of any musical knowledge or background is to blame here. When I browsed the site for existing works I found some pretty impressive tracks, such as those by Sam's Sound Box.
Once you create a track, you can decide how to license it ("regular" copyright or Creative Commons). CC-licensed tracks can be opened in the interface and changed by other users (they make their own copies). Unfortunately, I didn't find a way to search specifically for CC tracks... I just had to try my luck. I ended up finding schnipselwolke, which I then used for making lots of screenshots, as you can see on the next page.
When a track is loading, you can see a zoomed-out view of what the instruments look like and how they're laid out.
Here's a close-up of what the board looks like:
A drum machine:
There's a track view at the bottom:
And this is the tool-strip along the right side of the window, from which you drag tools onto your canvas:
When you drag-and-drop an instrument, you get a nice grid which allows you to line it up precisely with other instruments.
A cool looking synth pad. I think I saw a device by Korg which looks just like this.
Master audio output. The needles move, and it's all very retro-chic.
And yes, it crashed on me. This is the error message you get:
Bottom line: Seems a bit too ambitious to me. This could work as a freeware application which you download and use locally, but in-browser it doesn't really work, I think.
Comments
2
Subscribe to commentsJoshApr 6th 2010 6:08PM
I actually found the app quite simple and basic, to be honest. Then again, I'm a musician who works with digital audio workstation software all the time.
It's nothing too ambitious, really. It's all pretty basic stuff that's in here, and you won't be writing symphonies using this anyway. It's just for some quick fun :-)
"A cool looking drum machine pad."
A drum machine pad? It's a synth! :P
tporvazApr 6th 2010 11:29PM
Having a basic understanding of analog recording it wasn't hard to pick up and was quite informative on the idea as long as i tried to play around with it. I've lost countless hours with audiotool with it on hobnox. This more official audiotool website has more tools to work with. Over all I'm glad it has appeared on Download Squad.