Create a Revolutionary Audio Mix Application in Adobe Flash Using ActionScript

Recently, I wrote a series of articles about how to create a simple imeem application. For the interested reader, the articles are available on my page. Today, I will walk you through yet another music application built using ActionScript.

Not so long ago, I was brainstorming and came up with an idea about online music playlists. Let's take imeem, for instance. Certain songs (mixes) on imeem are made of a number of songs - which are all available (individually) on imeem. So I thought, what if users could create mixes right on imeem? Some of the benefits are:

1. less storage space would be used
2. a new engaging experience would be presented to users
3. very flexible playlist (easy to edit/modify)
4. ... maybe it can be monetized by allowing for playlist purchase

Then on the other side of the question, critics might argue that my approach would be bandwidth intensive. You'll be able to judge my approach after I've presented it to you. So let's get down to it.

Let's say there are 3 different songs on imeem that I'd like to have in a playlist. And more specifically, I'd like to take only the guitar solo parts of those songs and create the playlist. With my approach, here's how things would work:

• For song 1, I would choose the section between second 60 and second 120.
• For song 2, I would choose the section between second 120 and second 165.
• For song 3, I would choose the section between second 90 and second 150.

Then those 3 different sections would be arranged in an order specified by the user to form the playlist. Based on how the information is stored for playlists, the playlist might contain the following info:
{song1ID:60-120} {song2ID:120-165} {song3ID: 90 - 150}. As you can see, we store the ID of the song and the section. For simplicity purposes, here we use seconds. But the real application would use milliseconds for accuracy. We'd give the playlist a name and save it with the above info as its content. Then to play that playlist, we'd parse the content and determine the different songs and their respective sections, then load the songs and play the sections. Additionally, we could allow playlists to be concatenated to other playlists to form longer playlists. For the first version of the application, there would be no pitch/tempo modification - as this requires more advanced work. If the user later decides to add more songs or modify the playlist, they could easily do it.

So there you have it. That's the playlist application we'll be building in the upcoming articles. For now, get ready to critic my idea and post your comments. I will look into some performance considerations as we go along.

To continue with the tutorial, you will need a copy of Adobe Flash or Flex. Also, you'll need some knowledge of ActionScript. By the way, this idea is not patented. So if you think you can use it to make some cash, feel free to do so. Just remember to send me money!

In the next article, we'll get down to the architecture of the application.