Starting new audio lib

[alexjsmac]

Not ready to merge but feel free to try it out.

[CelticMinstrel]

This seems like a good step. I assume you plan a lot more new blocks.

[alexjsmac]

Awesome :+1: and indeed I do

[dethe]

I want to play with this but am not sure where to begin. Can you post a Gist (or add example or more) which exercises the new blocks to give a starting point and reference?

[alexjsmac]

@dethe For sure I'll do that right now

[dethe]

:+1:

[alexjsmac]

As of tonight we now have chords, check out gist ea53332c53d85fbb7a7d for a quick example

[dethe]

Sweet! Sounds great.

[CelticMinstrel]

I don't know how to use that hash to find the gist. Isn't there a way to actually link to it rather than posting the hash?

Also, I don't see anything in the diff that suggests chords. Did you not commit that yet, or did I miss it?

[alexjsmac]

You can load a gist with that hash. The chord was made with several note blocks that execute at once so you wouldn't see a reference to chords just in the code.

[CelticMinstrel]

Oh, you mean it's meant to be used in the Waterbear interface itself? I was trying to view it on GitHub.

Maybe I'll check it out at some point, then.

[alexjsmac]

One option for composing a bit of music is using Music Macro Language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Macro_Language). Pretty easy syntax to pick up.

[CelticMinstrel]

The MML block doesn't seem intuitive to me (who will know what MML is?). Also, Wikipedia seems to be unclear on whether MML can make chords.

[alexjsmac]

Yeah it definitely involves a learning curve but it's just one option. Simple enough to learn the basics quickly. I am having trouble getting notes to play one after the other without it.

[dethe]

If we have to go the way of embedding a mini-language I would prefer to go with something more well-known like ABC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_notation), but ultimately we should hide the details behind blocks, at least until we add support for quick expression blocks ( #192 ).

[CelticMinstrel]

I think you misunderstood me. It's not the choice of MML that I'm complaining about, it's the interface of the block that doesn't do a good job explaining what you're supposed to put there.

[alexjsmac]

Okay this is ready to be merged now, except that I haven't figured out how to get the new audio icons to fit right/appear at all in the wb-value's and wb-expression's. Maybe someone could shed some light on that?

[alexjsmac]

Here's a gist to show how to write melodies out: 6cbf5a2509ceb1ffd81b

[CelticMinstrel]

Okay, so the note blocks and such write to some sort of "temporary buffer" which is used by the play block?

Regarding the conflicts to be resolved, I've already merged them in my local copy, so I could push them as soon as @dethe gives the okay. Unless he'd rather do it himself.

By the way, how do you do chords with this? The previous gist on that appears to be out-of-date.

[dethe]

@amaclean199 Whenever there are known issues (like the icons) in a PR, go ahead and file an issue for them (if there is more than one known issue, file one each) and reference the new issue(s) in the PR.

[dethe]

@CelticMinstrel: I've been letting the assignee push the final merge, but could you push your changes that resolve the merge conflict into this PR branch?

[CelticMinstrel]

Sorry, that would require me to have write access to @amaclean199 's copy of the Waterbear repo, so I can't do it. That said... I didn't actually get any conflicts when I merged (not sure why github says there are some), so it shouldn't be too hard for him to do it himself.

[dethe]

@CelticMinstrel You can make a pull request targeting @amaclean199 's repo and branch, or he can just merge in from master, either way is OK with me.

[alexjsmac]

@dethe both keyboard.js and ndict.js were requirements for the keyboard block and were provided by Timbre so I just dropped them in lib. Does that affect how we consider the comments you made on them?

[alexjsmac]

By the way, how do you do chords with this? The previous gist on that appears to be out-of-date.

• @CelticMinstrel

I have repurposed those not blocks for melodies. I was thinking I would make a chord block.

[alexjsmac]

So do you want me to merge even with the audio icon issue still open ( #1288 )?

[CelticMinstrel]

A chord block might be fine, though I wonder how you'd do it. Logically, a chord is simply a set of notes just like a melody is a set of notes.

And then, what about counterpoint? It's not uncommon to want to play two different melodies simultaneously.

[alexjsmac]

Fixes issue #825

[alexjsmac]

Fixes issue #1189 too