I’ve been keeping an eye on HTML5’s Web Audio API for a while now. The API allows for easy audio synthesis and manipulation in the browser without any plugins (e.g. Flash). When I first started learning about Web Audio, it wasn’t available on Chrome - I held back on tinkering because I like easily sharing my projects. Chrome now enables the full Web Audio API.

I’m most excited about the ability to create oscillators (simple tones) extremely easily. You can synthesize music on demand with no need to pre-create music files for each note / tone.

I’ve spent a little time this weekend toying with the code and it’s incredibly easy to get started. For a good intro to oscillators, try this link. To see some cool all-HTML synths and other experiments, look here.

I hope to create a few fun projects as I explore the API. Some broad areas include:

  1. Agent Based Models creating procedurally generated music
  2. Games that incidentally create music as the players and AI interact
  3. Easy new electronic instruments where it’s impossible to hit a bad note
  4. Interactive audio experiments that demonstrate key concepts of music theory

I’ll be posting my results here!