So I guess that I'm looking for a coder, but not for a game...

[Nikolas]

Heh,

I'm not sure on where else to turn to. Of course the gen gen talk is not exactly the place, but I figured I should start here and see how it goes....

So...

I'm looking for a coder, in order, firstly, to discuss a few ideas and possibilities (cause I'm basically clueless) and then to sit down and do business, if things are as I think they should be.

Here's the basic premise of the project I have in mind:

I hope to publish next year a collection of works for solo piano + recording accompaniment (orchestral). For example listen here: https://soundcloud.com/editions-musica-ferrum/for-maggie

The idea is that the student will play the solo piano and the recording will be playing the rest of the orchestra.

The composing, recording, publishing, promoting and marketing part is ok. But just handing out the recording as an mp3 is the silliest and most useless way I could think of going ahead with this. Thus I thought that maybe I can create a custom software solution.

The goal of the software would be, ultimately, to be a playback machine with a set playlist (so not playing everything), but with a few added elements. The firstmost importance in this would be to be able and alter the playback speed in real time (through a slider/knob) and also have a second layer, a metronome, which can be turned on and off, by the user.

So the first question is: How difficult is it to build something like this? Reason I'm going for a custom made software is that I find that most public are a little too slow and if a publication is based on something like this, I should hand out as much information in the easiest form possible for them.

The second question is: Assuming it's easy (and cheap) enough to build it for windows, how difficult would it be to port it to iOS, android and iphone based tables and phones?

Extra note: Obviously using VLC (for example) can pull most of this off (with the exception of the metronome), but asking a paying client to download a new software online, get the right file, then go to the menu and find the right staff to click seems an overload of information which is not the best of ideas. But maybe VLC being open sourced could help in the process?

Thanks! ^_^

[Radiant]

You probably knew this, but some MIDI editing tools will be able to pull this off, if MIDI is an acceptable format for you.

The first question is that it's not a lot of work, but that it requires highly specialized software. Most developers just grab standard MP3/OGG libraries because they work (if in a standard way), and almost nobody has any clue how those internals work. If you know that, then writing this app is a few days' work; if you don't know that then that's going to take a few weeks of research.

The second question, porting this is going to be a nightmare unless you are very familiar with low-level audio coding on both systems.

[Nikolas]

Hiya!

Midi won't work. For sure... It needs to be in much better quality...

So, it seems a bit disheartening in a way I think... :-/ The porting issue is something else alltogether then, unless maybe if there's a total re-write x 4... brrrr...

[morganw]

If you want this to be immediately accessible to the public, and you want it to work on a large number of devices without the overhead of porting, I would suggest using a website.

For the player:
HTML5 audio has a playback rate which preserves pitch
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/av_prop_playbackrate.asp

For the metronome track:
Just add a second source track that includes the metronome (playing one track at a time is probably better for mobile browsers)...
...or use a script to play the original track, plus the metronome track, and keep both of them in time
http://hungry-media.com/2010/09/synchronizing-audio-with-html5/

Here is an example of the change in playblack speed:
http://hyperaud.io/lab/pbr-test/
The step of the audio adjustment is too large to sound nice here, but if you drop this from 0.1 to 0.01 then it should be pretty smooth.

Your system requirements are just the browsers that support HTML5 audio which is going to be a lot more straightforward than writing and distributing native applications.

[Nikolas]

morganw: This may very well be the solution I was looking for! EXCELLENT!

I'll keep looking and I'm checking with my web designer to see how difficult it really is, but if you can do it yourself, do PM me and I'll let you know if we could work together, etc...

Awesome!

[morganw]

I imagine your web designer can probably handle it, and probably make it look nice in the process. As far as I can tell, a couple of Javascript functions is all you need to get it going.

I forgot to mention:
https://soundcloud.com/editions-musica-ferrum/for-maggie
...amazing music by the way.

[Radiant]

...unless of course somebody solved this problem already   Good catch!

For the player:
HTML5 audio has a playback rate which preserves pitch
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/av_prop_playbackrate.asp