Imagine what creative developers could do if Flash could transmit and respond gracefully to MIDI. Now an online petition is urging Adobe to do something about that. You need an account on bugs.adobe.com to vote, but that simply requires providing your name and email address.
According to the petition's author, Tyler Wright of MusicRain, Adobe determines the priority of features by the amount of interest it sees from the development community. MusicRain makes Flash-based sheet music software. Wright grouses, "The sound is clunky and limited to piano only. Please support the future development of all online music software by letting Adobe know you want better support of sound."
Petitions have worked in the past. Wright points to the "Adobe, Make Some Noise" campaign for enhancing Flash audio, and the previous request for USB MIDI Device support, which is now under consideration at Adobe.
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Yeah, I've been trying to develop an application streaming karaoke data over IP, and I thought Flash would be a good idea. My original idea was the use just a standard MP3 file and have a separate MIDI file that would contain information about vocal pitch, time signature, key and the good stuff, plus, most obviously, the lyrics data, since that can be embedded within the MIDI file.
But of course Adobe likes to complicate things!
I ended up using XML, and it is definitely not easy to get lyrics to match up using simple timecoding, lol.
Ooh - how does that java thing work? that would be awesome if I could use that!
I have been wanting to make a drum kit tuition environment in Flash for ages. I had to use software called Isadora, by Troika Tronix in the end - but it isnt ideal because Isadora does not easily allow features such as accuracy scoring and online availability... My other option would be MaxMSP but that seems so complex.. I want to use Flash AS3!!!
What's the status of this? Is there any FAQ about which versions of Flash support MIDI (and what MIDI features are supported for each - ie simple playback, accepting input from MIDI instruments, etc.) or what you would need to get MIDI played in a certain version of the Flash player? I would think Adobe would recognize MIDI as a smart standard to support, if only due to its small file size, making it useful for background music.
I have made a midi-to-flash interface by using a java applet. Java captures the midi data form your system and the data is passed on to flash through java script.
You can see it in action over here: http://www.abumarkub.net/abublog
Thanks for posting this. I've been dreaming of the day the flash could support MIDI and hope this comes to fruition.