This first release of AudioExplorer is a basic tool-chest for viewing audio waveforms and examining the spectral content of audio data. In its first concept, it was intended as a tool allowing musicians and audio engineers to navigate recorded music, examine the detailed harmonic content of musical selections, and generate MIDI representations of the music for subsequent notation or musical resynthesis, or .... whatever! It is hoped that this current release may also find practical application in musical education, the study of birdsong, and numerous other creative endeavors involving musical physics.
This release of AudioExplorer is embarrassingly simple. It is in essence just an audio recorder/player which pipes the incoming or outgoing audio data through a spectrum analyzer, flashing the resulting frequency spectra on the screen in either of several formats. In interactive mode, it is even simpler, forgoing the intricacies of real-time synchronization, and displaying a single spectrum (and chunk of MIDI data) corresponding to a region of interest in the waveform. The author does take pride in the quality of the displays, the efficiency and artistry of the panels, and - like some of the best music - the elegance of combining a few simple concepts into a useful application. I hope that AudioExplorer will both please your eyes and satisfy your curiosity.
As the power of desktop computers has increased sufficiently to allow real-time generation and mixing of audio data, there has been an explosion of creativity directed toward the creating special effects and ultra funky sounds for both performance and recorded media. True to this author's scientific and academic background, this author's interest is much more in the domain of retrospective analysis, in developing tools for understanding harmonic interplay and rhythmic variation. Again, this release of AudioExplorer is still a basic tool chest, but the author eagerly invites ideas and discourse into new functionality for future releases and customizations of AudioExplorer.