gig

🔉 Bach player for JS

---

bach is a semantic music notation with a focus on human readability and productivity.

gig consumes and synchronizes bach tracks with audio data (or any kind of data) in a browser or browser-like environment.

See gig in action by using bach-editor, a minimal web-based editor for writing and playing bach tracks.

Example bach tracks can be found at https://codebach.tech/#/examples.

Sections

• Install
• Usage
• Documentation
  • Options
  • Methods
  • Getters
  • Events
  • Timers
• Roadmap
• License

Install

$ npm i slurmulon/gig

Usage

Simply provide your bach track as either a string (UTF-8) or a valid bach.json object.

import { Gig } from 'gig'

const gig = new Gig({
  source: `
    @tempo = 134

    play! [
      1/2 -> chord('Am')
      1/2 -> chord('G')
      3/8 -> chord('F')
      5/8 -> chord('D')
    ]
  `
})

gig.play()

Documentation

Options

source

Defines the core musical data of the track in bach.json.

If provided as a string, bach will be compiled upon instantiation.

If provided an object, it will be validated as proper bach.json.

• Type: string or bach.json
• Required: true

import { Gig } from 'gig'

const gig = new Gig({
  source: `
    @tempo = 150
    @meter = 5|8

    play! [
      3/8 -> {
        Scale('D dorian')
        Chord('Dm9')
      }
      2/8 -> Chord('Am9')
    ]
  `
})

audio

Specifies the audio data to synchronize the musical bach.json data with.

• Type: String, Blob, Array
• Required: false (may be inherited from source headers)

import { Gig } from 'gig'

const gig = new Gig({
  source: { /* ... */ },
  audio: 'http://api.madhax.io/track/q2IBRPmMq9/audio/mp3'
})

loop

Determines if the audio and music data should loop forever.

• Type: Boolean
• Required: false
• Default: false

import { Gig } from 'gig'

const gig = new Gig({
  source: { /* ... */ },
  audio: 'http://api.madhax.io/track/q2IBRPmMq9/audio/mp3',
  loop: true
})

stateless

Determines if the iteration cursor is stateless (true) or stateful (false).

Changing this value is not recommended unless you know what you're doing.

If you set stateless: false, you must provide a custom timer that manually sets gig.index to the current step (i.e. bach's unit of iteration).

See the Timers section for more detailed information.

• Type: Boolean
• Required: false
• Default: true

import { Gig } from 'gig'

const gig = new Gig({
  source: { /* ... */ },
  audio: 'http://api.madhax.io/track/q2IBRPmMq9/audio/mp3',
  stateless: true
})

Methods

play()

Loads the audio data and kicks off the internal synchronization clock once everything is ready.

import { Gig } from 'gig'
import source from './lullaby.bach.json'

const gig = new Gig({ source })

gig.play()

start()

Instantiates a new clock from the provided timer, acting as the primary synchronization mechanism between the music and audio data.

Warning

This method is primarily for internal use, and play() is usually the method you want to use instead.

Until play() is called, no audio will play at all, and, if there's any delay between the start() and play() calls, the internal clock will get out of sync!

import { Gig } from 'gig'
import source from './lullaby.bach.json'

const gig = new Gig({ source })

gig.start()

stop()

Stops the audio and synchronization clock. Does not allow either of them to be resumed.

import { Gig } from 'gig'
import source from './lullaby.bach.json'

const gig = new Gig({ source })

gig.play()

setTimeout(() => {
  gig.stop()
}, 1000)

pause()

Pauses the audio and synchronization clock. May be resumed at any point via the resume() method.

import { Gig } from 'gig'
import source from './lullaby.bach.json'

const gig = new Gig({ source })

gig.play()

setTimeout(() => {
  gig.pause()
}, 1000)

resume()

Resumes a previously paused audio synchronization clock.

import { Gig } from 'gig'
import source from './lullaby.bach.json'

const gig = new Gig({ source })

gig.play()

setTimeout(() => {
  gig.pause()

  setTimeout(() => {
    gig.resume()
  }, 1000)
}, 1000)

kill()

Stops the synchronization clock, audio, and removes all even listeners and artifacts.

This is particularly useful in reactive systems such as Vue and React.

import { Gig } from 'gig'
import source from './lullaby.bach.json'

const gig = new Gig({ source })

gig.play()

setTimeout(() => {
  gig.kill()
}, 1000)

mute()

Mutes the track audio. Has no effect on the synchronization clock.

import { Gig } from 'gig'
import source from './lullaby.bach.json'

const gig = new Gig({ source })

gig.play()

setTimeout(() => {
  gig.mute()
}, 1000)

moment(duration, is)

Determines when a duration occurs (in milliseconds) relative to the run-time origin.

import { Gig } from 'gig'
import source from './lullaby.bach.json'

const gig = new Gig({ source })

gig.moment(4, 'step')
gig.moment(12, 'pulse')
gig.moment(2.5, 'bar')
gig.moment(30, 'second')

check(status)

Determines if playback matches the provided status (as a string).

The supported statuses are:

• pristine: Playback has not changed since instantiation.
• playing: Playback is currently active.
• stopped: Playback is stopped.
• paused: Playback is paused and may be resumed later.
• killed: Playback has been killed and all listeners and artifacts have been removed.

import { Gig } from 'gig'
import source from './lullaby.bach.json'

const gig = new Gig({ source })

gig.play()
gig.check('playing') // true

gig.stop()
gig.check('stopped') // true

Getters

Gig extends bach-js's Music class and provides additional getters that are specific to real-time playback.

state

Provides the beat, elements and events found at the playback cursor (step).

• beat: The beat present at the duration (from Gig.beats)
• elems List of elements (by id) playing at the duration (from Gig.elements)
• play: List of elements that should begin playing at the duration
• stop: List of elements that should stop playing at the duration

prev

Provides the beat, elements and events found at the previous playback cursor (step).

next

Provides the beat, elements and events found at the next playback cursor (step).

cursor

Determines the cyclic/relative playback cursor (step), never exceeding the total length of the track.

current

Determines the global/absolute playback cursor (step), potentially exceeding the total length of the track.

Uses the stateless configuration option to determine if the value is derived from an imperative state or a monotonic timer.

place

Determines the global/absolute playback cursor (step), strictly based on elapsed monotonic time.

unit

Determines the base duration unit to use via the stateless configuration option.

Returns ms when stateless and step when stateful.

first

Determines if the cursor is on the first step of the track.

last

Determines if the cursor is on the last step of the track.

elapsed

Determines the amount of time (in ms) that's elapsed since the track started playing.

progress

The progress of the track's overall playback, modulated to 1 (e.g. 1.2 -> 0.2).

completion

The run-time completion of the track's overall playback.

The same as progress but can overflow 1, meaning the track has looped.

iterations

Determines the number of times the track's playback has looped/repeated.

repeating

Determines if the track's playback has already looped/repeated.

limit

Determines the limit of steps to restrict playback to.

If the loop configuration option is true, the limit becomes Math.Infinity.

Otherwise the limit matches the total duration of the track.

metronome

Provides the current pulse beat under the context of a looping metronome.

updated

Determines if the current step's beat has changed from the previous step's beat.

Events

A Gig object emits events for each of its transitional behaviors, extending Node's EventEmitter API:

• start: The internal clock has been instantiated and invoked
• play: The audio has finished loading and begins playing
• stop: The audio and clock have been stopped and deconstructed
• pause: The audio and clock have been paused
• resume: The audio and clock have been resumed
• mute: The audio has been muted
• seek: The position of the track (both data and audio) has been modified
• loop: The track has looped
• step: The clock has progressed a single step (bach's quantized unit of iteration)
• stop:beat: The beat that was just playing has ended
• play:beat: The next beat in the queue has begun playing
• update:status: The playback status has generally changed (i.e. paused, resumed, etc.)

Subscribe to events using the on method:

const gig = new Gig({ /* ... */ })

gig.on('play:beat', beat => console.log('starting to play beat', beat))
gig.on('stop:beat', beat => console.log('finished playing beat', beat))

gig.play()

Warning

Be sure to unsubscribe to events using the off method when you're no longer using them in order to avoid memory leaks!

Timers

Because the timing needs of each music application are different, gig allows you to provide your own custom timers.

gig supports both stateless monotic timers (default) and stateful interval timers.

It's recommended to use a stateless monotic timer since they are immune to drift, however stateful intervals are more ideal under certain circumstances.

Stateless

Stateless timers are those which determine state based on a monotonic timestamp.

By default gig is stateless and uses a cross-platform timer based onrequestAnimationFrame and performance.now(), a high-resolution monotonic timestamp.

If you want to customize the default timer, such as providing a function to call on each frame/tick, you can import the clock directly:

import { Gig, clock } from 'gig'

const tick = time => console.log('tick', time)
const timer = gig => clock(gig, tick)

const gig = new Gig({
  source: 'play! []',
  timer
})

Stateful

If your application has requires a less aggressive iteration mechanism than polling/frame-spotting (such as requestAnimationFrame), you can provide gig with a stateful timer.

The following example uses stateful-dynamic-interval, a stateless timer that wraps setTimeout with state controls.

Since it already conforms to the expected timer interface, it requires practically no customization:

import { setStatefulDynterval } from 'stateful-dynamic-interval'
import { Gig } from 'gig'

const clock = gig => setStatefulDynterval(gig.step.bind(gig), {
  wait: gig.interval,
  immediate: true
})

const gig = new Gig({
  source: 'play! []',
  clock,
  stateless: false
})

gig.play()

However, because stateful-dynamic-interval uses setTimeout behind the scenes, drift between audio (or any other synchronization points) will inevitably grow, and playback will eventually become misaligned.

This is due to the single-threaded nature of JavaScript and the generally low precision of setTimeout and setInterval. Read Chris Wilson's article "A Tale of Two Clocks: Scheduling Web Audio for Precision" for detailed information on this limitation and a tutorial on how to create a more accurate clock in JavaScript.

This limitation becomes particularly prominent in web applications that loop audio forever or play otherwise "long" streams of audio information.

Because most applications are concerned with accurate synchronization over time, gig establishes a driftless monotonic timer as its default, and its recommended to only detract from the default if you have to.

Interface

Timers are provided as a factory function (accepting the current gig instance) which is expected to return an object with the following interface:

interface GigTimer {
  (gig: Gig): GigTimer
  stop()
  pause()
  resume()
}

Your timer must call gig.step() as its interval callback/action. Otherwise gig has no way to know when each step should be called (after all, that's the job of the timer)!

Implementation

Timers must invoke their first step immediately, unlike the behavior of setInterval where a full interval takes place before the first step is run. This constraint ultimately makes aligning the music with the audio much simpler.

The best example of a timer implementation is gig's default monotonic clock, which can be found in src/timer.js.

Roadmap

• Replace howler with tone.js
• Unit and integration tests
• Seek functionality
• Tempo adjustment (required in bach-js or bach core)

License

Copyright © Erik Vavro. All rights reserved.

Licensed under the MIT License.