Music Synthesis In .Net Using DirectSound: Diving Deeper Than MIDI?

So I was working in the forums and on the side bar of some thread I saw this link: [URL]...It turned out to be almost entirely about MIDI, but it made me think that I really need to share some code I wrote a few months ago and see if perhaps there is reason to create what the above thread really asked for.Here's a little background on the following code:

Back in April or so of this year I was doing some spring cleaning and came across the old Yahama PSR-6 synthesizer keyboard I had received one year for Christmas when I was around eight. I remember I used to like the Bagpipe voice because at the low notes it made a good fart sound. For a Toys-R-Us/Radio Shack model keyboard, running on six D-Cell batteries, produced in the early to mid eighties, that was an impressive achievement. LOL Anyway, I always did want to learn to play piano (or keyboard) so I decided to literally dust the thing off, put batteries in it, and fiddle around a bit. A couple YouTube videos later and I was convinced that I wanted to do this. While I was waiting for the thing to ship and arrive, I thought that it really shouldn't be that hard to take a DirectSound SecondaryBuffer object and inject it with sound data which whas calculated based on the harmonic values of musical notes, thereby creating your own synthesizer.

First, I really had little idea what I was doing when I first set about doing this other than the general structure of calculating byte data for notes and stuffing them into a SecondaryBuffer object while it played. I had used direct sound a number of times in a number of ways, but always playing sound data that came from a source (file, stream, etc.). This would be my first attempt at generating sound data for the buffer.

Second, I'm a "code-as-you-learn-learn-as-you-code" kinda guy, so that means that I developed the initial project as I went. I would research a specific portion of the project (and there was a LOT of research to do! lol) and then code it and move on to the next. Of course, this eventually leads to a mess of a project in most cases where the foundation is a bit complex to begin with. So the code I'm posting is the second version of the concept. But even at that, I'm only going to post the primary user control at this point and hold back on the code for the test application I created with it (I will provide a download to the compiled app however). After getting the user control cleaned up (if not ideally redesigned), the second app became a "develop-as-you-go" project for the test application - so it is a bit of a mess now too; but mostly just to look at code-wise - it actually runs pretty well.

Third, there are still a few design issues that could be improved upon in the user control, and a few choices which were made for ease of coding that could be changed for performance. But because of this, other than for a couple of routines, most of the code should actually be pretty straight forward to anyone who's comfortable in VB already.

Ok, on to the example: we are going to create a MusicKeyboard control. This control will draw itself like a pinao keyboard and will render keys for the specified number of full octaves. Clicking a key will play the associated note in the specified voice. Voices will be created using a simple digital oscillator and optional even-noise generator on top of a sine wave form.

To get started, you'll first need to have the DirectX SDK installed. The latest one is available here:[URL]..displaylang=en however the example was created using the version from March 09. There should be no impact from using the newer version.

Once you have the SDK installed, create a new Windows Application and add a new User Control named MusicKeyboard to the project. Note that you could create a Windows Class Library project, but I personally like to develop in an Application for ease of testing and later convert to a class library.You'll need to drag a BackgoundWorker component from the toolbox onto the usercontrol and name it "SynthWorker". Set the worker's WorkerSupportsCancellation property to True.

Now you'll need to add the DirectX reference to the project. You can rightclick the project in the solution explorer and select Add Reference or go to My Project and the References Tab. From the list of .Net references,add Microsoft.DirectX.DirectSound.That should be all we need to get started. In the following posts we'll create a bunch of code files and get the keyboard noise-worthy.Reed Kimble - "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all"