Uke Tuner - Flash Based Ukulele Tuning Application

Now that I teach interactive media, rather than practice commercially for a living, I sometimes get fidgety, wanting to do more of my own but never having the time.

Finally the holiday's arrived and I was able to get inspired, on account of my wife buying a Ukulele. She was using an online tuning system, but it wasn't as helpful as it could have been. The problem with the online tuning system, was that it only gave audio samples of a Ukulele string being plucked. However it is much easier to tune an instrument to a continuous tone. In Uke Tuner I gave the option, plucked note, or continuous tone, so the user can choose their preferred method. Then of course I went overboard on graphics and interactivity - just for the fun of it.

You can download Uke Tuner 0.92 (Beta) here free >

For the more technically minded, graphics were produced in Fireworks then exported as PNG 32 to preserve alpha channels or SWF, for use in Flash. Audio was recorded from a Yamaha PSR-240 keyboard via a line-in cable from the keyboard's headphone socket. Sound was recorded and processed with Audacity then exported as WAV 32-bit for use in Flash. Interactivity was produced in Flash, with ActionScript 2. Flash Audio settings were set to export sound at 22Khz stereo and 128kbps. Playback speed is 30 fps to make it animate more smoothly. The application was compiled with MDM Flash Studio because it has a faster projector engine than the Flash Standalone Player, extends the ActionScript classes available in Flash with some additional functionality, and allows the creator to tweak the display options (such as turning off the blue bar at the top).

Creative Commons and Copyright

If you're an interactive media producer then copyright is something that will effect you directly both as a user of other's work (as in Image Libraries) and a creator (as in other people ripping your work off). Protecting your work, and licensing it for others to use can be complex, but an organisation called the Creative Commons has made it easier. Read on.

This great video introduction explains what it's about so much better than I can:



Click to view >

So now you know what it's all about, you will want to know how to license your work so others know how they can, or cannot use it.

Nothing could be simpler, Creative Commons have even made this bit easy, just visit their "Choose a License" page, select your preferences and voila, the license that fits your needs is spewed out ready for use.

I have already put it into use on my Carrara shaders website - Virtual Matter. It was very straight forward, have a go yourself.