Redesigned Website

Currently I am working on redesigning the Website of the Virtual Philharmonic Orchestra. Most of the work has now been done, but there are a few more things to complete.

The main change is that the streaming of the audio (MP3 files) which I host on my site, is now done through HTML5 and its <audio> tag, as explained here on my other blog. This allows playing the files on any current browser, without the user having to install a plugin. Also, this method gives me a better control of the access: I can implement access counters which keep track of how often an MP3 file is played, and I can provide authorized access to files which are otherwise protected. One general problem is that the web server where the site is hosted, is not really suitable for large volume streaming; therefore I did have to limit the access of many files, so as not to cause too much bandwidth allocation.

I also cleaned up the layout to make it easier to navigate. The main feature of this layout is that it is also mobile-friendly: all the content adapts to a smaller size (try this out by re-sizing the browser window, and you see what I mean), as it is based on flexible and floating <DIV>s (blocks of HTML parts which have a variable size and can arrange themselves to fit on the screen). The site now includes links to Wikipedia for composers and music pieces on the site. Social networking links are now provided, allowing a more active user feedback and engagement. Music recordings are now called "tracks", in accordance with the usual lingo in the music publishing industry. When available on commercial online music distributors, the direct links to those sites are provided. On Spotify, streaming is for free. iTunes, Amazon, and CDBaby allow download of the tracks and albums for a fee. My music is also on many more online distributors, which would be too many to list.

Still missing in the site re-organisation are pages with the albums, the videos, and my own compositions. These will be done as soon as I find more time. Furthermore, not all of the individual music tracks do yet have their full own page - but this will also be completed soon.

I hope that you enjoy this new site layout with all the new features!

Web site outage

From 6.September, around noon, until today, 8.Sept. around 11:13, the website of VPO has been down. This was a problem at the server side, due to overload of the database engine. The site was not accessible, instead an error 500 was displayed.

This has been fixed now, and the site is up and running.

Embedded Windows Media Player Plugin for Firefox/Chrome

Up to my VPO website only supported streaming for MS Internet Explorer. Users of Firefox and Google Chrome had to either right-click-and-save, or might be able to just click and hope that the audio plays. A few weeks ago this playing seemed actually to work fine for WMA files: there was no GUI, just a black screen with the words "waiting for video", and the music played. In case of an MP3 file there was even a volume control that appeared. When I tried this today, however, I noticed that the screen just remained black, and no audio did show. It might have been that I installed in recent weeks another plugin, or newer versions of existing plugins, which then disabled this functionality of simply playing the music through the web browser. Windows MS Internet Explorer did not have this problem, as the standard Media player plugin embedded as an object into the HTML page worked just fine and allowed streaming of the music. However, this same object did not show up when the page was shown in Google Chrome or Firefox, so these two browsers only had the option to download the music files and play them offline.

This means that the result of clicking on a simple link to an audio file is strongly depending on the installation history and the way the user's browser is configured - quite dissatisfying. After a bit of research I found a plugin which plays audio (WMA and MP3 files) straight through both Firefox and Google browsers. It looks very similar to the plugin in MS Internet Explorer, just the dimensions are slightly different. This plugin for Chrome and Firefox is actually better: it also shows the file info, and therefore has to be a bit larger.

The plugin is at http://port25.technet.com/pages/windows-media-player-firefox-plugin-download.aspx.

I rewrote the Javascript/PHP for embedding this plugin into the HTML code, now working on all three browsers fine. Since Chrome and Firefox do not by default come with this plugin, I had to make provisions for automatically check if the plugin is installed. This was achieved in Javascript by checking the variable array navigator.plugins[].name and comparing if the "Windows Media Player Firefox Plugin" was among those found. A slight complication was that in the name is the symbol
®. Since there appear to be different code pages to be used for encoding this non-standard symbol, I was not able to do a direct comparison and instead had to compare the string piecewise. It works, and now the site is able to see if the user has the plugin installed. If not, then a link is given from where this plugin can be downloaded.

During edits there was a site outage today, as some wrong temporary site configuration had mistakenly been uploaded. Apologies to those who tried to access the site today and got only a garbled text...!

Consistent GUI on Webpage

For the Virtual Philharmonic Website a consistent number of icons have been designed, based on a set of freely available button icons.


General audio file



Wave audio file



MP3 audio file



MP3 audio file with 5.1 surround



WMA audio file



WMA audio file with 5.1 surround



General MIDI file



video file



Information page



Discussion



The following qualifier icons indicate additional information about particular music files:

file was created with the new
Garritan Personal Orchestra 4 (GPO4) samples.




For accessing the commercial outlets of my music I am using the following logos:


TopTempo



iTunes




Amazon


The background of the VPO website is based on the following tile:

Update of Website

In the past days I updated/upgraded the website of the Virtual Philharmonic Orchestra: a consistent set of icons was designed, and several PHP automation scripts were included to read the ID3 tags. For this I found the great getID3().php script, which allows to read the tags in all kinds of media files. In my site the use of this PHP automation required a consistent use of filenames; therefore I had to rename a whole set of WMA files for consistency. I could have used a MySQL database for this task, to achieve a more abstract separation of content description from the file name, but I did not want to go through the hassle of setting this up.

I also added a new partial recording: the first third of the 2nd movement from Mahler's Symphony No.1. It is so far up to the beginning of the Trio. A really marvellous work. Sounding deceivingly simple in the orchestra recordings, but it took quite a while to get these first 4 minutes recorded.

"Rehearsal" Metaphor

Many years ago, I had introduced on my site Virtual Philharmonic Orchestra the mataphors of "Rehearsal" (for "beta-versions" of recordings, which still can be improved), "Dress Rehearsal" (for almost ready versions, part of larger works which are not yet complete), and "Concert Hall" (for final versions of the recordings). These metaphors had been quite useful for the MIDI renditions which I had created 1993-1998. After that, I did not anymore publish MIDI versions of my music, and I abandoned this paradigm.

Now, with me recording new versions of my music renditions, I would like to give access to a reproduction of the "creative process", and therefore I would like to store previous recordings and demonstrate how the music gradually changes from the very first "rough" recording draft to the final version which I would then deem "publishable". So I am reviving this paradigm, and I am in the process of revamping the web site, with a "Concert Hall", a "Dress Rehearsal", and a "Rehearsal Room". This will be based on a database where I will store my music for easy editing, upload, and access.

The website right now has not much functionality: the latest recording is always at the front page, and the metaphors are currently only developed in the old legacy site of the MIDI files. Over the next few weeks I plan to implement these old ideas in a new way, also providing then access to all my previous recordings.

And, btw, a new and improved recording of Mahler's "Hunter's Funeral" (Symphony #1, 3rd mvmnt) has been uploaded to the site.

Virtual Philharmonic Orchestra online again

After having neglected my Virtual Philharmonic Orchestra (VPO) for a few years and having lapsed the original domain name registration, I have now resumed the online presence of this music entity. I had founded the VPO back in 1998, when I was looking for a way of putting my MIDI music online. In 1999, the MP3.COM community gave this venture a boost, and I began posting my recordings.

I have now reinstated the old VPO site, now here at www.virtualphilharmonic.co.uk. Aliases for this site are virtualphilharmonic.net and www.virtualphilharmonicorchestra.com.