What is Flocking?

Flocking is a JavaScript audio synthesis framework designed for artists and musicians who are building creative and experimental Web-based sound projects. It runs in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Edge on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android.

Flocking is different. Its goal is to promote a uniquely community-minded approach to instrument design and composition. In Flocking, unit generators and synths are specified declaratively as JSON, making it easy to save, share, and manipulate your synthesis algorithms. Send your synths via Ajax, save them for later using HTML5 local data storage, or algorithmically produce new instruments on the fly.

Because it's just JSON, every instrument you build using Flocking can be easily modified and extended by others without forcing them to fork or cut and paste your code. This declarative approach will also help make it easier to create new authoring, performance, metaprogramming, and social tools on top of Flocking.

Flocking was inspired by the SuperCollider desktop synthesis environment. If you're familiar with SuperCollider, you'll feel at home with Flocking.

To learn more about Flocking's architecture and approach, see Clark, C. and Tindale, Adam. "Flocking: A Framework for Declarative Music-Making on the Web" in Georgaki, A. and Kouroupetroglou (eds.). The Joint Proceedings of the ICMC and SMC, (2014).

The latest stable release of Flocking is version 2.0.1. It is distributed under both the MIT and GPL licenses.