Technical note on Shockwave Player

and the Bach fugue movies

These movies require Shockwave Player 11

If you have Shockwave Player (test) and it works now, don't download the new version just yet (v. 11.5).  If you don't have Shockwave player, proceed to the Download section, which will direct you to the Adobe site.  Everybody should probably read the following note.

In its April 2009 release of Director 11.5 (with associated upgrade to Shockwave Player 11.5), Adobe assumes an aggressive marketing strategy in relation to the lucrative game market--Director's historical strength. Adobe foresees a leading role for Director in the emerging "Serious Games" market -- white paper here , and Wikipedia here.  This is a huge plus for Director, as Adobe appears now to be leveraging its interactive superiority over the market-saturated Flash. Director is an important authoring environment for interactive simulation, 3D, gaming, and increasingly virtual reality. All of this to say that the new release goes a long way toward assuring the longevity of Director, with likely growth of its client base. That's the upside.

On the downside. The new audio and text-rendering engines of v. 11.5, while markedly increasing capabilities of Director, have broken some features of my work at this site--ranging from the usual minor-but-irritating bug, to the substantive (see the next paragraph for details). As would be expected in a new release, some problems stem from bugs in v. 11.5 itself. All of the problems have to do with the way that text is archived and reconstituted in Unicode, introduced in v. 11 after I completed my work on the BACH tools, now exacerbated by the turbo charged text engine in v. 11.5. Unlike the self-contained WTC movies, BACH builds content on the fly from information contained in text files retrieved in real time from the net. Because text resides at the root of the BACH architecture, Unicode wreaks havoc and nothing renders properly. I'm confident that repairs can be made, but it will take some time. Thank you for your patience.

The most serious break pertains to the BACH tools (bach.nau.edu), which are rendered temporarily inoperative by the new Shockwave Player, but works fine with the old. This means that the Goldberg Variations site will now work only in old versions of Shockwave Player (v. 11.0.3 or prior). The Well-Tempered Clavier fugues work fine on the new Player, but the interactive homepage is broken, with the incipits playing each subject an octave lower, which is irritating but not disabling.  If this bothers you, switch to the html homepage.  Long-time users of the WTC site will notice some other minor bugs, for which I already have solutions, but need time to implement.

Here follows my old note on Shockwave Player.  If you don't have Shockwave Player, you can follow these instructions and you will be able to play the Well-Tempered Clavier fugue movies.  You will not be able to use the BACH tools however.

Download Section

Shockwave player comes in two versions, slim and full, and these movies will play (sort of, as per the above note) on either player.  However, some minor graphic features will not be operational in the slim version. To experience the complete range of graphics, the full version is therefore recommended.

Download  Shockwave Player 11 (slim)

Download Shockwave Player 11 (full) - follow these steps

1. Go to Adobe’s Web Players Download Page and click the link to "Shockwave Player."

2. Download the “Full Installer” of Shockwave 11 for your operating system and browser.

3. The download will include an "Uninstall" button that I recommend you execute before installing the new version of Shockwave Player

To users of the Intel Mac

In March of 2008 Adobe released the universal binary version of Shockwave Player 11.  With this new player you'll no longer need to open your browser in Rosetta mode.  If you have been running your Intel Mac in Rosetta for the purpose of playing Shockwave Player 10, you should download the new Shockwave Player 11 (above), then reset your browser for native operation as follows:

1. Quit your browser and open your applications folder.

2. Select your browser icon by clicking on it ONCE.

3. Pull down the file menu to Get Info.

4. Click the "General" drop-down list and DESELECT "Open using Rosetta."

This site is best viewed in Safari.

Until recently we've been recommending Firefox.  However, Firefox version 3.0 introduced an irritating bug in how often the screen refreshes in Shockwave movies, and what portion of the screen will redraw.  These movies continue to work great in Firefox before version 3.0.