Traces.js: A Javascript library for presenting music, physiology, and other time-series on the web

This paper describes Traces.js, our custom-built JavaScript library for presenting music and time-series data on the web. Using Traces.js, developers can easily build a variety of applications for taking in time-series data (audio, MIDI, physiological signals, etc) that, once im- ported, can be heard, seen, and interacted with. We discuss the origin of Traces.js as the code base for CosmoNote, a citizen-science web application for annotating music, feature, and related physiological data, and our need for a more generalized library for developing further web projects with different functionality and intended audiences. After a discussion of related work, we describe the software design concepts of Traces.js, showing, in detail, how its class-based design can be used to import, present, and export data. We then describe three significant projects that we have built with Traces.js, including the specific features used for each project. In the conclusion, we express our hope that the web audio community will find Traces.js useful for building their own projects.