Visualization of music from traditional approaches to modern interfaces

Notation h4> Western musical notation - a centuries-old traditional way of visualizing music. It is very slender and compressed system, a clear and symbolic, moreover, it is easy to master. Programs such as Sibelius, can easily transfer music notation in MIDI-data and vice versa.

But Western musical notation has limitations, particularly with regard to contemporary music. It is inconvenient to use in working with microtones . It has a limited ability to express the nuances of performing - a hundred years of jazz to refer to swing was not invented anything better than just write the word "swing" at the top of the score. key system works well for мажорных tonalities , but not so good for the minor keys and working with music frets , but when it comes to blues , then apply it is completely useless.

I want to share the assumption as musical notation may improve in the future. It is created by John Snaydalom ( Jon Snydal ) visualization solo John Coltrane (John Coltrane) in the song Miles Davis (Miles Davis) All Blues (I edited a bit to visually easier to perceive).

Visualization Snaydala more analog than digital - it reflects the exact nuances of performance Coltrane, with subtle hints of the pitch, timing and dynamics.

MIDI-sequencers offer to make further improvements go beyond the standard musical notation. Pay attention to simple electronic music sequencer called iNudge . Try it, it's funny.

Here is the melody Thelonius Monk «Four In One» in standard mode stave in the MIDI-sequencer. Rectangles show not only what notes were played and when, but their exact duration. Darker red rectangle means that the volume was higher, and the pink rectangles lighter - quieter. Also you can find the record on the volume bar at the bottom.

MIDI-system is very functional and easy to use. It can record your movements on the keyboard, you can import the score, you even have the opportunity to draw notes directly on the screen (my favorite method).

MIDI-player Music Animation Machine has some great videos that combine the visual representation of MIDI-tracks with audio recordings of classical works. Here, for example, the notorious Toccata and Fugue in D minor by Bach.



Since the software's ability to extract data from modern audio is constantly being improved, you can begin to manage them with the same ease as MIDI. This screenshot correction tone Melodyne , which is very similar to the Auto-tune .

Lines represent already sung notes and orange drops show notes which should take the singer, according to the program. Thickness displays the volume level drops. You can drag and drop to redraw the lines as you want to convert a song to suit your mood. Melodyne program can even decrypt and play melodies overwrite format stave and MIDI.

high and low frequencies h4> It is assumed that the higher the frequency space should appear "above", and the lower - "lower". It seems very reasonable, but in fact they may appear completely arbitrary and not even be related to physical performance. Piano high notes are on the right and lower left. Guitar "low" E string is physically on i> «top." Woodwind game on the lower and upper sheet also does not correspond with their physical coordinates.

Absolute pitch is displayed postupenno ascending, but altitude class displayed in a circle. The most plausible picture of the spatial organization of tone - a spiral.

Other ways to model the relation of tones h4> High and low - is not only shaped the definition that we use to refer to fast and slow vibration. As I said, the altitude class expressed circle.

But in fact, only a circle replaces the definition of "up / down" to "clockwise / counterclockwise." There are other ways to portray tone. We intuitively try to change the approach and present them as a movement closer or further inwards and outwards. We also think about how to make more high tones brighter and darker low. Some of those who play stringed instruments, sometimes specifically customize the header string slightly higher than the need to create an effect known as "brilliance".

Time h4> General arrangement - in musical notation denote the time from left to right. But this is not the only possible direction. I mean the paradigm that is offered in such rhythm games like Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero. Impeccable implementation of this concept belongs to a game called FreQuency .



The game even lets you create your own remixes.



I like this "tunnel" metaphor, and I would like to see it spread in advanced manufacturing environment.

Wave h4> The oscillations are sinusoidal tone (harmonic) vibration and you can visualize them thus:

Sinusoidal oscillations are not particularly useful for musical notation. But they really help you with the scientific point of view to understand what is happening when you hear something physically. Even better watch it in animation:

Look at all the animated membrane drums Wikipedia .

The wave form display of sound h4> audio editor display music as vibration amplitude waves using droplets that become wider when the sound becomes louder. Before you барабанная Fills (Funky Drummer break), created with an editor ReSycle . Blue drops show drum beats. Intensity drops contains extensive information about the musical parameters, it shows only the duration and volume. But ReSycle was created to simulate drum samples, for which the time and volume - the only really important information.

This graph that I painted to show how you perceive this song cycle.

In his article on Design Observer Rob Walker (Rob Walker) speaks of wave oscillations, as the music benchmark, which is gradually replacing the traditional "eighths» [ in the traditional musical notation - approx. pens. i>] or other recording formats that have already served their purpose. Player Online SoundCloud uses wave attractive graphics that help the listener to monitor the listening songs, watching the peaks of the volume. On SoundCloud even there is a group called Pretty Waveforms .

Waveform fluctuations tone tends to move from pure functionality toward design. Joshua Distler ( Joshua Distler ) created the concept of the album cover design Bjork , where each song is presented in the form of a sound wave.

Music Theory and Network h4> I always thought it would be cool to use the network for the visualization of music theory and even made several attempts to do so. Here is a comparison of the circle and halftone circle of fifths, which are for each other are scanned.

This scheme is a chord progression in the song Giant Steps John Coltrane .

Below is a block diagram that shows how the algorithm you can use to figure out what kind of mood and tone you hear.

It would be much cooler to have more abstract three-dimensional interactive visualizations that would show how to operate the chords, the tone and melody. Leonhard Euler showed how to display the tonal harmony as a spatial lattice torus-shaped, as shown in this animation. The red lines indicate the major third, green indicates small thirds and fifths blue display.

I have ambitions in this area, but I do not have programming skills to implement them. Although other serious move in this direction. Dmitry Timoshko ( Dmitri Tymoczko ) created a furore by publishing in Science his first music-related article on their topological methods for visualization of tonal harmony. I can not quite understand his ideas, but they strike me as intriguing.

// player.vimeo.com/video/20301089 video>

This illustration Anerood Patel (Aniruddh Patel) from his article « Language, music, syntax and the brain. " And again, I'm not quite clearly understand what it all means, but I plan to find out later.

Other theorists have attempted to use color to display a harmonic function. Scriabin, for example, it invented « light keyboard », although it has not became popular.

Visualization of musical forms and structures h4> The work on a song I like to use a simple color coding to distinguish between its segments. I use yellow for intros and endings, blue for the main theme, green and orange for the chorus for tools and breakdowns.

Edward Tufte (Edward Tufte) shows some of the more sophisticated methods of imaging the structure of the songs on his forum < / a>:

Martin Vattenburga project ( Martin Wattenburg ) Shape of Song shows repeated within a musical composition. Here is his rendering of Madonna's Like a Prayer.

This visualization Wattenberg for the song "For Elise" by Beethoven.

More options h4> The following is a fascinating video Niklas Roy ( Niklas Roy ) that shows how you can create a fashionable Audio dubbing on drum machine, using the binary count.

// player.vimeo.com/video/1639345 video>

Is this graphics color system is not cool musical notation or interface?

At Visual Complexity presented very many ideas like this.

In addition h4> John Clover ( John Clover ) told me about it poste , which strongly resonates with my "Stunning visualization of music and music education».

I had the opportunity to play a few songs from the album Bjork / project Biophilia . Visualization of some of them very original and interactive, some of the songs rendered just wondering, but traditionally, as visualization of some incomprehensible, but deserves attention for creativity. In any case, it is a remarkable experiment that I think will have an impact on the principles of music visualization.



Source: habrahabr.ru/company/audiomania/blog/235339/