Optical Sounds: A Live Music Visualisation System
Optical sounds is a live music visualisation system which uses audio input to generate live visuals during a musical performance. This piece was made as my final year project for college. This piece was made using Max 7.
Optical Sounds:
A Live Music Visualisation System
Optical Sounds investigates the question “How can the aesthetics of Walter Ruttmann’s 1924 abstract film Opus III be implemented into a visual rendering of a live musical performance?” This investigation is conducted through studying the history of abstract films, and in particular visual music films. The product of this paper is a music visualisation system built in Max 7 using Jitter and OpenGL that produces projected visuals using audio from live instruments to animate a series of shapes and colours, in accordance with the aesthetics of early abstract visual music films, in particular, those seen in Opus III.
The musical qualities of visual music films and their roots in synaesthesia were the sole pieces areas of focused research. Alongside the synesthetic perceptions of the author, the main musical qualities/characteristics used in this visualisation system are temporality and counterpoint.
Specific shapes are used for each instrument input – squares for bass instruments, circles for lead instruments. The velocity of the instruments input is measured at intervals of 30 and 60 milliseconds and the resulting difference in these two values is the value used to animate the shape in the screen.
The colours of the shapes can range from red to blue. This is based on the colours used in Opus III. These colours can be changed by playing a particular note into the system, A for Red and F for Blue. This is based on the authors synesthetic perceptions from viewing Opus III, the red was perceived as A, blue as F. The white seen in the film was perceived as E. Due to technical limitations, playing E into the system changes the opacity of the shapes.
A performance of the system was done, and a video made of this. The resultant output of the music visualisation system show the shapes reacting and animating to the audio input it receives and do so in its own time. The shapes do not directly react but instead move in their own time and the colours and shapes seen are correct to that seen inOpus III.