Visualizing the Music

The visualization of music continues to expand itself across many mediums with the marriage of music since the beginning of history. Visualization of music in the form of data or rhythmic beats has been around for quite sometime. Ever since the synthesizer allowed the user to control music with electronic buttons and switches, we would also be able to control light.

The creation of music, comes pre-built with the visual of the musician performing the instrument. The musician can perform solo, in groups consisting of duets, bands and to great orchestras. At some point, the audience grows tired of watching this purest form of music. However, the music is still good and it entertains our listening senses, but we have our sense of sight left unattended. We attend to these needs to keep the listener listening, to keep our audience entertained, to enhance the music with visuals and vice versa, to also enhance the visual with music.

The various ways we have learned to deal with the Audio/ Visual component comes in many various forms:

The Soundtrack

Since the beginning of theatre and films, the Soundtrack enhances the story of what is on stage or on screen. It has evolved from a live performance that worked in conjunction with the act, play or silent film to being embedded with the film itself. This level of music was used to enhance the visual. The visual was the story, which no good movie is good without a good story. This type of music enhancing the visual will find itself in movies, television shows and even commercial advertising.

The Music Video

The music video is much different than visualization seen in movies. Here there is no linear story being scripted, but a visualization is adapted to the music instead. A story, or supporting visuals can be used to enhance this music to take the audience to areas outside their own imagination.

The Others

The audience has seen the movie and the music video. A new generation of Music Visualization emerges on screen, visuals that move to the beat of music. These can be purely computer generated like those in your iTunes. They may not always tell a story, but they dance to the rhythm, moving the mind to see different beats in the stream of the music. We are dazzled by its artistic creation to express rhythm and sound and converting them into color, shapes, size, material.

Nobody Beats The Drum – Grindin’ from nobody beats the drum on Vimeo.

Now that we’ve dealt with sight and sound, the human sense of touch is often neglected. New environments are created to allow people to interact with them to create music as well as organize a huge amount of data that surrounds it. Dealing with many aspects of new technologies and software. Here are some noted ones to mention:

• http://thesis.flyingpudding.com
• http://www.apple.com/itunes
• http://www.scratchlive.net/scratchlive/2

If you have any great music visualizations you would like to share with everyone, please share it here. This document is still a work in progress.