Frequently Asked Questions
Will you be animating some new music soon?
Yes. We need to work with multitrack recordings that allow us to portray the different instruments separately. We are contacting current musicians to collaborate and work on their multitrack recordings.
Are stereo channels represented in your artwork & videos?
The display can very effectively show two or more channels. However, that creates a more complex display where detail is lost to show multiple channels. To keep the display simpler, the signal from both sides of the stereo pair has been combined to create a monophonic image. But the separate musical parts within that image are displayed with different colorations and textures so many elements of the recording can be viewed simultaneously.
Why are the volume peaks on the Treble side often shorter than on the Bass side?
With many traditional instruments aside from drums and percussion the Bass side shows fundamentals–the notes we write in music notation. The High/Treble overtones on the opposite side are usually smaller and lower than the fundamental foundation of the notes found on the Bass side.
In modern recordings drums and percussion, synthesizers, distortion, and effects add additional high frequencies and inharmonics. Loud cymbals produce hundreds of spikes that can obscure other important musical elements in the recording. For this reason those High/Treble frequencies are sometimes reduced in height or width to reveal more important underlying parts.
from SOUND to SIGHT
To create the 3D images used for the animation and artwork a passage of music is analyzed for its frequency content (what we hear as the pitches and tone of the music) thousands of times. Up to one hundred thousand “slices” of the analysis are strung together to assemble a 3D terrain.
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After creating a landscape from the audio analysis, we spend hours exploring the unique, detailed terrain. Then the artistic side takes over. The technology is only a tool for the human creative process.
We work to find the best layout, angles of view, colors, textures, backgrounds, and lighting to achieve a final piece that reflects the character and spirit of the music. We try many approaches before determining the look that is best.
Here's an image of a frequency analyzer used on many home and car stereos.
Imagine an analyzer with 1,000 bands that can draw a very detailed frequency curve.
3D Layouts of Music - Maps of Musical Worlds
Landscape Layout
The Landscape style of a Music3D layout resembles a horizontal topography or terrain. This layout is often best for displaying drums and other complex instruments with lots of high frequency.
Opening Notes of Erik Satie's Gymnopedie #1
Vertical Layout
The Vertical Layout stands up. Higher notes are visually higher in this display. Time moves from left to right. The volumes of notes point forward towards the viewer. The Vertical Layout mimics musical notation. But it displays many details of the music that musical notation does not.
Famous 1st Notes of Beethoven's 5th
Da, Da, Da, Daaaa Da, Da, Da, Daaaa
Combo Layout
This portrait of the beginning of Voodoo Child by Jimi Hendrix uses both display methods
This short video of the beginning of a Bach Fugue shows the notes laid across a keyboard in Landscape Horizontal Layout. Then tilts into a Lattice Vertical Layout. In this view the notes mimic musical notation.
The Relationship between MUSIC & ART
There are many examples of composers and musicians who described music in visual terms and were inspired by works of art. And hundreds of cases of artists whose work was inspired by music. Beethoven, Joni Mitchell, Liszt, Quincy Jones, Messiaen, Rimsky-Korsakov, Sibelius, Leonard Bernstein, Varèse make up just a short list of composers who have spoken on the topic.
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Here’s a quote from the composer Messiaen on the phenomenon:
“When I hear music, I see in the mind's eye colors which move with the music. This is not imagination, nor is it a psychic phenomenon. It is an inward reality.”
Synaesthesia
Kandinsky, widely considered to be the father of abstract art was inspired by music to paint the invisible. He had a condition, widely recognized today as synaesthesia.
Kandinsky was overwhelmed by the effect of synaesthesia while viewing a Wagner opera in Moscow:
"I saw all my colors in spirit, before my eyes. Wild, almost crazy lines were sketched in front of me."
Later, as he developed his thoughts and theories on the relationship between art and music he filled his work with shapes and colors that would “sing together.” He wrote,“Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many strings.”
The list of artists, musicians, and other creative types who have experienced synaesthesia number in the hundreds; from Van Gogh to Van Halen.
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Beethoven on his Visions of Music:
“I always have a picture in my mind when composing, and follow its lines.”
and “I change many things, discard, and try again until I am satisfied. Then, however, there begins in my head the development in every direction, and, in as much as I know exactly what I want, the fundamental idea never deserts me,—it arises before me, grows,—I see and hear the picture in all its extent and dimensions stand before my mind like a cast, and there remains for me nothing but the labor of writing it down, which is quickly accomplished when I have the time.” 1822
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Quotes about Music & Architecture
“Music is liquid architecture; Architecture is frozen music.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“I see music as fluid architecture.” - Joni Mitchell
“If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture.”
- Quincy Jones
