Sound and also Visuals

[rbedgar]

Bill was a classmate in electronic music for a few years. And we worked on early video stuff through Synapse, in Syracuse, in the early 1970s. He does have a good sense of sound.

Wagner -> Eisenstein as opera -> film.
This is explicit, not musings. Read Wagner on synasthesia, and read Eisenstein on Wagner.

[memedesigner]

Very valuable, thank you. I'll report back when Im done with my reading.

Scriabin was big with synaestheia also, I gather.

[Inventor]

memedesigner, when I watched your video it reminded me of a person's life experience. At first, you get lots of rapidly changing information that you can't really figure out, then you sort of understand or you think you do but you still really dont. About half way through perhaps there is a moment of inspiration and you see clearly what is happening, then you can comprehend better as things switch around. Finally, there is a big smile as you realize how good it all has been and will be.

Well, that may not be exactly your life experience or mine, but it could be someone's life experience or something similar. Anyway, that's what I was struck with when I watched the video. It was the story of a person's life experience in summary. Did you intend anything like that?

[memedesigner]

That was a good read of the video, Inventor. Those people smile through the deep depression of 1930s.

[memedesigner]

Excerpt from Baudelaire's essay Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser a Paris (1861):
"But what would be truly surprising would be for sound not to suggest color, for colors not to give the idea of a melody, and for sound and color to be incapable of translating ideas; for, ever since the day God uttered the world as a complex and invisible totality, things have always been expressed in reciprocal analogy."

(This translation from L.J. Rather's Reading Wagner)

Reciprocal analogy, would love to know the original expression in French. (10 minutes later). 'Une analogie reciproque'. Isn't the Internet just the greatest ever.

[Inventor]

Sound and Color dance in the sea of my imagination. They are like separate entities linked together at the wrist.

This reminds me of another project, there's a project brewing in the ChucK channel on representing math in music. Combining that with this thread, I'm wondering if I could do a math video for the project.

Perhaps I could draw the functions that are being played. I dunno, what do you think?

[memedesigner]

Go for it.

[rachmiel]

i think in the battle of the senses, sight tends to win over hearing. it's partly how the human brain works, partly our very visual time. which is why i've never been drawn to combining visuals with my music; the music would almost certainly be given some degree of short shrift. one big exception: moving images that are abstract representations of the music, music made visible. at its best, this can ENHANCE the musical drama, which is what i'm most interested in.

[memedesigner]

[ian-s]

In the 80's I did a midi lighting setup for a club with a resident band. I used a Roland MPU-101 with some custom level scaling/translation fed directly into the dimmer packs. The band (who I also engineered for) would rehearse a couple of new songs per week and after rehearsal, would program the light show into the MC-500. It was a tedious process so the light shows tended toward minimalist, but perfectly synced to the music. The MC-500 could time shift a track forward so the thermal inertia of the cans could be compensated for. The result was very good, only surpassed by having a real pro on the desk.

I think with good synchronization and creative restraint, visuals can enhance any musical performance.

I'm looking at controlling Milkdrop 2 or AVS with MIDI so I can create visual noodles with the G2. The built in audio response of visualizer programs is a bit limiting.

[rachmiel]

[seraph]

[rachmiel]

[egw]

[ian-s]

[egw]

I have something called miditracedraw.ape as well as some email from Tim Redfern, who wrote it, explaining it. It seemed like more trouble than it was worth, but if you can get something useful out of it, I'd be interested to hear about it. Drop me a PM with your email,and I'll send it to you.

[Sam_Zen]

Since electronics already have a strong mind-visual influence on the listeners, I am quite withdrawn about introducing
image as well. The sound should draw the picture in the first place.

Too often the music will become an illustration of the same that's been seen or vice versa.
So no extra value is added. As the accordeon-soundtrack during a news-footage about Paris.

But of course it can be part of a composition, to show something.
So I preferred first to experiment with a still picture during a compo.

[memedesigner]

I guess it's time for the annual update, here's 'The Bard Phenomenon', enjoy!
http://www.vimeo.com/1474231

[memedesigner]

Here's some new stuff to open the year: http://www.vimeo.com/2673654

Combining ambient sound, synths, visuals. 4 and half minutes of flowing meditative stuff.

[Antimon]

[memedesigner]

Thanks Stefan, I also think it turned out pretty well.

[seraph]

[Inventor]

I enjoyed the misty purple thingie also! (my level of comprehension of the piece, haha).

[mosc]

Yes, very nice.

[memedesigner]

Thank you, very kind of you all.