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I generally love this type of music visualisation, but I'm sorry, I must agree with the other comments, I don't like this. This has captured only two aspects o

I generally love this type of music visualisation, but I'm sorry, I must agree with the other comments, I don't like this. This has captured only two aspects of music, that of pitch and timing. Whilst these are important, music they do not make. This demo is at the level of the very early computer music, some forty years ago. I think what you fail to capture is emotion of the music. This can not be gained through a mechanically accurate replay of note values, in fact in a lot of cases, it is the inaccuracy or the movement in the timing of notes that can lead to emotion... Add to that the variances in dynamics (loudness), tonal quality and you start to gain some of the difference between a simple performance of tone and timing and start to see some of the complexity of a master performance. How to capture this in a visual display?

JoeAltmaier 15y ago
and what's with the circles? Trig tells us that the notes at the beginning and end of a measure will be further apart (the dot is crossing he strings at a slant) while the middle of the measure they should be closer together in time (the dot is moving at right angles to the strings). Is this intended? If not, then the circular motion of the dots is entirely a distraction, and meaningless.
- tmroyal 15y ago
  If you look and listen carefully, you can hear that the constant circular velocity is favored over sub-metric regularity. The notes in the middle of the measure are more rapid than the notes on the outside. It's a little ugly. I dont think it is meaningless. The circle is used to represent repetition and the lines juxtaposed over the circle is used to represent a pattern of pitch. Together they represent a repeating pattern that changes. It isn't the deepest it could be, but it isn't horrible.
ugh 15y ago
The visualization successfully captures two important aspects. That’s actually pretty damn good for a visualization, I think. It’s ok to simplify and the visualization isn’t even lying about what it is: Everyone can plainly hear that the music is recognizable but not quite there. It’s practically screaming at you that it shows those two aspects but can’t and doesn’t want to give you the whole picture. This is the best kind of visualization: It does make things simpler in order to make the easier to understand but it doesn’t claim for one second to show all the complexities.

JoeAltmaier 15y ago

and what's with the circles? Trig tells us that the notes at the beginning and end of a measure will be further apart (the dot is crossing he strings at a slant) while the middle of the measure they should be closer together in time (the dot is moving at right angles to the strings). Is this intended? If not, then the circular motion of the dots is entirely a distraction, and meaningless.

tmroyal 15y ago
If you look and listen carefully, you can hear that the constant circular velocity is favored over sub-metric regularity. The notes in the middle of the measure are more rapid than the notes on the outside. It's a little ugly. I dont think it is meaningless. The circle is used to represent repetition and the lines juxtaposed over the circle is used to represent a pattern of pitch. Together they represent a repeating pattern that changes. It isn't the deepest it could be, but it isn't horrible.

ugh 15y ago

The visualization successfully captures two important aspects. That’s actually pretty damn good for a visualization, I think. It’s ok to simplify and the visualization isn’t even lying about what it is: Everyone can plainly hear that the music is recognizable but not quite there. It’s practically screaming at you that it shows those two aspects but can’t and doesn’t want to give you the whole picture. This is the best kind of visualization: It does make things simpler in order to make the easier to understand but it doesn’t claim for one second to show all the complexities.