>MIDI sequence for a pure sine-wave synthesizer Interestingly, we do have this, and it is a crucial component of lossy audio compression techniques such as MP3

>MIDI sequence for a pure sine-wave synthesizer Interestingly, we do have this, and it is a crucial component of lossy audio compression techniques such as MP3 - it's the Fourier transform. Essentially you can convert any audio signal into sine intensity per frequency over time, and vice versa. The space-time resolution is somewhat adjustable, so quicker reaction time can be obtained at the expense of squishing nearby frequencies together. I would not describe a lot of music that I have observed as spectrograms as being "black," in fact there are visible patterns that correspond with the harmonics of the sounds being played.