Joined: Oct 13, 2007 Posts: 6221 Location: near Austin, Tx, USA
Audio files: 267
Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 2:22 am Post subject:
This is my latest composition, I added an animated blob-man and blob-woman. Their poses reflect the frequencies of the sound. It could be done better, say perhaps without negative angles on the upper arms, but overall I'm pleased with it as a first shot attempt. Now I have to go email the author of blob-man and tell him that I figured out how to animate his characters! The beginnings of a "real" music video? Fun, fun, fun...
blobman.mov
Description:
Meet blob-man and his companion blob-woman. I animated their heads, arms and legs according to the music instrument frequencies. Also has spheres and FFT. Short duration.
Joined: Oct 13, 2007 Posts: 6221 Location: near Austin, Tx, USA
Audio files: 267
Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 8:15 pm Post subject:
I've been working on posing the blobpeople and now I have them more fully animated. Notice that they bend their knees in time with the green sphere which represents the clarinet instrument. Now I'd like to improve the quality of the music including adding better guitar sounds...
blobman4.mov
Description:
A better video, with more fully animated people, more dynamic sphere sizes, and a closer look at the FFT.
Joined: Oct 13, 2007 Posts: 6221 Location: near Austin, Tx, USA
Audio files: 267
Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 11:36 pm Post subject:
seraph wrote:
what about assigning blobman to react to frequencies below a threshold and blobwoman above it
That sounds perfect. I could have all of blobwoman's motion keyed to the high-pitched Clarinet and all of blobman's motion keyed to the Heavy Metal instrument. I have created a hodgepodge of motion mixed in from the three instruments, but I can't really follow it well. By driving each blobperson with a single instrument, the relationship between the sound and the instrument will be more obvious. Thanks.
Joined: Oct 13, 2007 Posts: 6221 Location: near Austin, Tx, USA
Audio files: 267
Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 3:08 am Post subject:
This one turned out pretty good, although the music needs to be improved. I removed the spheres and made a scrolling time-series FFT, which created a "floor" on which to stand the blobpeople. I colored the FFT with red for bass and green for treble and shaded in between. Also I'm rotating the camera around the scene. The blob people squat down for lower frequencies and stand up for higher frequencies. I found that body rotation just didn't work for this, so I simplified the blobpeople's motion to just up and down. It is easiest to follow blobman as his music is louder. The instrument for blobman is on the left channel and the one for blobwoman is on the right channel, so headphones should help. I am pleased with the results so far.
blobman5.mov
Description:
Blobman and blobwoman squat down for lower frequencies and stand up for higher frequencies. Has scrolling FFT.
Joined: Oct 22, 2007 Posts: 137 Location: the flat universe
Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 7:47 pm Post subject:
I have seen a few events where the music and visuals were really great.
1. Cirque du soliel - the music, lighting, performers is always great.
2. Epcot's big music/fireworks/lasers/LCD videos/$10.00 churos is a great show.
3. Jarre's Moscow concert.
I haven't seen a small scale performance that was really impressive but I admit I don't go out for music much.
I'd love to see/hear some though. It's a natural to have sight and sound merge. Get smell and touch too and it would be awesome.
That give me an idea for a fuzzy vanilla synthesizer.
Joined: Dec 20, 2005 Posts: 110 Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 9:39 am Post subject:
Blobman Subject description: Ideas
You code quickly!
It's a pleasure to see something develop so quickly...
Since you asked, here are some ideas for where you might point your code...
When I see your red and green, I think that I'd use perhaps amount of saturation instead...but I know that the choice itself is idiosyncratic.
Maybe design a dashboard that a user could use. Have the attributes that can be affected in the visuals on one side. Have the aural attributes that can be used to cause the effect on the other side, so that they can be chosen from a list for each visual manipulative.
Add a file browser for selecting other sound files.
Have the dashboard so that you can toggle it visible and invisible.
Now you'd have an armature that you can add to, and others can play with for additional feedback.
Joined: Oct 13, 2007 Posts: 6221 Location: near Austin, Tx, USA
Audio files: 267
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 11:26 am Post subject:
Re: Blobman Subject description: Ideas
rbedgar wrote:
You code quickly!
It's a pleasure to see something develop so quickly...
Since you asked, here are some ideas for where you might point your code...
Why, thank you very much! I like to program and being able to do music videos by programming with these modern software packages is just amazing to me. I also like all of your ideas. Basically what you are going for is a user front-end for creating an animation from any music source. Surprisingly, I have done something not quite like that but a step closer.
It is my latest video, this one is 60 seconds long and it features a set of 8 colored cylinders that move up and down, forming an animated FFT of the music. The "control panel" is a set of variables at the top of the file that the user can set, though they must know what they are doing - not just any numbers will suffice. The automation is that you can put in any *.wav file and type a command to Chuck which will then create the video. Unfortunately the video must then be rendered by running POV-Ray and then there is the audio + video assembly using iMovie.
To get cloer to your concept, I could use the command line form of POV-Ray, find some utility that unites audio + video that also runs from the command line, and then write a Perl script with a graphical front end that receives the control variables from the user and executes the rendering and assembly, then finally plays the video somehow. I will have to look into such a user front-end someday soon!
As to the saturation, the colors are specified as a vector <r> with r, g, and b varying from zero to one. By saturation do you mean varying green from a dark green to a light green? I could do that easily. Anyway, I am up to "Blobman 8: The Harvest", which you can view on my website. I also have a few videos with glass objects and colored lights that sparkle on the glass surfaces, plus of course the FFT video they are all viewable at:
The videos are currently the top few entries on the page, I add new stuff to the top as I create. Also here is an image from the semi-automatically generated FFT video:
My mom really liked the FFT video, she said it was my best work yet although it is just a simple FFT made with only 8 cylinders and rotating the camera slowly. I thought blobman was more professional, but I think she liked the music better on the FFT video. Anyway, it's a tool that anyone can use with ChucK now to illustrate their music.
Thanks for the suggestions, and... are there any more suggestions, particularly regarding video or audio content? Maybe I could make that FFT out of 8 blobpeople moving up and down, hmmm... what to do next?
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 12:12 pm Post subject:
Re: Blobman Subject description: Ideas
Inventor wrote:
what to do next?
I was thinking ... would the phase info from the FT be interesting to control something?
Sofar I like your blob-vid's best, just to hang a bit of weight in here against your mom, I know I stand no chance _________________ Jan
also .. could someone please turn down the thermostat a bit.
Joined: Dec 20, 2005 Posts: 110 Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 2:39 pm Post subject:
Coding Subject description: more ideas...
For color: color is described, and manipulated within, different color "spaces".
Red/Green/Blue is one, where you add or subtract different amounts of each primary color to get a mix.
Another color space is Hue/Value/Chroma. In it, the color "quality"-the difference between blue, red, orange etc.--is one variable, called hue. Value or brightness is an axis from black to white, and Chroma is the amount of color saturation, ranging from a grey (no sauration) to the most intense color of red or blue etc.
I haven't looked closely at Chuck, but many programming languages have different functions that allow you to work within different color spaces. So if Chuck has a "HSB" space, or something like that, you have three axes you can manipulate. See Photoshop palette options for examples of color spaces. _________________ Robert Edgar
rbedgar@stanford.edu www.robertedgar.com
Joined: Oct 13, 2007 Posts: 6221 Location: near Austin, Tx, USA
Audio files: 267
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 8:35 pm Post subject:
For the color, I went with Hue. I wrote equations for the red, green, and blue colors that cause the various frequencies to have colors ranging from red to green to blue, approximating the color spectrum. I also tried various schemes for incorporating the phase information without success.
I tried rotating the FFT bars according to the phase, I tried constructing ribbons of complex vectors chained end to end, and I tried making a snowflake with all the FFT vectors extending radially from the origin. Nothing worked because the phase information changes so dramatically from one sample set to the next. I ended up with animations that would give you a headache if you stared at them too long.
Now, if you purposely wanted something chaotic like a zig-zag lightning bolt, then my final animation attempt would work. It has the complex vectors chained together with the phase divided by two so that all the vectors point to the right, making a lightning bolt shape. That might work for a rock and roll song.
I don't know, I'll think about it some more. I wonder if there's a way to get an FFT with phase that varies smoothly over time? It could be from a certain type of music perhaps. Thanks for the suggestions, I enjoyed the process even if the results are uncertain.
Joined: Oct 13, 2007 Posts: 6221 Location: near Austin, Tx, USA
Audio files: 267
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 10:51 pm Post subject:
I think I found one that works. It's an FFT with phase represented as lightning from the sky at night. If you form a complex vector linkage of the FFT, it wraps itself up in a scribble scrabble ball, so I just divided the phase by two which constrains it to +/- 90 degrees. That way the complex vector linkage only goes in one direction, and I pointed it down. Add in a random starting point and alternating cone shapes and you have some OK looking lightning. Goes well with a strumming electric guitar with overdrive (thanks to kijjaz for the instrument). Here is a snapshot, and I put the video on my site:
Hey I like those lightning bolts ! (and the guitar that goes along with it). _________________ Jan
also .. could someone please turn down the thermostat a bit.
Joined: Oct 13, 2007 Posts: 6221 Location: near Austin, Tx, USA
Audio files: 267
Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 9:58 am Post subject:
Blue Hell wrote:
Hey I like those lightning bolts ! (and the guitar that goes along with it).
Thanks, I wasn't too pleased with them at first but now I like them more and more. Maybe I should have blobman throwing lightning bolts like Zeus from a mountain top or something, hmmm... There are atmospheric effects in POV-Ray for making fog and such, but I don't know how to use them yet... maybe two blobmen in a lightning fight? I don't know, time for some creative thinking!
Here's a nice visualization of a beautiful piece of piano music I just came across - Claude Debussy - Claire de lune. I think this visualization helps one understand the structure and construction of the music.
Joined: Jan 18, 2005 Posts: 4145 Location: Sweden
Audio files: 371
G2 patch files: 100
Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2007 1:31 pm Post subject:
mosc wrote:
Here's a nice visualization of a beautiful piece of piano music I just came across - Claude Debussy - Claire de lune. I think this visualization helps one understand the structure and construction of the music.
Nice! It almost gives you a better impression of how you would set about playing it, than you would get if you watched the player's hands. Inspiring.
Nice! It almost gives you a better impression of how you would set about playing it, than you would get if you watched the player's hands. Inspiring.
Funny, for me it doesn't work that well. I find myself checking if the bars light up at the right time instead of listening to the music and viewing the video - I turned it off _________________ Jan
also .. could someone please turn down the thermostat a bit.
Joined: Oct 13, 2007 Posts: 6221 Location: near Austin, Tx, USA
Audio files: 267
Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 11:17 pm Post subject:
I enjoyed it, the bars lighting up in rapid sequence helped me get a feel for how amazingly quickly those piano fingers play. But I'm more of a visual type than auditory, maybe that's why. Just goes to show everyone has a different reaction to something, eh?
Joined: Feb 11, 2006 Posts: 59 Location: Berlin, Germany
Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 11:55 am Post subject:
So if conceptual art was about 'no-medium' or 'please-pay-no-attention-to-the-medium' this 'post-medium' era of art is much more entertaining.
The only handicap is, that the artist would need to be an skilled in several media...and that requires maybe more effort than can be reasonably asked from any individual. But then again, who said art is about being reasonable. And art collectives should work well for post-medium.
Any way, I've dabbled some time with the combination of audio & visual. But my interest in more in the narrative, operatic almost, use of visuals...Im just a story & ideas person.
Here's my first demo ... its something I did this summer; both the audio and the visuals were sequenced live (visuals using a midi controlled VJ sw) and only minimal amount of postprod has been applied.
Joined: Dec 20, 2005 Posts: 110 Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 10:58 am Post subject:
memedesigner Subject description: memes gone wild
Nice post. Some background you may already have:
- Check out 1960s-era Bruce Conner films, like "A Movie".
Use of found footage against found music track.
Also "Fall" by Tom DeWitt. Wasn't digital, but used an optical printer for similar effects, and if I remember correctly, chroma-key like effects that are similar to a digital keying. DeWitt's audio also had similarities.
Not to reduce yer work to that of others, just thought you might be interested in precursors.
Other thought: percussion in audio relates to film cuts. How about elements that relate melodic tracks to visuals?
Joined: Feb 11, 2006 Posts: 59 Location: Berlin, Germany
Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 12:55 pm Post subject:
Thanks for your encouragement!
Havent seen any of Conner or DeWitt, have to check them out. Michael Rush's Video Art that I just recently skimmed through mentions Conner, but only fleetingly.
The artist I really resonated with from that video art anthology was Bill Viola. Youtube got his Venice Biennale 2007 work that has tremendous emotional charge to it; his sonics (to the extent one can hear through youtube compression...) are maybe more effects-like and in a supporting role. But very powerful stuff.
Relating melody to visuals, that's a big question. I've been into Wagner lately, I think there just might be something there in the Leitmotif type of an approach to take this all further ... now just a stone's throw from opera
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You can download files in this forum
Forum index » Discussion » Composition
FAQ
Calendar
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
Chat Room
