I shouldn’t post a lengthy article here on the subject but I am very interested in the idea of graphing musical information. I don’t have a major concern about the study of color relating to music (synesthesia) but instead the idea of charting data as a means of defining both music and beautiful patterns of information is much more intriguing to me.
I had the idea of a piece of software some years ago that would more or less allow you to draw music in a wide range of manners. A piece of software that really consolidated many concepual ways of graphing music, drawing it, structuring, etc. I don’t have programming prowess to handle this on my own. If you do please don’t hesitate to contact me. I did recently come across software that approaches this in some fashion.
AlgoScore is based in CSound and focuses on algorithmic composition – http://www.bitminds.net/kymatica/index.php/Software/AlgoScore
One important feature it has that my idea for software also entailed is it’s non-realtime aspect. Maybe it’s just a personal ideal but I find it pretty writing music when I’m not entirely sure what it will result in. Anyhow, the image atop relates to a currently incomplete work, Pressed Twelve-tone Flower. I attempted to extrapolate musical information from the image and qualities of a pressed flower while utilizing serialism. Really, it came down to dissecting the image and deciding what was purposeful enough to use a musical information. It was tricky. I think.
Here’s an image relating to the software AlgoScore:
It’s standard data there. Envelopes, waveforms. Nothing terribly unfamiliar. However it might just be me but I can get enough of looking at this type of score. For some conceptual pieces of music, this is where it makes the most sense: in the graphing of data, notes, musical suggestions, rules, guidelines.
In my hypothetical software, I imagine a feature that allows you export as a PDF and end up with a lovely chart/graph designating maybe the beautiful, theoretical piece of you music you can’t really hear.
Update: It seems that a couple days later the entire website (with said software) has become unavailable. Adding further to the rare presence of interesting scoring software out there.
Jairo says: March 18, 2010 at 1:15 pm
Hey Estevan my friend!
Have you checked Alchemy? http://al.chemy.org/features/ it has a feature to draw based on input from the microphone, is not exactly what you are looking for, but may have principles you could use.
Keep walking my man.
estevan says: March 18, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Oh my… this is beautiful.
For this sort of design style I’ve often just used processing.org and implemented some simple generative things. To use audio though… my my.
h-ates says: June 23, 2010 at 11:18 am
One should note that the software homepage moved to http://kymatica.com/Software/AlgoScore