Music Visualization with Processing

Live Spectrogram

Re-Inspired by the awesome artistic works in Resonance the Film, a TED talk on generative music videos, and then remembering the good ol’ days of MilkDrop magic, I found myself captivated and wanting to learn more about music visualization and how I could create my own.

Since I will be using Processing for the first time this semester in my computer graphics class, I chose to jump start my learning by exploring music visualization in the language Processing. Doing some very minor research on the subject of music visualization, I discovered that spectrograms are pretty neat and simple to program.

So, starting with a base spectrogram application by Dan Ellis, I started modifying his “LiveSpectrogram” Processing code and created my own version. My changes include: HSV color mode, mp3 file chooser dialog, code cleanup and code optimizations. There is much more to be done, but this is a good start that already looks pretty cool.

While nothing special or original, this is a fun side project that will grow into better things as I find the time. Here are some screen shots of my simple Processing app in action, playing two different Black Moth Super Rainbow songs, enjoy!

Sample Images

 The 2 above = “Milk Skates”    |    The 2 below = “Forever Heavy

I just find it so neat to watch and attempt to understand the patterns that form while listening!

Again, it’s nothing fancy, but I found this app to be a nice and fun intro into the world of algorithmically generating visualizations for songs. There is a lot more to be done here, and I’m way far behind the latest and greatest, but I’ll try to make more updates for fun as free time allows…

Download!

* Source code ****

 

Update (9/25/11):
How cool and clevera circular spectrogram!

Update (11/20/12):
Tweaked colors a bit, now wit more RED!…

Tame Impala – It is not Meant to Be
Screen Shot 2012-12-13 at 8.42.12 PM
Aphex Twin – Windowlicker

Update (12/13/12):
—-> Converted this to HARDWARE with an Arduino!  <—-

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