
12 Piano notes made visible for the first time  - thinker
http://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/musicology.html
======
teeja
_For the first time in history individual piano notes have been made visible
using the CymaScope instrument._

Except for all the times someone fed the output of a mic amplifier into a
scope and watched a Lissajous figure.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lissajous_curve> Not to mention Duddell's photo
oscillograph over 100 years ago.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscilloscope_history#Photograph...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscilloscope_history#Photographic_oscillograph)

~~~
raverbashing
Yes

Still it's not clear what they are doing with the sound, and how they're
plotting it

~~~
hamai
I guess they could be using "partials":

>Any complex tone "can be described as a combination of many simple periodic
waves (i.e., sine waves) or partials, each with its own frequency of
vibration, amplitude, and phase." A partial is any of the sine waves by which
a complex tone is described.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_series_%28music%29#Par...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_series_%28music%29#Partial)

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beemoe
"The CymaScope represents the first scientific instrument that can give us a
visual image of sound and vibration - a cymatic image - helping us to
understand our world and universe in ways previously hidden from view." ...
you can graph change in pressure over time to get a visual image of sounds and
vibrations. It is safe to say people have been doing this for a very long
time. And what about the page on "sonic healing"... What a crazy site!

~~~
asksol
Like this little "fact box":
[http://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/soundhealingimages/Pr...](http://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/soundhealingimages/Principles_of_Resonance_URL.jpg),
only reference to "Prime Resonance Frequency" I could find on the web was on a
few new-age sites, and apparently they have managed to find the frequency at
which a cell vibrates.

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dsirijus
So, this is like Chladni patterns, but in 3D and high definition? Or just
Chladni patterns with high framerate? I'm having a hard time interpreting this
from very vague and pretty uninformative descriptions.

Frank Zappa stated on multiple ocassions that he considered himself, in
essence, an air sculptor. I'd love to see few of his "sculptures" animated in
3D.

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ivanb
So what do the images depict? Is it some density map in polar coordinates?
Fourier? What am I seeing here?

~~~
defrost
Camera images of a fluid on a circular membrane would be my best guess:

<http://www.cymascope.com/cymascope.html>

<http://www.cymascope.com/gallery.html>

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wavesounds
"If we sample a moment from music and analyze it in terms of its fundamental
frequency and associated harmonics, and then apply that sample to, say, a
circular latex membrane of known elasticity, known diameter and fixed edge,
present mathematical techniques cannot predict what pattern will form on the
membrane."

If you knew the resonate frequency of the membrane I wouldn't think this would
be that hard to figure out using Fourier analysis
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_analysis>

------
pazimzadeh
I think I prefer the iTunes visualizer.

~~~
jarin
Milkdrop is probably the best general visualizer ever made. There used to be
an iTunes port but I think it died long ago, which is too bad.

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DanBC
These are very pretty visualisations. I agree with others here that the page
is "interesting" and seems to lack detail about the process.

The visualisations reminded me of the book "Computers, Pattern, Chaos, and
Beauty" by Clifford Pickover.

[http://www.amazon.com/Computers-Pattern-Chaos-Beauty-
Graphic...](http://www.amazon.com/Computers-Pattern-Chaos-Beauty-
Graphics/dp/031206179X)

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pretoriusB
This looks like a goofy amateur science thing.

> _"The CymaScope is a new type of scientific instrument that makes sound
> visible."_

Really? Because we have been making sound visible for centuries. I have around
40 plugins in my Logic Pro that "make sound visible".

> _"The CymaScope has applications in almost every branch of science simply
> because vibration underpins all matter. The ability to see such vibrations
> permits a depth of study previously unavailable to scientists, engineers and
> researchers."_

Really? Because it seems rather simple to make one...

> _"Music, in the absolute sense, is the invisible geometry of the cosmos, a
> delicate tracery of frequencies that harmonise with each other and from
> which all matter manifests."_

Only if you define "music" very loosely, and probably not even then.

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largesse
_MMV technology is still under development but as this excerpt from Pink
Floyd's "Welcome to the Machine" shows, an exciting future lies ahead when all
music can be transcribed to MusicMadeVisible._

I preferred the laser shows at the planetarium when I was a teen.

