

Bach cello suites visualized - brisance
http://flowingdata.com/2011/12/08/bach-cello-suites-visualized/

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icarus_drowning
As a person who holds a degree in Music Theory, I find this interesting and
frustrating at the same time. Interesting in that the pitch relationships of
individual notes seems a lot clearer, but frustrating because the
visualization is so limited. I don't think that the frustrating aspects of it
are indicative of a failure on the part of the author, but because even our
somewhat confusing and complex system of notation ultimately conveys so much
more information about the relationships of the fundamental harmonic building
blocks that form the basis of pieces like this. In this visualization, that
information is almost nonexistent.

My first thought is to ask a question of those who aren't fluent in the
language of written music: does this help you "understand" the music better?
As a performer (I teach piano as one of my many occupations), I'm constantly
trying to simplify my ability to quickly read and understand the music I'm
playing, and that inevitably involves seeing chords, not notes.

So: do you think this helps you? Why?

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hardy263
I play violin, so although I'm not illiterate in reading music, I find that
when I look at a piece, I cannot immediately understand what the melody sounds
like until I actually play it. I have trouble switching from different keys
between pieces, so I cannot "visualize" the right sounds in my head. But
having relative string lengths shows me patterns and gives me more insight
into how the piece may sound like. It may even be more informative on where I
can place my finger on the string.

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moe
Although pleasant to look at I didn't find this visualization very
enlightening.

For me this one provides a much stronger glimpse into Bach's genius:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUHQ2ybTejU>

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jberryman
Sorry to be negative, but this utterly fails at visualizing anything
meaningful about the music. IMNSHO the two important things here are the
harmonic structure (it's a sequence of arpeggiated chords for chrisssake) and
the motions of the separate voices and how theyre married to the strings.

This distracts from and misrepresents the musc.

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sliverstorm
Seems about as good at presenting music for the eyes as a traditional
visualizer in iTunes.

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seagaia
Neato...this visualization is sort of well suited for a piece like that
Prelude because it's mostly arpeggiations - when the strings change shape you
can sort of feel more beforehand how the chords will change (the shrinking
kind of tightens up, makes the pitches higher), moreso than looking at the
sheet music.

That being said, it's not like it's a very useful visualization (just neat).
I'm sure one could train oneself to get a feel for the visualization better,
sort of in the way that if you read music long enough you can sort of play a
piece in your head and get a rough feel for the relations in the notes (not
necessarily the correct pitches unless you have perfect pitch, but the correct
relative pitches...if that makes sense - a musician could very well think in
their head what a C-E-G sounds like, but not all would imagine a 440Hz tone
for the C, perhaps one would think of a 500HZ, but the ratios between the
notes in their imagined C-E-G and an actual C-E-G would be the same.

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djacobs
It seems like the dots are making sound when they hit the edge of the string,
whether it's vibrating or not. This makes sound come out early from a string
that happens to be vibrating in the direction of the dots, and the rhythm is
un-naturally syncopated.

I believe in playing rubato. To my knowledge, Bach did not.

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delinka
You've given me a different perspective. I was noticing the odd syncopation as
well, but I attributed it to the dots running in circles-- they'd cross the
lower and upper strings more slowly than the center strings.

I had not considered your idea that the visualization is making the music and
only when a dot touches a string, and even when that string is out of its
resting location.

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alf
Direct link to HTML5 version. <http://www.baroque.me/>

Beautiful.

~~~
tantalor
You can grab one of the circles by mousing near it, and then drag it through
the string.

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dragonsky
I generally love this type of music visualisation, but I'm sorry, I must agree
with the other comments, I don't like this.

This has captured only two aspects of music, that of pitch and timing. Whilst
these are important, music they do not make. This demo is at the level of the
very early computer music, some forty years ago.

I think what you fail to capture is emotion of the music. This can not be
gained through a mechanically accurate replay of note values, in fact in a lot
of cases, it is the inaccuracy or the movement in the timing of notes that can
lead to emotion... Add to that the variances in dynamics (loudness), tonal
quality and you start to gain some of the difference between a simple
performance of tone and timing and start to see some of the complexity of a
master performance. How to capture this in a visual display?

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JoeAltmaier
and what's with the circles? Trig tells us that the notes at the beginning and
end of a measure will be further apart (the dot is crossing he strings at a
slant) while the middle of the measure they should be closer together in time
(the dot is moving at right angles to the strings). Is this intended? If not,
then the circular motion of the dots is entirely a distraction, and
meaningless.

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tmroyal
If you look and listen carefully, you can hear that the constant circular
velocity is favored over sub-metric regularity. The notes in the middle of the
measure are more rapid than the notes on the outside. It's a little ugly.

I dont think it is meaningless. The circle is used to represent repetition and
the lines juxtaposed over the circle is used to represent a pattern of pitch.
Together they represent a repeating pattern that changes. It isn't the deepest
it could be, but it isn't horrible.

