Platforms that use Colour to Describe Sound

I have already been over the theory behind colour and sound and showed how they are in fact naturally related.

It is important at this stage to say that just because we can prove certain frequencies are related to certain colours, doesn't mean we have to stick firmly to this structure every time that we choose to describe sound with colour. It is also important to state that from now on, any readers can assume that we are using FFT analysis and processing as the underlying means for everything being generated ie waveforms, spectral images, metering, colour etc.

A platform I use regularly called Traktor (DJ Software) has four different choices for colouring the audio waveform that it displays, obviously they feel that certain people will prefer different colour scemes from others.

I am going to assume that anyone reading this uses DAW software, again these commonly allow the user to change the colour of tracks and groups within the software, in order to visually keep track of where you are. 

Image-Lines FL Studio takes this to the next level, with some fantastic plugins that show the user with graphics and colour exactly what is going on with the device.

First off tis the "Z Game Imager", which allows you to visualize in a creative and intuitive way what is happening in the music. Other than simple velocity mapping to the size scale (X, Y, Z planes) of the image and a frequency analyser there doesn't seem to much controlled by the music itself; there is a certain amount of predefined graphical movement regardless of music. However it is still enough to add something to the experience in my opinion.

This is a fairly new feature, the are plugins that use other graphcal feedback.In this tutorial by "Seemless" on YouTube, we see how their most powerful sythesiser is actually capable of taking any image and turning it in to sound. It can then in turn display that info on the right hand side as a spectral image.

In this next one, we can see it again uses a spectral image in a pinky/orange hue to show the harmonic content of the audio the equaliser is editing. The actual content of the tutorial has no meaning for this project, it just shows the EQ nicely.

In the next post I will look at Max for Live, the programming language that Ableton Live is built upon.This allows for far more interesting and detailed analysis and graphical reconstruction of audio signals.