Technical Research Contact

In my hunt for any good explanation of how FFT works, I stumbled upon this page..

Gamma Devices - Metering

I have contact the man behind the devices via Blogger, hopefully he will be able to give me some advice on where to gather the information needed for me to build a device capable of converting Frequency to Colour.

Above is the video link for the "Gamma Devices M-Series". I am curious as to the build of the Graphic EQ style display, as this maybe the best way to gather individual frequency data and send it out to be processed into colour.

History of the "Colour Organ"

As suspected, not only am I not the first person to have concieved of the idea of generating colour from sound, the idea has infact been around for centuries.

Colour Organs through the Ages

"Around 1742, Castel proposed the construction of a clavecin oculaire, a light-organ, as a new musical instrument which would simultaneously produce both sound and the "correct" associated color for each note."

The first point of interest for me, is that the concentration was not on the complete keyboard. Without exception, the men behind the incarnations of various colour organs through the ages have concentrated on mapping the colours to Key; C is always red for example, rather than my former idea where the lowest register was entirely represented by one colour, blending as we move up through the registers.

 




As we can see from the graphic above, no clear concensus have ever been reached for which note should fit which colour. We can also see that some pretty big names have had a shot at it, which I did not expect to see! Namely Newton & Helmholtz, two men without whom I certainly would not be sitting here writing this!

Ill save my explanations for anotherr post, but lets just say just now I have those who I can understand and those who I can't. Or perhaps it's those who's colour choices I like and dislike... hmmm. I will say this though, from a logical implementaion standpoint, Vishnogradsky's spectrum stands above the rest, simply by using the sharps as gradient keys between the whole tone colours.

Having thought about it, certainly from an accuracy standpoint, this could be a better idea for me. It is also encouraging to me that this was something of great fascination in days gone by. I can imagine in the 1700's this would have been pretty cool! There is also a trend for taking idea from the past and reinventing them for today. These were intended for beauty; if I can add accuracy to that equation then I feel I'm onto a winning idea.

"And dark and light colors do actually have effects which are comparable to low and high musical tones. Dark colors are sonorous, powerful, mightly like deep tones. But light colors, like those of the Impressionists, act, when they alone make up a whole work, with the magic of high voices: floating, light, youthful, carefree, and probably cool too." Karl Gerstner, The Forms of Color 1986.
 

Colour to Frequency - The Light Side

So there is another side to this equation, that I touched on earlier. time to get into it a little bit deeper.

Wavelength to Colour Converter

Website - Colour Science

The first link is pretty much what it says on the tin. The science behind it is explained in the next link, all you need know to play is this - enter a value between 380nm and 780nm...

The second is some preisting science, explaining the mapping of colours throught their frequency spectrum.

As with audio, light and the colours contained within exist in their own spectrum. We can think of this as a little window of perception for us. Vibrations of atoms with a frequency between 20HZ and 20KHZ are known to us as sound, that we percieve with our ears (mostly). In exactly the same way, we percieve light with our eyes, with the colour seperated by its wave frequency. Now there is "slightly" more to it all than I am getting into just now and I am certainly not a physicist. I guess the fact that light exists as a wave and a particle at the same time would be one! Anyways, this is not relevant just now.

The colours seperate out 380nm and 780nm. nm stands for nanometers. When combined into this equation, you can work out the frequency of light waves, pretty cool huh!?

The Relationship Between Speed, Frequency and Wavelength

As the article points out, this equation shows that, in order for us to percieve a medium red colour, 448,000,000,000,000 photon wavecrests pass over our retinas, every single second. 448 TRILLION HERTZ. That's 448Bil every millisecond. 448Mil every nanosecond.

Almost to much to take in, huh? Well, not for your brain. Infact, our brains decoded that, along with every other frequency of colour hitting our eyes, with amazing accuracy. At the same time as running your whole audio perception system, your body, and itself. Unbelievable...

Anyways, the bottom line is this. Frequency and vibration is integral to everything in the Universe. Sound and light are one. As with sound, light has lower and upper registers, harmonics and octaves. 20HZ converts to Red

We exist in a constantly evolving orchestra of light, my mission for this project is to try and reinvigerate the project studio, in a universal way!
 

Spectrum Lab

So as a continuation from last night, I found this fantastic little program called "Spectrum Lab", that takes real time audio information and runs an FFT process on it, in order to generate a colour mapped frequency analyser. Further more, you can adjust the colour spectrum, threshhold points and frequency response, allowing a pretty large range of displays and graph types. Here is a link to the Website, with a couple of screen grab so you get the idea.

Spectrum Lab

 

 If nothing else, this program demonstrates clearly that others have had similar thought processes (and have been capable of actually making them happen). It is also going to be invaluable in helping me explain the project to people I may have to consult in future; I can easily convey the ways in which I would ideally change this system in order to do what I want to do in the studio environment. 

I have already touched on the fact Max/MSP can do FFT proccessing along with modernised varients, so the question is now, how can I utilise prexisting Max/MSP objects to recreate a slicker, graphically focused version of what you see above? Also, how can a get it out of the computer Real-Time? As cool as Spectrum Lab is, it is old. Their idea of real-time back then is perhpas not quite what I understand real-time to mean, so streamlining the process would seem to be important.

At this point, I think I can safely say that no matter what path my research leads me down in terms of production, I will be using Ableton as the Hub. There are many reasons behind this. It is the "Musicians DAW" (though a lot of others would lay claim to this, too). It has seemless Max/MSP integration and I can also feed a range of software from it very simply by comparison to others. Finally, it runs on both Mac and PC, though I will be building this project on the Mac side first - there are some objects that only exist on the Mac version of Max/MSP that

First Progress Meeting

As I mentioned yesterday, I was looking forward to having a chance to chat with James. I wasn't disappointed tbh!

I have certainly come away with some confidence that wasn't there before. I also got a clear impression of which project he thought had legs, and tbh it was the one I knew it would be.

So back to audio reactive lights I go. However I realised today that I have been missing a whole range of possible applications and methods to achieve the project and the uses for the system.

Certainly, environmental testing of musicians in environments is the most obvious, however dependant on my progress I could push the idea further.

Generative graphics were a topic that was raised during the meeting and it was certainly a way I had thought of achieving the colour to frequency mapping. This technique can be shifted in order to generate a whole range of parameters for generating randomised patterns and colours etc. You can have image-change parameters shift on transient detection; you can change many more parameters infact when using a program such as Resolume Arena to control your projections. There are too many to mention just here frankly.

So I am going to do a rough draft of the aims of the project as I see them just now, so I have a reference point for the future.

1. To create an environment that is capable of reacting to audio dynamically, through the use of FFT/Spectral Analysis techniques, in order to map the the colour balance, hue and intensity of LED lights, or the visual content of a projector(s) mapped within a room.

2. To test both common platforms of audio analysis currently in use, Max/MSP/M4L & Arduino, in order to find the most suitable platform for deconstruction of audio information into usable data for control of lighting/projection systems.

3. To find the most efficient way of transmitting the information needed to activate the lights. Possible methods include direct micing of the environment, line level signal transmitted from the audio stream, MIDI to DMX conversion.

4. To test a range of scenarios for possible use of the system, with focus on studio production, mixing and mastering scenarios, in order to establish a consensus of it's use for the purpose intended; there is a possibility that in the studio environmental activity is not wanted/useful. It could be that for certain types of music it is more applicable than others. These can all be tested using scientific double blind testing on the producer community already exisiting within Abertay.

5. To test the positioning of dynamic lighting within the environment. Can splitting the stereo positioning of the image in the room aid/engage the producer or mix engineer in a more pronounced way with the audio? Dependant on the results, this could be proved to be a mix enhancing tool.

There are a number of other applications that this could be useful, including nightclubs & festivals, theaters, bars. You could have your bathroom lights react dynamically to the sound of splashing in the water, or just a great addition to a bedroom soundsystem for listening....


So now it's time to get started properly, over the weekend I am going to find a range of texts that I can get on both Max and Arduino. This is the most pressing issue I have, as my knowledge base of both these platforms needs to expand fast. At the start of the week I will also be buying my Arduino; I understand there are a fair few and some reviews need to be watched to make the best choice on which one to buy. Dependent on what my research over the weekend yields I may also go ahead and buy a bread board and a strip of LED's and the basic tools I will need. There is no point in holding back with this, the sooner I get this stuff the sooner I will know how to use it. I have found over my time in education, immediated and practicle application of the knowledge I have been given/found is the way I learn best.