Bach cello suites visualized

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

by brisance • 15 years ago

58 17 15 years ago

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?

hardy263• 15 years ago

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.

corin_• 15 years ago

I used to be a non-professional orchestral cellist (could sightread anything pretty well), and a professional singer (again could sightread very well), and this visualisation didn't do anything for me.

Not only did I not find this an easier way to follow the music, I found it basically impossible, watching it didn't help me see the music at all - and I know the suites pretty well, so really it should just have been reminding me of notes I already know pretty well.

gtani• 15 years ago

This has potential, but staring at red screens hurts my eyes. If you enlarged the grid to be able to clearly see and input intervals (probably not that hard on iPad), you might have a actuated instrument interface a la Wang, Overholt, or Berdahl.

http://actuatedinstruments.com/

I read music well on piano, clarinet and flute, but very poorly on guitar, FWIW).

delinka2• 15 years ago

It's a nice piece of animated art based on music. I don't see this as useful beyond getting the uninitiated interested in music.

alf• 15 years ago

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

Beautiful.

tantalor• 15 years ago

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

jberryman• 15 years ago

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.

sliverstorm• 15 years ago

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

dragonsky• 15 years ago

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?

JoeAltmaier• 15 years ago

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.

tmroyal• 15 years ago

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.

ugh• 15 years ago

The visualization successfully captures two important aspects. That’s actually pretty damn good for a visualization, I think. It’s ok to simplify and the visualization isn’t even lying about what it is: Everyone can plainly hear that the music is recognizable but not quite there. It’s practically screaming at you that it shows those two aspects but can’t and doesn’t want to give you the whole picture.

This is the best kind of visualization: It does make things simpler in order to make the easier to understand but it doesn’t claim for one second to show all the complexities.

moe• 15 years ago

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

seagaia• 15 years ago

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.

djacobs• 15 years ago

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.

delinka2• 15 years ago

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.

Bach cello suites visualized

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