Guysssss I’m gonna miss y’all. Thank you for a great semester. Friend me on the ‘book, and/or check out ma website to stay in touch!

Step 1 of ‘the dream’ is complete. The program plays a select set of songs and visualizes the music using a forward fourier transformation (fft). The “.getBand()” command is used to quantify the various aspects of the audio waves.

As a user, hold down the ‘P’ key to view the menu. It will tell you that you have the option to change the song (with the number keys), the colors of the visualization (keys a through g). You can increase and decrease the intensity of the visualization with the ‘=’ and ‘-‘ keys, respectively. Finally, you can pause the movie with the ‘I’ key and take a screenshot by clicking on the screen. downloadable .zip file – including .mp3’s – here.

Worldstar-quality video clip of the in-class demo

Code:

import ddf.minim.*;
import ddf.minim.ugens.*; 
import ddf.minim.analysis.*;
import processing.video.*;

int spectrum;
float videoHeight;
float videoWidth;
float threshold;
float multiplier;
PFont font;
StringList playlist;
color ringColor;
color antiColor;

Minim       minim;
AudioPlayer jingle;
FFT         fft;
Capture     video;

void setup()
{
  //video presets
  font = loadFont("MicrosoftTaiLe-Bold-12.vlw");
  video = new Capture(this, 640, 480);
  video.start();
  threshold = 20;

  //sound presets
  minim = new Minim(this);
  jingle = minim.loadFile("bt.mp3", 1024);
  fft = new FFT( jingle.bufferSize(), jingle.sampleRate() );
  spectrum = fft.specSize();
  multiplier = 20;

  //sound-dependant video settings
  videoHeight = ((spectrum - 480)/2)+1;
  videoWidth = ((spectrum - 640)/2)+1;

  //sound-dependant background
  size(spectrum, spectrum);
}

void draw() {

//tracklist, key commands
if (keyPressed) {
  if (key == 'p') {background(255);
                  fill(0);
                  textFont(font, 12);
                  textAlign(CENTER);
                  text("Press 'P' at any time for playlist options, press number keys to change the song:",(width/2), 25);
                  text("1: One Direction - Happily",(width/2),50);
                  text("2: No Doubt - Sunday Morning",(width/2),75);
                  text("3: Beethoven - 5th Symphony",(width/2),100);
                  text("4: Andrew McMahon - Catching Cold",(width/2),125);
                  text("5: DJ Naim - Crispy Hunneds",(width/2),150);
                  text("6: Arctic Monkeys - Do I Wanna Know?",(width/2),175);
                  text("7: Grimes - Oblivion",(width/2),200);
                  text("8: Frank Ocean (feat. Diplo) - Hero",(width/2),225);
                  text("9: Srkrillex - Bangarang",(width/2),250);
                  text("0: Grimes - Genesis",(width/2),275);
                  text("Press a, b, c, d, e, f, and g keys to change the color profile", (width/2), 325);
                  text("Press = to increase the intensity, - to decrease the intensity of the waves", (width/2), 350);
                  text("Press 'I' to pause the current song", (width/2), 375);
                  text("Click on the screen to snap a screenshot!", (width/2), 400);
                  }

//color changer
  if (key == 'a') {ringColor = color(255,0,0); antiColor = color(0,255,0);};
  if (key == 'b') {ringColor = color(0,255,0); antiColor = color(255,0,0);};
  if (key == 'c') {ringColor = color(255,0,0); antiColor = color(0,0,255);};  
  if (key == 'd') {ringColor = color(0,255,0); antiColor = color(0,0,255);};
  if (key == 'e') {ringColor = color(0,0,255); antiColor = color(255,0,0);};
  if (key == 'f') {ringColor = color(0,0,255); antiColor = color(0,255,0);};
  if (key == 'g') {ringColor = color(random(255),random(255),random(255)); antiColor = color(random(255),random(255),random(255));};

//intensity changer
  if (key == '=') {multiplier = multiplier + 5;};
  if (key == '-') {multiplier = multiplier - 5;};

//pause button
  if (key == 'i') {jingle.pause();};

//track changer
  if (key == '1') {jingle.pause();jingle = minim.loadFile("oned.mp3", 1024);jingle.loop();fft = new FFT( jingle.bufferSize(), jingle.sampleRate() );};
  if (key == '2') {jingle.pause();jingle = minim.loadFile("nod.mp3", 1024);jingle.loop();fft = new FFT( jingle.bufferSize(), jingle.sampleRate() );};
  if (key == '3') {jingle.pause();jingle = minim.loadFile("bt.mp3", 1024);jingle.loop();fft = new FFT( jingle.bufferSize(), jingle.sampleRate() );};
  if (key == '4') {jingle.pause();jingle = minim.loadFile("catch.mp3", 1024);jingle.loop();fft = new FFT( jingle.bufferSize(), jingle.sampleRate() );};
  if (key == '5') {jingle.pause();jingle = minim.loadFile("crispy.mp3", 1024);jingle.loop();fft = new FFT( jingle.bufferSize(), jingle.sampleRate() );};
  if (key == '6') {jingle.pause();jingle = minim.loadFile("doi.mp3", 1024);jingle.loop();fft = new FFT( jingle.bufferSize(), jingle.sampleRate() );};
  if (key == '7') {jingle.pause();jingle = minim.loadFile("oblivion.mp3", 1024);jingle.loop();fft = new FFT( jingle.bufferSize(), jingle.sampleRate() );};
  if (key == '8') {jingle.pause();jingle = minim.loadFile("hero.mp3", 1024);jingle.loop();fft = new FFT( jingle.bufferSize(), jingle.sampleRate() );};
  if (key == '9') {jingle.pause();jingle = minim.loadFile("skr.mp3", 1024);jingle.loop();fft = new FFT( jingle.bufferSize(), jingle.sampleRate() );};
  if (key == '0') {jingle.pause();jingle = minim.loadFile("genesis.mp3", 1024);jingle.loop();fft = new FFT( jingle.bufferSize(), jingle.sampleRate() );};
    }

else {
  //launch music analysis
  fft.forward(jingle.mix);

  //video section
  if (video.available()) {
   video.read();
  }
    video.loadPixels();
    image(video,videoWidth, videoHeight);

  //for loop for EQs
  for (int i=0; i < fft.specSize(); i++) {
    float level = fft.getBand(i)*multiplier;
    noFill();
    strokeWeight(3);
    stroke(ringColor,random(100,200));
    //top left & right
    line(i, 0, i, level);line(width - i, 0, width - i, level);
    //bottom left & right
    line( i, height, i, height - level);line( width - i, height, width - i, height - level);
    stroke(antiColor,random(100,200));
    //left top & bottom
    line(0, i, level, i);line(0, height - i, level, height - i);
    //right top & bottom
    line(width, i, width - level, i);line(width, height - i, width - level, height - i);
    //oval
    if (level > 350 && level < 450) {
       strokeWeight(15);
       stroke(ringColor,random(0,150));
       ellipse((width/2),(height/2), level, level*1.2);
    }
  }
  };};

//  screenshot
void mousePressed() {
    saveFrame("tuneshot-###.png");
  }

Inspired by Alice. The process of turning sound into numbers and numbers into visuals is tough for exactly the reasons we talked about in class. Sound has many aspects to it that change from instant to instant. Fourier Tranformations? Spectrum size? Changes in waves over time? If you think I remember ANY trigonometry, you’re wrong.

Recall my dream for Amon Tobin-style crowdsourced music visuals, tersly summarized below:

This weeks I got the basics of minim down. I am exploring use of the getBand(), noise(), and averaging sound bytes over time. The code below plays the very basic “jingle” file so we can observe how changes in the sound of the music are reflected across the soundbytes. Different axis feature different equalizer-type representations of the sound.

Notice how the equalizers tend to have a long-tail situation in terms of frequency.

My inner economist thinks the next step is to take the (inverse?) natural log of this equalizer value and see how it looks.

import ddf.minim.analysis.*;
import ddf.minim.*;
import processing.serial.*;
import ddf.minim.ugens.*; 

float x; 
float y;
float l1; 
float l2; 
float l3; 
float l4;  
float l5;
float level; 
float average;

Minim       minim;
AudioPlayer jingle;
FFT         fft;

void setup()
{
  float y = 0;
  float x = 0;
  l1 = 0; 
  l2 = 0; 
  l3 = 0; 
  l4 = 0; 
  l5 = 0;
  size(600, 600, P3D);
  smooth();
  colorMode(RGB);

  minim = new Minim(this);

  // specify that we want the audio buffers of the AudioPlayer
  // to be 1024 samples long because our FFT needs to have 
  // a power-of-two buffer size and this is a good size.
  jingle = minim.loadFile("jingle.mp3", 1024);

  // loop the file indefinitely

  jingle.loop();

  // create an FFT object that has a time-domain buffer 
  // the same size as jingle's sample buffer
  // note that this needs to be a power of two 
  // and that it means the size of the spectrum will be half as large.
  fft = new FFT( jingle.bufferSize(), jingle.sampleRate() );
}

void draw()
{
  background(0);

  // perform a forward FFT on the samples in jingle's mix buffer,
  // which contains the mix of both the left and right channels of the file
  fft.forward( jingle.mix );

  for (int i = 0; i < fft.specSize(); i++)
  {
    // draw the line for frequency band i, scaling it up a bit so we can see it
    x+=0.02;
    y+=1;
    float n = noise(x);
    float t = noise(y);
    float p = noise(i);
    pushMatrix();
    stroke(70, 3, 11, 20);
    translate(310, -140);
    rotate(.5);
    fill (60, 170, 205, t*4);
    rect(t*(width)-50, n*height+10, 50*n, height/2*n);
    rect( n*height+10, t*(width)-50, height/2*n, 50*n);
    popMatrix();
    stroke(255);
    level = fft.getBand(i);
    l1 = level;
    //float logLevel = -1/log(level);
    print(average + " | "+ p + "\n");

    if (average <= 12) {
      stroke(50, 160, 200);
      rect(40, 30, 150, 450);
    };

    if (average <= 18 && average >= 12) {
      stroke(50, 160, 200);
      rect(60, 130, 180, 450);
    };

    if (average <= 40 && average >= 18) {
      stroke(50, 160, 200);
      rect(400, 30, 550, 450);
    };

    if (average > 40) {
      stroke(50, 160, 200);
      rect(350, 130, 120, 600);
    };

    line( i, height, i, height - level*50);
    stroke(255);
    line(i, 0, i, p*100);
    line(average, i, 0, i);
    l5 = l4;
    l4 = l3;
    l3 = l2;
    l2 = l1;
    average = 100*((l1 + l2 + l3 +l4 + l5)/5);
  };
}