VISUAL MUSIC

The images below were constructed by colour-coding music. Repetition of patterns, visible in the images, are one of the tools composers use to set up musical expectations, then defy, delay and finally fulfill them. The ultimate gratification gives us a hit of dopamine, which partly explains our passion for music.

Rose Red, English folk song sung in a round. Each of the 4 voices has its own layer in the animation.

Ryan Molloy wrote a string quartet called Gealach Chríoch Lochlann, which is Irish for Scandinavian Moon. The vibrating optical illusion sections represent microtones, pitches that sit between those that are typically found in Western music.

Chromatétude is a harp solo composed by Anne-Marie O'Farrell. She describes the writing of it in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka1qAeIvHds. I chose colours from the Prismatic Springs in keeping with her chroma theme.

dave mccune - window scene

raymond deane - samara

west african drumming rhythm - moribayassa

christine mcvie - songbird

villa-lobos - le polichinelle

west african drumming rhythm - dibon

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Sometimes I weave the designs into tapestries with thousands of tiny glass beads. I love coloured glass; watching it dance with light stirs the same sense of awe I feel when listening to music. The beads I use come in hundreds of different colours, textures, and finishes, providing a powerful set of tools for expression.

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Composer Ryan Molloy kindly provided me with this feedback on the visual music of one of his pieces.

"... with this [colour] scheme it becomes clear how strongly D-centric this passage is and also how much C (or surrounding inflections) gravitates around that pitch. This highlights an interval of a minor 7th which I've long been very close to and I've known it influences my music but this actually flags it up in black and white! (Or in Red and Blue in this case!)"