VISUAL MUSIC OF VARIOUS GENRES IN WHICH THE NOTES ARE COLOUR-CODED
Rose Red, English folk song sung in a round. Each of the 4 voices has its own circle in the animation. Created for my artist talk at the Become Become Artist Residency in Sardinia in 2018 to demonstrate the visual music process. Each time I show it, I teach it to the audience and we all sing. Audiences in Ireland, Spain, and Italy have been great sports.
Repetition of patterns is one of the tools composers use to set up musical expectations, then defy, delay and finally fulfill them. That fulfillment explains a small part of our passion for music. Visualizing the music reveals them.
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Sometimes I weave the designs into tapestries with thousands of tiny glass beads. They come in hundreds of different colours, textures, and finishes, providing enough variety for expressive colour combinations. The blue and gold tapestry, the biggest one I made, is Beethoven's so-called Moonlight Sonata and it has 57, 652 beads.
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Photos by Maline Campbell
Ryan Molloy kindly provided me with this feedback:
"... 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!)"
"... 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!)"
