Music visualization or music visualisation, a feature found in electronic music visualizers and

media player software Media player software is a type of application software for playing multimedia computer files like audio and video files. Media players commonly display standard media control icons known from physical devices such as tape recorders and CD play ...

, generates animated

imagery Imagery is visual symbolism, or figurative language that evokes a mental image or other kinds of sense impressions, especially in a literary work, but also in other activities such as. Imagery in literature can also be instrumental in conveying ...

based on a piece of

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

. The imagery is usually generated and rendered in real time and in a way synchronized with the music as it is played. Visualization techniques range from simple ones (e.g., a simulation of an

oscilloscope An oscilloscope (formerly known as an oscillograph, informally scope or O-scope) is a type of electronic test instrument that graphically displays varying voltages of one or more signals as a function of time. Their main purpose is capturing i ...

display) to elaborate ones, which often include a number of composited effects. The changes in the music's

loudness In acoustics, loudness is the subjectivity, subjective perception of sound pressure. More formally, it is defined as the "attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which sounds can be ordered on a scale extending from quiet to loud". The relat ...

and

frequency spectrum In signal processing, the power spectrum S_(f) of a continuous time signal x(t) describes the distribution of power into frequency components f composing that signal. According to Fourier analysis, any physical signal can be decomposed int ...

are among the properties used as input to the visualization. Effective music visualization aims to attain a high degree of visual

correlation In statistics, correlation or dependence is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Although in the broadest sense, "correlation" may indicate any type of association, in statistics ...

between a musical track's spectral characteristics such as frequency and

amplitude The amplitude of a periodic variable is a measure of its change in a single period (such as time or spatial period). The amplitude of a non-periodic signal is its magnitude compared with a reference value. There are various definitions of am ...

and the objects or components of the visual image being rendered and displayed.

Definition

Music visualization can be defined, in contrast to previous existing pre-generated music plus visualization combinations (as for example

music videos A music video is a video that integrates a song or an album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device intended to ...

), by its characteristic as being

real-time Real-time, realtime, or real time may refer to: Computing * Real-time computing, hardware and software systems subject to a specified time constraint * Real-time clock, a computer clock that keeps track of the current time * Real-time Control Syst ...

generated. Another possible distinction is seen by some in the ability of some music visualization systems (such as Geiss' MilkDrop) to create different visualizations for each song or audio every time the program is run, in contrast to other forms of music visualization (such as

or a laser lighting display) which always show the same visualization. Music visualization may be achieved in a 2D or a 3D

coordinate system In geometry, a coordinate system is a system that uses one or more numbers, or coordinates, to uniquely determine and standardize the position of the points or other geometric elements on a manifold such as Euclidean space. The coordinates are ...

where up to six dimensions can be modified, the 4th, 5th and 6th dimensions being color, intensity and transparency.

History

The first electronic music visualizer was the Atari Video Music introduced by Atari Inc. in 1977, and designed by the initiator of the home version of ''

Pong ''Pong'' is a 1972 sports video game developed and published by Atari for arcades. It is one of the earliest arcade video games; it was created by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, but B ...

'', Robert Brown. The idea was to create a visual exploration that could be implemented into a

Hi-Fi High fidelity (hi-fi or, rarely, HiFi) is the high-quality reproduction of sound. It is popular with audiophiles and home audio enthusiasts. Ideally, high-fidelity equipment has inaudible noise and distortion, and a flat (neutral, uncolored) ...

stereo system. In the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

music visualization was first pioneered by Fred Judd. Music and audio players were available on early home computers, with some possessing visualization features, such as ''Sound to Light Generator'' (1985, Infinite Software), which used the

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer developed and marketed by Sinclair Research. One of the most influential computers ever made and one of the all-time bestselling British computers, over five million units were sold. ...

's cassette player. The 1984 movie '' Electric Dreams'' prominently made use of a music visualizer, although as a pre-generated effect, rather than calculated in

. For PC/

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

, one of the first modern music visualization programs was the

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

, multi-platform '' Cthugha'', written in 1993. In the 1990s, the emerging demo and tracker music scene pioneered real-time techniques for music visualization on the PC platform; resulting examples are ''Cubic player'' (1994), ''Inertia Player'' (1995) or in general their real-time generated Demos. Subsequently, PC computer music visualization became widespread in the mid to late 1990s as applications such as ''

Winamp Winamp is a media player (software), media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Rad ...

'' (1997), ''

Audion The Audion was an electronic detecting or amplifying vacuum tube invented by American electrical engineer Lee de Forest as a diode in 1906.De Forest patented a number of variations of his detector tubes starting in 1906. The patent that most cle ...

'' (1999), and '' SoundJam'' (2000). By 1999, there were several dozen

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

non-trivial music visualizers in distribution. In particular, '' MilkDrop'' (2001) and its predecessor "geiss-plugin" (1998) by Ryan Geiss, ''G-Force'' by Andy O'Meara, and AVS (2000) by

Nullsoft Nullsoft, Inc. was an American software house founded in Sedona, Arizona in 1997 by programmer Justin Frankel. Its products included the Winamp media player and the SHOUTcast MP3 streaming media server. History In 1997, Justin Frankel, ...

became popular music visualizations. AVS is part of

and has been recently

d, and G-Force was licensed for use in

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

and

Windows Media Center Windows Media Center (WMC) is a discontinued digital video recorder and media player created by Microsoft. Media Center was first introduced to Windows in 2002 on Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE). It was included in Home Premium and U ...

and is presently the flagship product for Andy O'Meara's software startup company, SoundSpectrum. In 2008, iTunes added the "Magnetosphere" visualizer created by The Barbarian Group.

Use by the Deaf Community

There have been applications of electronic music visualization in order to enhance the music listening experience for deaf and hard of hearing people. Richard Burn, a PhD candidate at

Birmingham City University Birmingham City University (abbrev. BCU) is a university in Birmingham, England. Initially established as the Birmingham College of Art with roots dating back to 1843, it was designated as a polytechnic (United Kingdom), polytechnic in 1971 an ...

, as of 2015, is researching a device that displays detailed visual feedback from electronic instruments. These visuals will provide information on the specifics of what is being played, such as the pitch and the harmonics of the sound. This allows deaf musicians to better understand what notes they are playing, which enables them to create music in a new way. Researchers from the

National University of Singapore The National University of Singapore (NUS) is a national university, national Public university, public research university in Singapore. It was officially established in 1980 by the merging of the University of Singapore and Nanyang University ...

have also created a device that seeks to enhance musical experiences for deaf people. This technology combines a music display and haptic chair that integrates sound qualities from music into vibrations and visual images that correlate with the specific qualities found within the music. The visual display shows various shapes that change size, color, and brightness in correlation with the music. Combining this visual display with a haptic chair that vibrates along with the music aims to give a more all-around experience of music to those hard of hearing. Music visualization can also be used in education of deaf students. The

Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly known as Cooper Union, is a private college on Cooper Square in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-s ...

in New York City is using music visualization to teach deaf children about sound. They have developed an interactive light studio in the American Sign Language and English Lower School in New York City. This consists of an interactive wall display that shows digital output created by sound and music. Children can trigger the playing of instruments with their movement, and they can watch the visual feedback from this music. They are also able to view a "talking flower" wall, in which each flower can transform sound into light based on the specific frequencies of the sounds.

List of electronic music visualizers

*'' Atari Video Music'', designed by the initiator of the home version of ''

'', Robert Brown, and introduced by Atari Inc. in 1976.

List of music visualization software

*''

Advanced Visualization Studio Advanced Visualization Studio (AVS), is a music visualization plugin for Winamp. It was designed by Winamp creator, Justin Frankel and was first shipped in version 2.0a4 with Winamp 2.61. ''AVS'' has a customizable design which allows users to ...

'' (

Justin Frankel Justin Frankel (born 1978) is an American computer programmer best known for his work on the Winamp media player application and for inventing the Gnutella peer-to-peer network. Frankel is also the founder of Cockos Incorporated, which create ...

) (Platform: Windows) *'' Cthugha'' (1993, Kevin "Zaph" Burfitt) (Platform: DOS, Winamp) *'' Magic Music Visuals'' (2012–present, Color & Music, LLC) (Platforms: Windows, macOS/OSX) *'' MilkDrop'' (2001–2022, Ryan Geiss) reimplemented as ''projectM'' (Platforms: Multi-platform) *'' Music Animation Machine'' (1985–2013, Stephen Malinowski) visualizes

MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...

, rather than waveforms. *''

Neon Neon is a chemical element; it has symbol Ne and atomic number 10. It is the second noble gas in the periodic table. Neon is a colorless, odorless, inert monatomic gas under standard conditions, with approximately two-thirds the density of ...

'' (2004, Jeff Minter and Ivan Zorzin) (Platform: Xbox 360) *''

Psychedelia Psychedelia usually refers to a Aesthetics, style or aesthetic that is resembled in the psychedelic subculture of the 1960s and the psychedelic experience produced by certain psychoactive substances. This includes psychedelic art, psychedelic ...

'' (1984, Jeff Minter), an early "light synthesizer", did not use audio input but was designed to create visualizations in accompaniment to music. *'' Trip-a-Tron'' (1988, Jeff Minter) a follow up "light synthesizer" (Platforms: Atari ST and Commodore Amiga) *'' Virtual Light Machine'' (1990, Jeff Minter) (Platform: Atari Jaguar)

List of media players supporting visualization

*''

AIMP AIMP is a freeware audio player for Windows and Android, originally developed by Russian developer Artem Izmaylov (). It supports a variety of audio codecs, and includes tools to convert audio files and edit their metadata. It also has the c ...

'' (AIMP DevTeam) (Platform: Windows) *''

Foobar2000 foobar2000 (often abbreviated as fb2k or f2k) is a freeware audio player for Microsoft Windows, iOS, Android, macOS, and formerly Windows Phone, developed by Peter Pawłowski. It has a modular design, which provides user flexibility in c ...

'' (Platform: Windows) *''

MediaPortal MediaPortal is an open-source media player and digital video recorder software project, often considered an alternative to Windows Media Center. It provides a 10-foot user interface for performing typical PVR/TiVo functionality, including playi ...

'' (OpenSource, Team MediaPortal) (Platform: Windows) *''

'' (2001, Apple) (Platforms: Mac OS X, Windows) *''

Apple Music Apple Music is an audio and video streaming service developed by Apple Inc. Users can select music to stream to their device on-demand, or listen to existing playlists. The service also includes the sister internet radio stations Apple Musi ...

'' (2019, Apple) (Platforms: macOS, iOS & Android) *'' Elmedia Player'' (Eltima Software) (Platform: Mac OS) *''

'' (Nullsoft/Radionomy) (Platform: Windows) *''

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP, officially referred to as Windows Media Player Legacy to retronym, distinguish it from Windows Media Player (2022), the new Windows Media Player introduced with Windows 11) is the first media player (application soft ...

'' (Microsoft) (Platform: Windows) *''

MediaMonkey MediaMonkey is a digital media player and media library application developed by Ventis Media Inc., for organizing and playing audio on Microsoft Windows and Android operating systems. MediaMonkey for Windows (sometimes noted as MMW) includes ...

'' (Ventis Media Inc.) (Platform: Windows) *''

RealPlayer RealPlayer, formerly RealAudio Player, RealOne Player and RealPlayer G2, is a cross-platform media player (software), media player app, developed by RealNetworks. The media player is compatible with numerous container file formats of the multimed ...

'' (RealNetworks) (Platform: Windows) *''

Kodi Kodi may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * KODI, a radio station in Cody, Wyoming, USA * Kodi (film), ''Kodi'' (film), India, 2016 * Kodi, a dog in the 2004 film ''Balto III: Wings of Change'' Other uses * Kodi (software), an open sour ...

(formerly XBMC)'' (Team XBMC) (Platform: Cross-Platform) *'' MusicBee'' (Steven Mayall) (Platforms: Windows) *'' KMPlayer'' (Pandora.TV) (Platform: Windows) *'' Amarok'' (Open Source, KDE) (Platform: Cross-platform) *''

Totem A totem (from or ''doodem'') is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage (anthropology), lineage, or tribe, such as in the Anishinaabe clan system. While the word ...

'' (Open Source, Gnome) (Platform: Linux) *''

Clementine A clementine (''Citrus × clementina'') is a tangor, a citrus fruit hybrid between a willowleaf mandarin orange ( ''C.'' × ''deliciosa'') and a sweet orange (''C. × sinensis''), named in honor of Clément Rodier, a French missionary who f ...

'' (Open Source) (Platform: Cross-platform) *'' Audacious Media Player'' (Audacious Team) (Platform: POSIX) *''

VLC media player VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source, software portability, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media Server (computing), server developed by the Vide ...

'' (Open Source,

VideoLAN VideoLAN is a Nonprofit organization, non-profit organization which software development, develops software for playing video and other media formats. It originally developed two computer program, programs for media streaming media, streaming, ...

Project) (Platform: Cross-platform) *''

Xine xine is a multimedia playback engine for Unix-like operating systems released under the GNU General Public License. xine is built around a shared library (xine-lib) that supports different frontend player applications. xine uses libraries fr ...

player''

Notes

External links

Visual Music Archive
{{Visual music Audiovisual introductions in 1976 Visual effects Visual arts media Visual music Digital art