I have been interested in doing some audiovisualistic live performing with my trusted Machinedrum and Monomachine. Here’s a clip of my work in progress.
I have a Pure Data patch doing all the visuals, an audio interface recording audio and also sending some tracks to Pure Data for audio-reactive visuals. I also have a Launchpad Mini for launching different “scenes” in the visuals and an OP-1 synth for improvised fun.
Next time I will propably make some of the visuals follow MIDI instead of audio, that way I can create visual “sequences” with my Machinedrum’s or Monomachine’s MIDI machines.
Anyone else doing something like this? Any tips or ideas are greatly appreciated.
Hey Paetkaa, cool stuff. I’m not messing around with this, but I want to be. Is Pure Data a good way to do so? I’ve played around with Max a bit, and even Jitter, but never dug too deep with visuals.
Definitely intrigued by the idea of making visuals follow MIDI. I use a fairly static track lineup on Octatrack, where tracks 4 = bass, 5 = kick, 6 = snare, 7 = HH, and the rest vary. I’d love to send MIDI triggers to a visual sequence based on hits from those tracks, and have other aspects determined by the audio.
Post more, I’d love to see what else you’re doing with visuals
Cool. I’d suggest trying out a VJ software called Resolume. I’ve been using it a bit, and it’s pretty good. You can basically load in videos into it and use it as a sort of video sampler. Hook it up to a MIDI controller and you can control a lot of the stuff in the program with MIDI CC’s. I’ve lost the few videos I made back in the day unfortunately (damn disk crash a couple of years back), but you can get some incredibly interesting results with it.
I want to get back to using it more myself, it’s really an excellent program. A friend of mine is a VJ and used to swear to it (I think he uses a combination of a lot of programs now), check out some of his videos here;
I’ve been using Quartz Composer for AV stuff for years now, I chose QC because of its modular patching environment that just made sense and was easy to use without having to program stuff. I also use Resolume more recently because not only can it trigger videos but it can also host Quartz files.
Thanks for the encouraging comments! I’ll try to upload something new as soon as I get something new done. I’m using a Windows PC in this setup. I think Pure Data is somewhat buggy on Windows (especially MIDI), but I get by.
Pure Data is a tricky enviroment for these kinds of things. I love it because it’s so flexible, but patches can get pretty messy and are hard to debug once you have a lot of stuff in them. Also it’s a lot of punching in coordinates.
I really need to look into Resolume and Quartz Composer, thanks for the ideas Daisuk and spbaker! Is it possible to use audio to control the visuals in these programs?
Amazing visuals spbaker and Daisuk! Really beautiful stuff.
Audio in on both is possible! Quartz is mac only tho
With Resolume, audio is super flexible, you can either load an audio file in, or have video with audio and choose internal FFT control, or route audio from a microphone or soundcard, it really is super easy to do.
Have played around w/ MD for triggering visuals, but not for a long time.
My last experiement a few years ago used audio from MD, wih midi triggering a Processing sketch programmed to look like a tv test pattern; that video output was input as a live channel into Resolume which my partner jammed on in real-time while I jammed on the audio.
We have recently introduced a visual aspect to our performances. Our guy has been getting into vvvv recently, and that is the main program we intend to use for now. It’s a huge pain in the ass (especially since it’s still in beta and bug infested) but it’s very open source and has great potential.
Here’s a video of our first performance:
And a few photos from a gig where we’ve put 2 clear screens in front of us to create that 3D effect, with a regular projector screen behind in order to fill it up:
For my own project, I’ve been looking into a way to generate random (premade) visual sequences and modify them automatically through MIDI. Is Pure Data something I should take a look at?
I hereby perform an obscure necromantic ritual on this thread to share with you my newest audiovisual trickeries. Furthermore I feel this area merits more discussion.
In this performance Pure Data is taking care of most of the musical sequencing (algorithmic sequencers utilizing a generous amount of randomness), while the sound engines are Machinedrum, Analog Four, OP-1 and Samplr (iPad).
All the visuals are created in Pure Data (the last one is using a video clip made in Blender) and they are connected to the sounds in various ways ranging from amplitude reactivity, to almost oscilloscopic ways of displaying waveforms and the spectrum of the sounds.
While Pure Data is definitely old, limited and sometimes cumbersome to use, I’ve started thinking about it more and more as an instrument. It has it’s own recognizable sound, look, feel etc. but for me all that is exactly what makes an instrument unique and interesting. And in the end, the quality of your work really isn’t about which instrument you choose, its about how well you learn to use it.
I’d suggest trying out a VJ software called Resolume. I’ve been using it a bit, and it’s pretty good. You can basically load in videos into it and use it as a sort of video sampler. Hook it up to a MIDI controller and you can control a lot of the stuff in the program with MIDI CC’s. I’ve lost the few videos I made back in the day unfortunately (damn disk crash a couple of years back), but you can get some incredibly interesting results with it.
