I'd like to see a visual that looks like a measure, on a peice of sheet music. It would be zoomed in, and the notes are just flying by left to right, with the music. Like a horizontal player piano roll... sort of. Ideally it would be adjusted so that short notes and long notes are approximately correct. No need to do chords, but that would be nice. :-D

Calvin

Umm... I guess you're asking for the visuals to somehow identify the notes being played? Not bloody likely. I think it'd only work on recordings of a single instrument.. Once you got anything else (drums, extra harmonies, etc.) in there how would it identify notes?

Bah, forget about identifying notes. Personally, I think it would just look cool to see any musical notes on a scale flying across the screen. :) Of course there has to be something about them that lends to the music being played.

I've seen software programs which attempt to create transcriptions of notes from raw audio data. No, they don't work when there's a lot of different sounds piled on top of each other. But for the purposes of a pretty visual, it could be fun without needing to be accurate.

But then Toby would have to keep answering bug reports about how it doesn't accurately transcribe the songs.

Not likely? Yeah I suppose you're right. In order to identify the notes, you'll need to do a fast fourier transform, not sure if that is possible. If only the empeg could take music and draw do a spectrum analysis, if only the empeg had some kind of spectrometer so it can identify when particular loud notes are playing and are what center frequencies. Probably too complicated for a car stereo to do in real time. Oh well, wishful thinking. :-D

Calvin "tee hee"

Doh.. I hate it when I can't tell if someone's serious, sarcastic, or just trying to be humorous... So I'll just be factual to avoid interpreting things wrong.

The empeg of course does have a spectrometer that can tell what frequencies are loud. However with anything other than a single instrument playing, the volumes of those frequencies would be all over the map, and software can't reliably tell what notes are coming from what "instrument." Then the topic of note duration comes into play... How would you deicde what quarter notes, half notes, rests, etc. are when you've got a lot of instruments which are sustaining a frequency at the same volume... All sorts of issues there. If you wanted it to really look like sheet music, you'd need to at least throw some fake eighth notes and rests in there.

The suggestion of a "best guess" at a note to be displayed is a good one... Just pick the loudest average frequency in a given interval and use that as a way to pick a note on the staff. Then when the next interval comes the average will be either higher or lower... That's all good. I was just saying that there's no way to accurately display any "real notes" of anything other than one instrument playing. And besides some audio test tracks, I don't have many MP3's of one single instrument playing.

In any event, it's a really neat idea, but it seems there are issues with how the notes would be chosen and interpreted.

Has anyone seen professional music transription programs? Even with a single instrument the guesswork and computation is REALLY intensive. First you have to give a tempo, then set the timing up and the quantization, define what key it's in. The list goes on. Personaly, random notes scrolling along the screen looks tacky. There's a clarion head unit which has a piano keyboard on the display the playsrandom notes to the music, ugh.
May as well put pulsing LEDs and tinsel and glitter on the dash. COOL MAN.
NOT

sorry, havn't had my distemper shots yet.
I wouldn't use a set of notes that float across the screen.

Yeah, but there's a difference. Toby would be coding it. He could make anything look cool.

For example, imagine Hula Hoops, except with musical notes.

sod acuracy just give us some bouncing notes

In reply to:

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May as well put pulsing LEDs and tinsel and glitter on the dash.

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WOW what a great idea. Now why didn't I think of that?

Yeah, but there's a difference. Toby would be coding it. He could make anything look cool.

Oh yeah, that's all right then

Hey, I'd settle for a visual similar to Tux Much, but with the heads of our four little South Park friends. And yes, each head strobes to different frequencies.

Actually, I'd love the presence of an image folder that we could dump raw pics into for use with STATIC, TUX MUCH or any other new image-based visuals. They could be added and named through emplode to make it easy for everyone (or an addition fo the config file to make it more hands-on). Then selecting those visuals lets you choose the specific image you'd like to use - right on the player.

Yeah, it's superfluous. But so are all the visuals. Eye candy. Hopefully for the passengers, not the driver.

Bruno

Now to devise a serial interface to connect the empeg to exterior strobes....

Well said. ;-)

Just make it look real! So what if it misses a note here and now and back again?

Calvin

Not sure if anyone noticed, but there's a couple visuals which are kinda doing this... "Pianola" and "TimeShade 128" The TimeShade visual actually comes off looking a little like it's printing out one of those player piano rolls. Very cool effect. I'm sure they're not really identifying notes, just frequency ranges (kinda like the spectrometer visuals) but it's kinda neat anyway.

Pianola is one of my new favourite visuals. I love the deceleration effect. Maybe someone should make sure Toby sees this thread when the empeg-shop opens up again. ;)

Bruno