Over the last week, I have once again been messing around with my music apps; Oscilab, the loop maker and sequencer on my phone, combined with a beta-test version of the Poweramp music player on my tablet, which includes a new “visualisation” feature.
This transforms any audio signal played through it into a complex and synchronised series of patterns which are unique to each sound, allowing you to “see” the music.
Like, far out, man.
Unfortunately there is no way to save the resulting psychedelic visual display, unless you get creative and improvise a little, of course.
So I built myself a studio in the airing cupboard; a black box with my tablet lying in the bottom of it and a sheet of glass on top with my phone on top of that.
Then, with my phone camera turned on, all I needed to do was line up my tablet in the video viewfinder, press play on the tablet and record on the camera, then close the door and wait for my latest musical creation to finish playing.
Once I have video of the unique patterns produced by my new tune, all that remains is for me to edit the video to the exact length of the audio track, (cutting out me turning on the tablet and removing any blank screen from the end) remove the sound from the raw video, dub the music back over the edited footage and; Voila! another masterpiece.
I’m not one for leaving an idea alone, once I’ve convinced myself of its brilliance, so I ended up making four new electronic soundscapes in the last few days, all with their own trippy visual accompaniment.
I’m posting one of the most melodic and chilled-out numbers here, which I’ve called The Glimmering, but you can also find it, along with all the rest of this week’s audio output (plus one earlier attempt) on my new page, Sound and vision: The Oscilab project, via that link or the drop-down menu at the top of the page.
I hope you enjoy the soothing tones of this adventure in electronic psychedelia and when you’ve sampled its peculiar delights, why not visit the new page for yourselves and check out the rest of my collection.