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 pla ...

, 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 psychotherapy. Forms There are five major types of sensory im ...

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

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

and

frequency spectrum The power spectrum S_(f) of a time series x(t) describes the distribution of power into frequency components composing that signal. According to Fourier analysis, any physical signal can be decomposed into a number of discrete frequencies, ...

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 statisti ...

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 a ...

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 of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing devi ...

), by its characteristic as being

real-time Real-time or real time describes various operations in computing or other processes that must guarantee response times within a specified time (deadline), usually a relatively short time. A real-time process is generally one that happens in defined ...

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 A laser lighting display or laser light show involves the use of laser light to entertain an audience. A laser light show may consist only of projected laser light beam, beams set to music, or may accompany another form of entertainment, ty ...

) which always show the same visualization. Music visualization may be achieved in a 2D or a 3D coordinate system where up to 6 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 The Atari Video Music (Model C240) is the earliest commercial electronic music visualizer released. It was manufactured by Atari, Inc., and released in 1977 for $169.95. The system creates an animated visual display that responds to musical inp ...

introduced by

Atari Inc. Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Atari was a key player in the formation of the video arcade and video game industry. Based primarily around the Sunnyv ...

in 1976, and designed by the initiator of the home version of ''

Pong ''Pong'' is a table tennis–themed twitch arcade sports video game, featuring simple two-dimensional graphics, manufactured by Atari and originally released in 1972. It was one of the earliest arcade video games; it was created by Allan A ...

'', Robert Brown. The idea was to create a visual exploration that could be implemented into a Hi-Fi 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 Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

music visualization was first pioneered by

Fred Judd Frederick Charles Judd (5 June 1914 - April 1992) was a British inventor, amateur radio operator, and proselytiser of early British electronic music. Early career Like fellow composer Tristram Cary, Fred served in the forces during World War ...

. Music and audio players were available on early home computers, ''Sound to Light Generator'' (1985, Infinite Software) used the

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as the ''ZX81 Colou ...

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

. For PC/

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

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 the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

, multi-platform ''

Cthugha This is a compendium of the lesser known Great Old Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. __NOTOC__ Overview In Joseph S. Pulver's novel ''Nightmare's Disciple'' several new Great Old Ones and Elder Gods are named. The novel mentions ' ...

'' in 1993. In the 1990s the emerging

demo Demo, usually short for demonstration, may refer to: Music and film * Demo (music), a song typically recorded for reference rather than release * ''Demo'' (Behind Crimson Eyes), a 2004 recording by the band Behind Crimson Eyes * ''Demo'' (Deafhe ...

and

tracker music Tracker may refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Tracker (''G.I. Joe''), in the ''G.I. Joe'' universe * Tracker (''PAW Patrol''), in the animated television series ''PAW Patrol'' * Tracker Cameron, in the television series '' ...

scene pioneered the real-time technics for music visualization on the PC platform; resulting examples are ''Cubic player'' (1994), ''Inertia Player'' (1995) or in general their real-time generated

Demo Demo, usually short for demonstration, may refer to: Music and film * Demo (music), a song typically recorded for reference rather than release * ''Demo'' (Behind Crimson Eyes), a 2004 recording by the band Behind Crimson Eyes * ''Demo'' (Deafhe ...

s. Subsequently, PC computer music visualization became widespread in the mid to late 1990s as applications such as ''

Winamp Winamp is a 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 Radionomy in 2014. Sin ...

'' (1997), ''

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

'' (1999), and ''

SoundJam SoundJam MP is a discontinued MP3 player for classic Mac OS-compatible computers and Rio-compatible hardware synchronization manager that was released in July 1999 and was available until June 2001. Jeff Robbin and Bill Kincaid developed SoundJa ...

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

freeware Freeware is software, most 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 t ...

non-trivial music visualizers in distribution. In particular, '' MilkDrop'' (2001) and its predecessor "geiss-plugin" (1998) by

Ryan Geiss Ryan may refer to: People and fictional characters *Ryan (given name), a given name (including a list of people with the name) *Ryan (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name) Places Australia * Division of Ryan, an elector ...

, ''G-Force'' by

Andy O'Meara Andy may refer to: People *Andy (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters *Horace Andy (born 1951), Jamaican roots reggae songwriter and singer born Horace Hinds *Katja Andy (1907–2013), German-American pianist and piano ...

, and

AVS AVS or Avs may refer to: People * AVS (actor), Indian actor and comedian Sports * Colorado Avalanche, an NHL hockey team Schools * Abbey Vocational School, a secondary school in County Donegal, Ireland * Amman Valley School, a bilingual (Wel ...

(2000) by

Nullsoft Nullsoft, Inc. was an American software house founded in Sedona, Arizona, in 1997 by Justin Frankel. Its products included the Winamp media player and the SHOUTcast MP3 streaming media server. In later years, their open source installer syst ...

became popular music visualizations. AVS is part of

and has been recently

d, and G-Force was licensed for use in iTunes and

Windows Media Center Windows Media Center (WMC) is a defunct 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 Ultimate ...

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 Barbarian is a full-service creative digital advertising agency headquartered in New York City. Since 2001, Barbarian has been creating the future faster and transforming brands through creativity, innovation and technology. Barbarian specializes ...

Use by deaf people

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, is currently 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 have also created a device that will 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 to 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 gives a more all-around experience of music to those hard of hearing. Music visualization can also be used in education. The Cooper Union in NYC 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 NYC. 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

*''

'', designed by the initiator of the home version of ''

'', Robert Brown, and introduced by

in 1976. *''Pixelmusic 3000'', open source music visualizer on a microcontroller, made by Uncommon Projects in 2008.

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 c ...

'' (

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 creates ...

) (Platform: Windows) *''

'' (1993, Kevin "Zaph" Burfitt) (Platform: DOS, Winamp) *
G-Force
' (2000, SoundSpectrum) (Platforms: Multi-platform) *
Goom
' (2001, Jean Christophe Hoelt) (Platforms: Multi-platform) *''

Magic Music Visuals Magic Music Visuals is a music visualizer and VJ software application for Windows and macOS. Features Magic can be used to create live visuals for music performances, or to create music videos for recorded songs. It has a modular interface whic ...

'' (2012–2022, Color & Music, LLC) (Platforms: Windows, macOS/OSX) *'' MilkDrop'' (2001–2012, Ryan Geiss) reimplemented as ''projectM'' (Platforms: Multi-platform) *'' Music Animation Machine'' (1985–2013,

Stephen Malinowski Stephen Anthony Malinowski is an American composer, pianist, educator, software engineer, and inventor. He was born on August 6, 1953 in Santa Monica, California. He is best known for his musical animations and his computer program, the Mu ...

) visualizes

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

, rather than waveforms. *''

Neon Neon is a chemical element with the symbol Ne and atomic number 10. It is a noble gas. Neon is a colorless, odorless, inert monatomic gas under standard conditions, with about two-thirds the density of air. It was discovered (along with krypt ...

'' (2004,

Jeff Minter Jeff Minter (born 22 April 1962) is an independent English video game designer and programmer who often goes by the name Yak. He is the founder of software house Llamasoft and has created dozens of games during his career, which began in 19 ...

and Ivan Zorzin) (Platform: Xbox 360) *''

Psychedelia Psychedelia refers to the psychedelic subculture of the 1960s and the psychedelic experience. This includes psychedelic art, psychedelic music and style of dress during that era. This was primarily generated by people who used psychedelic dr ...

'' (1984, Jeff Minter), an early "light synthesizer", did not use audio input but was designed to create visualizations in accompaniment to music. *''

Virtual Light Machine The Virtual Light Machine (VLM) is a light synthesizer developed by Jeff Minter in 1990. It was installed into a number of electronics, including the Atari Jaguar CD and Nuon DVD players. The Virtual Light Machine is similar to what would later ...

'' (1990,

) (Platform: Atari Jaguar)

List of media players supporting visualization

*''

AIMP AIMP (Artem Izmaylov Media Player) is a freeware audio player for Windows and Android, originally developed by Russian developer Artem Izmaylov ( rus, Артём Измайлов, Artyom Izmajlov).

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

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

'' (2019, Apple) (Platforms: macOS, iOS & Android) *''

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

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

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

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as ...

'' (Microsoft) (Platforms: 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) *''

Kodi KODI (1400 AM) is a radio station broadcasting a news/talk format. Licensed to Cody, Wyoming, United States, the station is currently owned by the Big Horn Radio Network, a division of Legend Communications of Wyoming, LLC, and features prog ...

(formerly XBMC)'' (Team XBMC) (Platform: Cross-Platform) *''

MusicBee MusicBee is a freeware media player for playback and organization of audio files on Microsoft Windows, built using the audio library. Features * Audio playback: MP3, AAC, M4A, MPC, OGG, FLAC, ALAC, APE, Opus, , WavPack, WMA, WAV, MIDI, ...

'' (Steven Mayall) (Platforms: Windows) *''

K-Multimedia Player K-Multimedia Player (commonly known as The KMPlayer, KMPlayer or KMP) is an Adware-supported media player for Windows and iOS that can play most current audio and video formats, including VCD, HDML, DVD, AVI, MKV, Ogg, OGM, 3GP, MPEG-1/2/ ...

'' (Pandora.TV) (Platform: Windows) *''

Amarok Amarok may refer to: Music * Amarok (band), a Spanish progressive rock band * ''Amarok'' (Mike Oldfield album), 1990 * ''Amarok'' (Nargaroth album), 2000 * ''Amarok'', 2010 album by Francisco López (musician) Other uses * Amarok (wolf), in Inu ...

'' (Open Source, KDE) (Platform: Cross-platform) *''

Totem A totem (from oj, ᑑᑌᒼ, italics=no 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 ...

'' (Open Source, Gnome) (Platform: Linux) *'' Clementine'' (Open Source) (Platform: Cross-platform) *''

Audacious Media Player Audacious is a free and open-source audio player software with a focus on low resource use, high audio quality, and support for a wide range of audio formats. It is designed primarily for use on POSIX-compatible Unix-like operating systems, ...

'' (Audacious Team) (Platforms: POSIX) *''

VLC media player VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client and commonly known as simply VLC) is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for d ...

'' (

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) (Platforms: 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 ...

player''

Notes

External links

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