Epistrophy

I’m working on a project which I feel like I need some advice on, as I’m not really sure what direction to go in. The basic idea is that I need to create some abstract video in Jitter to go along with a piece of music, but I’m not sure the best way to do it. If anyone’s able to offer any suggestions or tips for what direction I should go in it would be very helpful.

I’m a composer with some very basic experience of Max but I’ve never really used Jitter at all. The piece I’m working on is an experimental sonic art kind of thing based on tidal data. I used tide level data from a number of cities around Europe, assigned a single oscillator (in Ableton Live) to each city, with the frequency of each oscillator varying according to the tide level in that city over the course of one day. Anyway, the end result of all this is that the audio is quite slow-moving, meditative, kind of otherworldly-sounding, sometimes quite dissonant, with a lot of acoustic beating.

I feel that some abstract visuals would complement this well - probably something similarly slow-moving and meditative. I initially thought about doing something where the visuals would derive directly from the audio (I’ve seen people doing this in Jitter but I don’t really know how it works) but then I had the idea of doing something where the visuals derive from the underlying data which the audio is based on instead. Since the music basically consist of lots of overlapping sine waves, my composition teacher suggested looking into something related to Lissajous curves. I can see from googling that people have done stuff related to this in Jitter, but it's hard for me to tell whether this is a viable option for what I’m looking for.

I’ve had a look through the Jitter tutorials but haven’t been able to find anything that looks useful so far. If anyone has any suggestions about where I should look or what kind of direction I should explore it would be hugely appreciated!

Thanks for reading, and sorry for the long post!

I’m a composer with some very basic experience of Max but I’ve never really used Jitter at all. The piece I’m working on is an experimental sonic art kind of thing based on tidal data. I used tide level data from a number of cities around Europe, assigned a single oscillator (in Ableton Live) to each city, with the frequency of each oscillator varying according to the tide level in that city over the course of one day. Anyway, the end result of all this is that the audio is quite slow-moving, meditative, kind of otherworldly-sounding, sometimes quite dissonant, with a lot of acoustic beating. 

Hi,
I’m working on a project which I feel like I need some advice on, as I’m not really sure what direction to go in. The basic idea is that

jitter-help-for-music-project-lissajous

open the Package Manager (search here for that term if you're unfamiliar with it) and search for jit.mo and Vsynth packages. check out their launcher patches and help files.

 first (these are distinct from the Jitter tutorials).

make sure you're completed the Video and Graphics tutorials first (these are distinct from the Jitter tutorials).

Ok thanks Rob, I'll check those out and see how I get on.

Hi Epistrophy, I am also a composer doing visuals. I also don't use audio reactive algorithms to draw my visuals but start from the compositional data itself. This is a good approach since it is computationally cheaper, given that all of your data is generated before you start rendering. Definitely use the jit.mo package as Rob suggested. I think some of my video tutorials "Composing Visual Music" could be helpful to your cause. They are a work in progress but I would be happy to answer any questions about what's in them. To give a couple of examples:

This is one result of my visualization technique:

Subscribe if you want and let me know if you have any specific questions I can help you with.

Hi Epistrophy, I am also a composer doing visuals. I also don't use audio reactive algorithms to draw my visuals but start from the compositional data itself. This is a good approach since it is computationally cheaper, given that all of your data is generated before you start rendering. Definitely use the jit.mo package as Rob suggested. I think some of my video tutorials  "Composing Visual Music" could be helpful to your cause. They are a work in progress but I would be happy to answer any questions about what's in them. To give a couple of examples:
https://youtu.be/TbUBFBgxAtk 

This is one result of my visualization technique:
https://youtu.be/blCHhrEFqT4

Subscribe if you want and let me know if you have any specific questions I can help you with.

Hi Michelez, this looks like exactly the kind of thing I need. Thanks a lot!

Your piece looks interesting too! I subscribed.

Hi Michelez, this looks like exactly the kind of thing I need. Thanks a lot!

Your piece looks interesting too! I subscribed.

Jitter help for music project (Lissajous?)