francesco.rosati

i'm looking for a simple way to convert a number, representing a frequency, into a list of three numbers, respectively Red Green Blue channel, respecting the correspondances between the audio and the light spectra. I've tried with some simple algos but whitout good results.

i'm looking for a simple way to convert a number, representing a frequency, into a list of three numbers, respectively Red Green Blue channel, respecting the correspondances between the audio and the light spectra. I've tried with some simple algos but whitout good results.
Do you have any good idea?

freq-to-rgb

Depends on what you mean by good results. You may already be doing this...

If frequency is a single number you can fiddle with it in various ways:

unpack as three numbers using shift and mask

scale the freq differently for each color plane

This is a basic problem of mapping sound to image and vice versa. A nice

picture doesn't necessarily make a nice sound. I've used MetaSynth a lot

for this but I have to design the image knowing what images make "good"

sounds for me. I have not been satisfied with going from sound to image

although manipulating a sonogram with jitter has produced some things I

You might also try fiddle~ and its cousins to collect spectral data from

your sound mapping the fundamental and several strong harmonics into RGB.

Envelope following is also useful as an input to the alpha channel.

Depends on what you mean by good results.  You may already be doing this...

If frequency is a single number you can fiddle with it in various ways:
    unpack as three numbers using shift and mask
    scale the freq differently for each color plane
    scale the freq to 0..1 range then scale

This is a basic problem of mapping sound to image and vice versa.  A nice
picture doesn't necessarily make a nice sound.  I've used MetaSynth a lot
for this but I have to design the image knowing what images make "good"
sounds for me.  I have not been satisfied with going from sound to image
although manipulating a sonogram with jitter has produced some things I
really like.

You might also try fiddle~ and its cousins to collect spectral data from
your sound mapping the fundamental and several strong harmonics into RGB.
Envelope following is also useful as an input to the alpha channel.

Cheers,
Gary Lee Nelson
TIMARA Department
Oberlin College
www.timara.oberlin.edu/GaryLeeNelson


there are a few good ideas documented from about 1700-something to today, 

but most of them were not based on simple mathematic formula, but rather on 

sensibility of particular artist. I like the ones by Oskar Fischinger and 

Len Lye, but some people are pleased with mapping of freq to Hue and 

there are a few good ideas documented from about 1700-something to today, 
but most of them were not based on simple mathematic formula, but rather on 
sensibility of particular artist. I like the ones by Oskar Fischinger and 
Len Lye, but some people are pleased with mapping of freq to Hue and 
amplitude to Brightness or Saturation.

there is a work group of the AFIM wich works on the Visualisation of sound

I think you will be interested in their work...

thank you very much for the precious infos!

The main question didn't involve any sort of artistic mapping, this will be for sure one of my next steps, but my goal is only to rapresent a frequency from 20 to 18.000hz with a linear colours scale from red to blue or something similar.

E.g.: an higher freq should be positioned in the range of the Blue-Violet if not standing at the synesthetic feels that probably wants to put an higher frequency within the Red range..and so on...

At least i've tried simply using the Swatch object and that's works pretty good for me.

Anyway the link about visualization of sounds shows an amazing project! I have ever been interested in this kind of synesthetic correspondances, from Skrjabin (a semi-scientific approach) and Kandinsky (a total artistic approach to sounds' visualization) to the contemporary goals on this ground as the mentioned O'Really videos on the Point Line Cloud's Curtist Roads DVD.

Simply for discussing about it and share a little "OutOfTopic" opinion, i've recently seen an exibition by the duo tinylittleelements and i've found the video part as a really interesting interpretation of sound.

Hope you can understand my bad bad english!

thank you very much for the precious infos!
The main question didn't involve any sort of artistic mapping, this will be for sure one of my next steps, but my goal is only to rapresent a frequency from 20 to 18.000hz with a linear colours scale from red to blue or something similar. 

E.g.: an higher freq should be positioned in the range of the Blue-Violet if not standing at the synesthetic feels that probably wants to put an higher frequency within the Red range..and so on...
At least i've tried simply using the Swatch object and that's works pretty good for me.

Anyway the link about visualization of sounds shows an amazing project! I have ever been interested in this kind of synesthetic correspondances, from Skrjabin (a semi-scientific approach) and Kandinsky (a total artistic approach to sounds' visualization) to the contemporary goals on this ground as the mentioned O'Really videos on the Point Line Cloud's Curtist Roads DVD.
Simply for discussing about it and share a little "OutOfTopic" opinion, i've recently seen an exibition by the duo tinylittleelements and i've found the video part as a really interesting interpretation of sound. 

Hope you can understand my bad bad english!


if you only want to map freq to color you can try this (just copy and paste it into a new patcher) :

this is an adaptation of a little patch I made for the automatic determination of color.

and you can get the freq of your sound object with fiddle~ (on MAC) or pitch~ (on PC).

PS : don't worry about your english, mine is not so good too...

this is an adaptation of a little patch I made for the automatic determination of color.
and you can get the freq of your sound object with fiddle~ (on MAC) or pitch~ (on PC).

PS : don't worry about your english, mine is not so good too...


thank you Antoine! This is exactly the scaling equation i need!

thank you Antoine! This is exactly the scaling equation i need!
Thank you so much for posting!

Freq to rgb