Bach, Sonata in C Major, Allegro assai, Lara St. John, solo violin, BWV 1005

About this video...
Performed by Lara St. John, recording courtesy of Magnatune.

This is one video in a series of experiments described here:
http://www.musanim.com/bwv1007m1/

Another version of this video (with time-scale warping) can be viewed here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Fvyc9filg0

Q: Why is the video so jittery? Can't you do something about that?
A: Yes and no. When videos have fast motion, it looks smoothest if the frame rate of the video matches the frame rate of the playback system. My computer display here at home runs at 60 fps (frames per second), and when I view my videos here at that rate, they're beautifully smooth. But when I upload a 60 fps video to YouTube, they convert it to 30 fps by mixing pairs of frames together, so that each frame becomes a kind of blurry double exposure. Therefore, I make 30 fps versions of the videos for YouTube. If you play a 30 fps video back on a system running at 60 fps, it looks jittery, but at least the individual frames look right. If your internet connection is slow, YouTube (or your browser software and/or Flash player) may reduce the frame rate even further. The effect becomes more noticeable as the scrolling speed of my videos increases, so I tend to use slower scrolling speeds than I would otherwise (as a compromise), but in this one, other aspects of the animation (the big patches of color and the irregular outlines when the melodic path changes direction) were less visible when I squished the horizontal scale, so I pushed it further in the fast and jittery direction than I would have otherwise. If you want to see this video at 60 fps, go here
http://vimeo.com/32804052
download the original (right-click the download link on that page), and play it with the QuickTime Player. It might help to shut down all the other programs on your computer.

Q: What do the colors mean?
A: The colors indicate "pitch class" (that is, note name, C, C-sharp, D, D-sharp, etc.). You can read more here about the system I use:
http://www.musanim.com/mam/pfifth.htm

Category:

Music

[Lukeaduke510]

To see this entire piece printed largely and displayed with the music accompanying it would be magnificent. Keep up the good work.

[smalin]

@Lukeaduke510 My first graphical scores were done that way. Trust me, this is better.

[Hugonaty]

I play the music far more than I pause it. So I believe smalin should have made the viewing more enjoyable than the pausing. :P Just for future reference.

[smalin]

@Hugonaty Unfortunately, the only way I can do that is to make the moving animation a little worse than it is now and make the still-frame images a lot worse. I don't think you'd prefer that ...

[kiralogy]

woooow this ranks right to the top in my opinion (well maybe the balls are still a little bit better but yeah)! :)

[xGeeHam]

i wanted to read the comments but couldn't draw my eyes away from the video!

[OriginalBasaliskos]

Looks like DNA or strokes of watercolor.

[lion82292]

This is so amazing. You sir are fantastic.

[Anathiron]

I really like this type of "colouring". It looks like a painting. And as all music is painting but with sounds instead of paint, as painting is music with paint instead of sounds.. Wait, now I'm just blabbing a bunch of filosophical stuff xD But you get what I mean, I hope :P