[linux-audio-dev] Project ideas?

[Dave Robillard]

On Tue, 2004-06-08 at 12:45, iain duncan wrote:
> > Well, since SOMEONE has to pipe up and say Pd can do it, might as well
> > be me. :)
> > 
> > Pd with GEM is pretty cool as far as visualization goes.  Far better
> > than anything I've ever seen or heard of actually, because you can
> > visualize MIDI any way you want, which has waaay more potential than
> > visualizing a boring old waveform (digital audio)
> 
> I'd say the opposite is true. Midi is lame for visualizing a continuous 
> data stream, say for example mapping frequency content or amplitude to a 
> continuous visualization. While midi is easy to work with with, 7-bit cc 
> values are pretty coarse. The trick to making the waveform visualiztion 
> interesting is to allow the user to break up the composite waveform into 
> user defined frequency bins so you can ride the amplitude of specific 
> frequency areas.
> 
> Iain

Well if your real goal is to visualize a waveform then yeah, MIDI would
be silly (it isn't a waveform, period).  I went off on bit of a tangent
perhaps, but I was speaking more from a creative/musical/artistic
perspective.

There's a /lot/ more information available in a MIDI performance, so the
potential to do interesting things is greater.  Flash the screen
whenever the kick drum goes, have notes represented on screen as 3D
objects using frequency for location, filter cutoff controlling
lighting, blah blah etc. etc.

I'm really surprised I havn't seen GEM used to do more things like that
(or maybe I just can't find it).  The potential for the system is
amazing...

-Dave Robillard (rant rant)