Bliss paint did not make the upgrade to my new MAC so I began to make animations of music in Flash. These were very tedious to do as each note had to be first created, tuned and then placed as closely to each note in the music as possible. I began with simple rounds placing the notes in space vertically from light at the top to dark at the bottom.
BE SURE TO SEE THESE EXAMPLES LARGE BY CLICKING ON THE SMALL GIZMO AT THE FAR BOTTOM RIGHT OF THE VIDEO ON YOUTUBE.
EXAMPLES:
The Ghost of Tom (For some reason I called it the ghost of John on youtube)
I then translated some small classical pieces to color.
It soon became clear that as I tried to translate more complicated music there was not going to be room on the screen vertically for several octaves, so I approximated the place in space they would occur keeping the high notes up and the low notes down and making some interpretations of how the notes should appear.
Bach Aria from the Goldberg Variations
The last change I tried with the balls of color was to have them not only diminish in size as they aged but have them float off the screen altogether as in this lovely prelude by Scriabin.
This was all very well but it was not what I originally intended to do, that is, create an instrument that would play colors in time. There were too many variables AND more important the colors were not really interacting with each other enough.
So I went back to my original structure and began to animate that. Here the colors would be the whole story. There would be no up and down, no colors dancing around just color coming out from the center and moving to the edge and out the door.
This example is how that works. I had trouble exporting the Flash video and it appears a bit jumpy and there are some unfortunate artifacts but with this method of showing the colors it would be possible to constuct an instrument and play it in real time fairly simply. Dynamics can be successfully accomplished by the bands of color getting larger as the music gets louder as they do in this example. The colors are beautiful and they were chosen by the composer of the music. So I am finished animating a translation of music to color for the time being. It is time for someone to construct this instrument who knows how to program. I think there is a tremendous potential for such an instrument as it could take many forms and could be played together with other instruments with different textures tuned in the same way.
There are lots more examples on youtube on my Channel if you are interested.