For this assignment I made two spheres scale and change to the rhythm of “I Will Survive”. I ended up spending a lot of time shape control from audio / midi inputs, so that is why there ended up only being two shapes on a white background.

For inputs, I had one patch load a midi file and set initial tempo (not automatically). Then once you press “Start” it begins a music tempo using the “transpose” block, triggering the start of the song clip, as well as generic kick / hats on generic beats. There is some delay between the “transpose” and the Midi notes that i tried to account for, but it could use improvement. Listening to the clip, you’ll hear the midi and percussion is all on the left ear, those sounds are what are really triggering the movement.

For the Geometry, I was sending percussion bangs and midi note values to a second patch. The percussion bangs were triggering shape scaling and color changes to the beat. The Midi note values were used to trigger the mesh resolution of the outer wireframe sphere, with lower notes being lower res. This ended up not coming across as cleanly as I had hoped.

If I had more time, I would try this process with a song that is 100% Midi and add more shapes for each instrument.

Tangent: If anyone is curious, you can not auto-convert .nsf’s (gameboy audio files) or any other proper chiptune tracker (Famitracker, FT 0CC, Delfmask, Impulse…) to Midi. I spend too much time learning that the hard way…