visualising sound
the brief Choose one song you enjoy from 3 different genres of music that you listen to on a regular basis and produce a series of visuals that will be formed into a printed format of your choice (series of posters, small publication, album covers etc...). Each visualisation should be produced using the visual elements of the rhythms, sounds and / or patterns of each song. Try to explore what visuals these elements create and how you could use them to help create your printed outcomes.
considerations The aim of this brief is not meant to capture the emotions and intended message of a song, but to take the physical structure, and shapes that the song is formed out of and use it as the foundation of each visual representation. Once the visuals have been created you should aim to develop the set into a series that work well together so you do not end up with 10 completely unlinked visuals. Consider the design tools available to you, so the final outcome suits the genre of music.
mikey scott
BAGD L06
visualising sound brief
one
visualising sound visual research
A wide range of visual research was collected to see how people have visualised music in previous briefs. The use of shape as a tool and using the space on a page as different measurements is a creative way of forming accurate infographics while also forming really cool visuals which result in attractive outcomes I discovered that visualising all the elements of one song would cause overall confusion as there would be too many elements to fit onto one printed image and still be understood by the user. So by focusing on one instrument would allow me to create a clear structure and a key to allow any body to follow the design through and it fit clearly with the chosen song The main tools that have been used to visualise sound are structure shape or pattern or colour, so these will be the main visual tools that I would experiment with.
mikey scott
BAGD L06
visualising sound brief
two
visualising sound initial ideas
After transcribing the songs, I used my knowledge on music reading and drumming, as well as the structure of drum beats to experiment with pattern variations and possile ways of portraiting the full songs drum groove. It became clear after trying to create these concepts that a strong consistent structure should be used as a platform for all three songs.
mikey scott
BAGD L06
visualising sound brief
three
visualising sound digitized concepts
Each different pattern has been setup so that each measured segment is equal to a certain time scale, therefore in terms of a drum beat it works very much in the same way as a piece of written music, as there is a different shape for each voicing used on the drum kit as well as a grid ensuring each element is placed on the correct beat.
mikey scott
BAGD L06
visualising sound brief
four
visualising sound design development
mikey scott
BAGD L06
visualising sound brief
five
visualising sound design applied to songs
citizen cope
mikey scott
BAGD L06
visualising sound brief
the roots
bill withers
six