Excerpt 1 from Towards One - Process [Youtube]
audiovisual video where the visuals follow the sounds and evocative textures suggested by the sounds.
Excerpt 2 from Towards One - The beauty of mathematical harmony [Youtube]
Download or play process excerpt in quicktime format - VIDEO CLIP 1 - process
Download or play excerpts
in quicktime format
Play full video [Towards One]-[At YouTube]
Visuals and Music by Maura McDonnell
Visual Music Composition Piece
Towards one is a visual music piece that Explores ways of combining moving visuals and music to create a sense of harmony between visuals and music. There are two clips from this 6 minute piece available for preview. The first is based on the music composition technique - process. The second is based on the exploration of the pythagorean concept of harmony.
Video Clip 1 - process
This clip is taken from section2 of the piece Towards One. It explores the music compositional strategy of Growth Process. A short music piece was created out of long timbres sound designed with the KYMA sound design system. Additional sounds were added and mixed with the KYMA created sound timbres to create an evolving timbre that had within its design rhythmic and tempo properties.
The Visuals were created then in response to this piece of music, emulating the growth process of the music composition and taking the textures and timbres as inspiration for the forms of the visuals. Visual rythms were created in response to the musical rhythms.
Video Clip 2 - harmony - Tetractys
The Pythagorean symbol the 'Tetractys' became the focus for the visuals and music in this section. The Tetractys embodied the most harmonious music ratios. These geometric ratios were utilised in many other art/cultural forms such as architecture and art.
In the visuals The source footage manipulated and formed into a tetratyk shape was a photograph of organ pipes. The Tetratyk was constructed and animated in both Photoshop and After Effects.
The music was crafted utilising the octave the fourth and the fifth. The sounds were created utilising fm synthesis and pythagorean tuning. The composition is a progression of simple arpeggios using these simple music intervals
Audio/ Music Documentation
Maura McDonnells History of Visual Music
This site was created in preparation for teaching a course on music and image to the Music and Media Technology Students, Trinity College, Dublin - 2002 - 2003. At the time, had not put in any authoring information, as it is mainly links to web sites and resources that deal with visual music, in particular rhythmiclight, which is an excellent resource.
However, the site has been mirrored on many other people's sites, for example on paradise2012 and many others.