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Seeing Music

More and more tangible effort is shown up in contemporary art scene towards synthetic unification of arts, interdisciplinary new forms that blend different artistic fields into an immersive experience. Such kind of art forms are Visual Music, Music Video, Virtual Reality Art and VJ art, among others.

While listening to music, often you can find yourself dreaming – morphing visual images evolve in your mind. Some musical styles are more visually inspiring than others. In these cases we can talk about cinematic music. I guess that instrumental classical, electronica (trance, ambient etc) or more experimental tracks, could be especially effective in evoking mental imagery – non-narrative sequences of symbolic visual structures. Just close your eyes and – you can see music… That’s right!

Lights and visuals are used as projections into air and to multiple screens during most of big concert shows to impress audience. For example, electronic music wizard Jean-Michel Jarre is famous for his visually attractive giant laser shows – futuristic sound-and-light extravaganzas. He has featured also a visual music instrument – the Laser Harp, one of Jarre’s signature electronic instruments.

Jean-Michel Jarre and his Laser Harp

A synaesthetic experience of vision and sound is used to give the audience new sensations by using DJ-ing combined with VJ-ing at club evenings and raves. It is a form of Live Video Art. Like DJ-ing, it is performing art, i.e. performing visuals in synchronization to music and the manipulation of imagery in real-time. Because there is no all-in-one-unit yet, it is a lot of experimenting and improvisation. It is similar to composing music, you need a flash of inspiration to intuitively blend visuals and musical material into an impressive expression.

What is Visual Music?

“In the moving image we have a synthesis—the
spatial counterpoint of graphic art, and the temporal
counterpoint of music.”
—Serge Eisenstein

In a nutshell, Visual Music is an abstract audiovisual art form, mostly experimental in nature, where musical structures and principles are used to create a visual imagery composition. It is a synaesthetic art form, that includes music visualizations, music video, silent imagery and other artworks that blend music and visuals into immersive and captivating multi-sensory experiences. Musical abstract time and movement in time-space is captured into eye catching visual imagery – colors, shapes, lights and motion.

Historic Roots Of Visual Music

“MTV-phenomenon” has its historic roots in Color Music traditions. It seems to stretch back into ancient times, but has shown consistent development for well over two hundred fifty years.
One of the oldest known visual music instruments was Castel’s Clavecin pour les yeux (Ocular Harpsichord) in the 18th century. In the 1920s Thomas Wilfred attracted public attention with his invention – an early electrical instrument Clavilux. In the 1940s Oskar Fischinger has designed his instrument – Lumigraph.

Alexander Skriabin, a famous Russian composer, was deeply interested in synaesthesia, a truly fascinating condition in which sensations in one modality (e.g. hearing) will produce sensations in another modality (e.g. vision). He has used a specially designed instrument Fiestra per luce, keyboard of light, at the performance his symphonic poem Prometheus Moscow in 1911.

Music has been an inspiring source for some avant-garde visual artists. Abstract paintings by Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee were a kind of Visual Music experiments to create paintings that would capture the musical time – movement of the painted elements.

W. Kandinsky, Composition X. Oil on canvas, 1939.

Experimentalists in the domain of Abstract Cinema like Oskar Fischinger, Mary Hallock-Greenewalt, Mary Ellen Bute, among many others, have used a translation of visual image to sound or music, as images drawn or scratched onto a film’s soundtrack were converted to sound when the film is projected, and this visual material was shown simultaneously.
A wonderful masterpiece of Visual Music was Lapis (1966) by James Whitney. In this hypnotic computer animation meditative feeling was achieved by creative use of symbolic circular forms of mandala and spiral.

Lapis (1966) by James Whitney

Surfing In Mindscapes – Ideas For Electronic Musicians

Nowadays you can gig from the laptop alone. But – for creating content for your performance or audiovisual artwork you need much more … The video content may come from various sources – library footage, self made stuff, fractal art, still images, video clips… But – best solution is always originality. You need an original and impressive visual content that would complement musical material, opening up new levels and meanings.

Fruitful collaborations between electronic instrumentalists, composers and visual artist could be a key to attractively promote your music for wider audience by selling music tracks on DVD-s and online (iTunes etc) as music videos or pure ”visual music” pieces, and as well to make performances more attractive.

© Ines Reingold-Tali

Article is a guest post by Ines Reingold-Tali from www.yocoma.com . For further details and collaboration ideas visit YOCOMA or contact by email: info@yocoma.com .

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I’m not sure if it’s because of bad music (lol), piracy or both, but cold hard fact is that these kind of statistics speaks for themselves. I think it would be best to bury the cd as music distribution format. MP3 simply put ROCKS. It’s just so more economic and reasonable for the consumer to pre-listen and buy only the songs he/she want’s and not the whole cd of 10-20 songs with maybe one or two likeable tracks.

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What are the options?

Popular music by major recording artists are typically the most sought-after songs to pair with films, television programs and advertisements. They can add impact to a message or narrative. For big budget advertising projects the right hit can be memorable, but for most projects, it simply isn’t affordable. Old or new, hit songs and recordings are usually the best music available, period. Generally, they’re created by the most talented artists or became popular because of the times, novelty, an original sound, a new genre, controversy, or include cultural resonance that continues to engage broad audiences. Depending on the popularity of a track, the price can be steep.

Tracks from indie musicians and labels are usually easier, much cheaper and often as high a quality as you can find. This category includes composers and musicians who are new and undiscovered, in the process of being discovered or choose not to give up their independence to a major recording label. Independents are often a better option for projects than popular music because they offer a fresh sound that can bring a production to life. Many producers find that they attract attention to their projects by using the latest undiscovered song, track or artist. There are plenty of talented undiscovered artists in this group that are often eager for exposure, flexible and extremely cooperative. Finding time to sift through thousands of artists and songs to identify the perfect fit is the larger problem. The right track creates buzz for the artist and label and the production.

Finding help

Many companies now navigate rights and clearance issues directly with independent artists and labels making life easier for producers. They filter out the best, and then pre-clear the music to ensure every track they offer for licensing is usable immediately. These tracks are great to use as temp tracks (temporary placeholders until final edits are completed). Should directors, editors and producers fall in love with a temp track, it’s already cleared, ready to license and pre-priced. A simple call or email to wrap-up the license is all that’s needed.

Most companies representing independent music also offer free music searches so a production team can focus on the production. It’s the difference between going to a huge library and browsing through rows and rows of books, searching for just the right one, or getting help from the research librarian. It is far more efficient to use the skills of a professional to dramatically narrow the search for the right track at the right price.

When music is left as an afterthought, it often shows. Music is key to making a production more engaging and memorable. It often puts the viewer in a time and place or sets the stage for dramatic effect. A few notes, arranged into an original sound, can sell a car or move an audience to tears. Finding music that works is both an art and a business all its own.

Article is a guest post by Seb Jarakian from musync.com. For further details about music licensing visit musync.com or contact by email: info@musync.com.

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But then, it happened: somwhere in the early ‘01, trance really hit me hard! I bought a compilation CD called Trancefloor.net (2001) and included were some very uplifting and melodic tracks such as Airfire feat. Talla 2XLC – No Signs Of Life, Svensson – Clubbin On Sunshine, System F – Cry (Oliver Llieb Remix), Traveler – Bright Sun… so much energy, drive and emotion! I got goosebumps all over and I WAS SOLD!

It was a golden era of trance and also a starting point for my music hobby.

Unfortenately, that era is long gone now…

…and electro house seem to rule..

Electro house has taken over all the dance music and IMO it’s the reason that SOUL has disappeared from modern trance. It has killed the traditional trance. Trance sounds more and more like electro house. Sure, there are tons of brilliantly produced trance songs which have cool elements, basslines, rhythms and wacky effects, but where’s the sensation, uplift, drive and memorable melodies? All I here is slow electro house style drumloops, blips and blops everywhere without anykind of emotion or memorable theme… And most of the songs sounds like they’ve come from the same procuder. Everything’s sounding the same. Everyone’s using same drumkits, loops, fx, sidechain compression pumping, etc. There’s no variation in production techniques.

Seriously, it seems electro house has taken over the whole EDM scene. It has infiltrated into every dance music genre, not only trance. Just listen. But most dramatically into trance. Modern trance sounds like 30% trance and rest is electro house: bleeps, blops, wacky fx’s, weird noises, pumping sidechain compression, no melody and if there is it builds up only into first breakdown and then…. nothing… it doesn’t develope anywhere from there, just more bleeps, blops, snap-crackle-and-pops-with-pumping-bass-and-fx and then all the way to outro. Plain boring, I say! No doubt it’ll work on a dance floor, but when “trance DJ’s” play it in their “trance radio shows” it gives me just YAWNS and definetely none of these songs won’t ever stick to my head and most definetely I ain’t gonna listen ‘em again or buy a cd or MP3.

Why’s electro house infiltrated everywhere? Because it’s so freakin’ popular! DJ’s play it, people like to dance to it and there’s some money to be made with it. Of course every producer want’s his music to be popular (and I don’t blame them, I wan’t that too), so add a little electro house elements to your music and you have a hit!

Sometimes I wonder maybe the reason why everything’s electro house these days is because producers have run out of ideas? Maybe all the melodies has been used already so all there is left is just electro house style blips, blops, clicks, fx and drums?

Nah, I don’t think so. It’s just so uber-POP!

I don’t say all electro house is bad; even I like some of the catchier tunes from this genre. It’s just I hate because it has been infiltrated everywhere. Too much is too much. And most sadest thing is it seemed to have killed traditional uplifting trance. No one doesn’t seem to produce good trance anymore and I miss those good ol’ days of hard energy emotional tunes..

Or maybe I’m just getting old and hankering back to the good ol’ days when everything seemed to be better

If you’re a fan of electro house, don’t be offended what I wrote here, this is just my opinion and my taste of music!

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