Capture the colors, play the world back
What would a photograph sound like if its colors became musical decisions?
An image becomes a score. Color translates into pitch, duration and intensity.
AN INTERACTIVE STUDY INSPIRED BY THE PROJECTONE COLOR, ONE NOTE.
Take a photograph of the world around you.
Average its pixels into a grid of colors.
Map color channels to pitch, duration and velocity.
Adjust the grid, tempo, scale and effects.
The instrument captures a photograph of the real world and reduces it to a grid. Each cell holds the average color of a group of pixels, turning visual detail into a surface for sequencing a sample.
Changing the grid size changes the material available to the sequencer. The source remains a piece of the world you chose to capture.
Different color channels control different musical dimensions: note pitch, duration and velocity. The image becomes a set of relationships that can be heard as well as seen.
Automatic pitch detection helps establish a scale. The mapping connects a captured image to a musical structure that the user can continue to shape.
Grid size, tempo and scale type remain adjustable. Reverb and delay give further ways to transform the sound after the image has supplied its initial pattern.
The photograph is a starting point for playing with a sample: capture a scene, listen to the pattern it suggests and reshape that pattern through the controls.
A photograph becomes material for composition, with room left for the person playing it.