Hang about. I may have given away the punchline in the headline, and now there’s not much more to say.
“Hey, is there a plug-in out there that I can just switch on and visualize music with?”
I can’t count the number of times I get asked this. That could make the following a very popular download, indeed. Animator Alex Rutterford’s original Gantz Graf video, interestingly, was not reacting to audio. But generative technique has moved on since then, so aping the style of the visuals in a patch makes some sense. The results aren’t perfect, but they do demonstrate what could be possible in satisfying this appetite for visuals that run autonomously. Details on the newest plug:
Someone wrote me asking for help moding Ganz Graf by user vh. (http://www.maxforlive.com/library/device/133/ganz-graf-live)
In messing with the device I swapped out the Max interface objects for live.* ones so presets can be saved in the Live library. This is a simple patch really but great fun to create audio reactive visuals to your music.
When I get some time I’ll keep modding and adding features to this one, including child devices to put on different tracks to send different data sources in to change different aspects of what gets rendered.
To use on stage:
(*) Add to your master track (or track you want to trigger it)
(*) Map menus and number boxes to controller knobs (or rack and map to macro knobs for instant mappings)
(*) connect laptop to projector and turn off “mirror displays” (on Mac)
(*) move floating video to display being projected and hit Esc
I have mixed feelings about the desire for “automatic” visualizers, in that I hope that musicians continue to appreciate the art of the live visualist. On the other hand, that’s exactly who is developing this sort of thing. In the end, the more visualizations flourish, the healthier the scene may become. Have a look at the showreel of Clint Michael Sand, aka synnack, who does some terrific work with this (and developed this modded plug-in from a previous patch in the Jitter community):