What if you could see music? I believe that almost everyone naturally does as a child, but that the relevant neurological connections recede as people grow up. In my case, they happened to persist, and experiments on my ever-so-tolerant students suggest that in the vast majority of adults, these connections merely lie dormant and can be reawakened at any time.
As a result, I started developing the Music Visual Scale (MVS): an original system for re-teaching this primordial music vision, allowing one to see musical processes moving through time: melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, dynamics, phrasing, expression and formal structure, all at once, effortlessly, without losing any information. With sufficient experience, one can even collapse an entire musical piece into a single glance, an inner 3D visualisation.
If you think this fanciful, please indulge me and try the following. Looking at the shapes below, which one is called Bouba and which one is called Kiki?
If you said the spiky form is Kiki and the round one is Bouba – how did you know? And why were you so certain? – Indeed, up to 98% of people give the same answer, regardless of culture or native language. This effect has puzzled scientists since its discovery in the 1920s. I say the explanation is simple – it's a rudiment of your ability to visualise sound.
And you likely possess more than just a rudiment. Sound engineers often describe mixes as "muddy" or "clean and crisp". If you can recognise this difference in, say, a 1920s phonograph record vs a modern pop song, chances are that you can learn to discern between other qualities, too – and to see them with your inner vision. This is what my Music Visual Scale teaches.
Unlike conventional notation, the MVS reveals the spatial and timbral architecture of music in real time, allowing one to see sound as shaped motion across a mental canvas. This motion can also be represented statically, allowing an instantaneous overview over any given piece of music.
I am currently working on two components of this project:
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Elegant Music, a book outlining how to (re-)acquire this skill
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A computer program/DAW plugin which will apply the method and "translate" any piece of music into its visual equivalent
The MVS is designed to foster intuitive thinking, facilitate composition and sound design, and to illuminate the aesthetic logic that underpins music. More than just a niche thought experiment, the MVS's potential applications reach beyond the field of music itself:
USE CASES & APPLICATIONS
Teaches people to see music
No need for external lightshows. The MVS teaches people to visualise complex patterns in music – without the years-long theoretical training previously required. The immediate, quasi-sensory understanding exponentially increases the pleasure derived from listening to music.
"Impossible" audio engineering
Up until now, it has been notoriously difficult, almost impossible, to separate different components of any given music after mixdown. The MVS provides a theoretical framework to allow future DAWs to do just that.
Improves music as a field
Since the MVS allows its users to visualise complex musical structures at once and with ease, it also allows them to compose proficiently – and to separate the wheat from the chaff when improving their works.
Facilitates language learning
In many languages, pronunciation differs markedly from orthography. Using the MVS to visualise the sound of a phrase rather than relying on spelling greatly facilitates the acquisition of phonetically complex languages such as Chinese, Russian or French.
Opens music to the Deaf
With the MVS, even complex music can be brought to life with a unique, accurate and non-random representation. Using the graphical, animated output, the complexity and joy of music can be shared even with those who can't hear it – whether it be a Beethoven symphony or the raw energy of punk rock.
Actual AI, not just an LLM
Music is difficult to pin down in purely mathematical terms. The MVS allows for clean abstraction of previously fuzzy components, such as subtle variations between different interpretations and mixes – nuances with profound emotional effect. Using this data, an artificial intelligence could be trained to act intuitively, just like a human would.
Promotes synergistic thinking
Up until now, synaesthesia was thought to be a congenital trait. But with the MVS, acoustic synaesthesia can be (re-)learned. Just like learning an instrument, this is bound to hone the user's creative and synergistic thinking, even in unrelated fields.
Retrieves masterpieces
Music archives notoriously suffer from underfunding and understaffing, with the result that unsung late composers and forgotten masterpieces have little prospect of being discovered. A score processing program equipped with the MVS would be able to visualise archival music and preselect potentially interesting works, drastically reducing workload for overwhelmed institutions.
Truly explains music
Many great philosophers and physicists have examined music; but so far, none has found an exhaustive, clear answer on what music actually is, and why seemingly simple sound waves have the complex effect that they have. With the MVS, humanity would move one step closer to understanding the organic, living, breathing nature of music.
CURIOUS?
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