Early experiments: encoding images with sound

YouTube Uploaded by ScrollingMusic on Mar 23, 2011

"The predecessor to our MATLAB synthesizer is a function we call RevSpectrogram, which interprets an image of any size as a spectrogram of a sound, and creates the sound based on the intensity of the pixels in the image. When the sound is visualized, the spectrogram image obtained retains much of the properties of the original image.

We encoded four sample pictures with RevSpectrogram:
1. An improvised picture with white lines
2. Picture of a gull (taken by Andy Wang)
3. "Earthrise", taken by William Anders in 1968 during the Apollo 8 mission to the moon
4. A Windows glass desktop background

The reverse spectrogram interpolates each pixel to a linearly-spaced frequency index. The frequent clicks you hear prevalently are a result of the linearly-spaced sine waves matching up every 1/20th of a second."

Matlab Synthesizer - Beethoven: "Waldstein" Sonata

YouTube Uploaded by ScrollingMusic on Mar 3, 2011

"Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op. 53. I. Allegro con brio

This sonata is considered to be one of Beethoven's greatest and most recognized, and one of the three particularly notable ones of his middle period. Beethoven completed this sonata, one of his most technically challenging works, in the summer of 1804. During this time, Beethoven had begun to develop hearing problems that would lead to his deafness in later life. The "Waldstein" name comes from the sonata's dedication, to Count Ferdinand Ernst Gabriel von Waldstein of Vienna, a close personal friend of Beethoven's.

This synthesized rendition was generated by our Matlab synthesizer. For this piece, we programmed a very velocity-sensitive sound whose harmonics change with changing dynamic levels. Volume levels alone are not enough to convey the vast scope and grandiosity of this work. The colors in the scrolling visualization correspond to dynamic levels as well, with red being the loudest notes in the piece."

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