Template:Score Vizualizations

KeyScapes

Craig Sapp's KeyScapes are visualizations of harmonic structure. Sapp began to develop them as a graduate student at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University in the late 1990s. Although keyscapes are useful in giving a synoptic view of the harmonic structure of single movements and/or works, their use in the aggregate indicates many changes over time. The initial Tonal Landscape Gallery gives a brief visual introduction. For large-scale comparison functional (relative) harmony (divorced from a specific key) proved more useful than exact-pitch (absolute) mapping. Every piece at Sapp's KernScores website provides a virtual keyscape that may be absolute or relative. In movements with repeats, the user may select a view with or without repeats included.

Music Animation Machine

Stephen Malinowski's Music Animation Machine (MAM) is well-known in computer-music circles but is underutilized in calssrooms, where its value transcends diverse levels of education and musical training. Originating in California in 1985 and continuously improved ever since, it works like a video-camera for the inner workings of music fabric. It presents a wide range of geometrical objects moving across the viewer's screen. Depend on its settings it can emphasize relationships between pitches, harmonies, rhythmic values, loudness, and so forth. Viewers will find rhythmic patterns and contrapuntal refinements of the music being viewed hard to miss. Although MAM was originally dependent on MIDI, it has been retooled to work in live concert settings. Malinowski's Youtube channel (smalin) offers the best current (graphical) lexicon of its offerings, but other MAM websites include the history of its gestation and development, freeware (Windows only), sample files (ibid), and miscellaneous items.