For this project, I decided to manipulate pfft~ to visualize a composite rhythm. The piece I decided to visualize was Clapping Music by Steve Reich. Clapping Music is a piece that deals with rhythm being shifted out of phase of another until finally the original rhythm comes back again.
As seen above, Reich shifts the original rhythm over by an eighth note until the original rhythm returns and marks the end of the piece (as noted with the D.C. al Fine). The piece is essentially a simple statement of how even just a simple, repetitive motive can be tweaked to create some really interesting polyrhythms.
I chose this piece for this project solely because I have always wanted to visualize this piece. Having studied and performed it in one of my classes, I have always wanted to hear and see this piece in an even more abstract way.
My process in Max8 was to take a patch originally made in class and I built off of it. I first made sure the incoming sound was from a .wav file and not my adc~ and then created two more shapes to fly around the screen. Then, jit.mo was put into place to help control the color scheme of the shapes in an organized fashion. I also made sure that the scale of the shapes was consistent with that of the intensity of the sound file. In other words, the higher the decibel, the more intense or larger the shape. When the original theme of Clapping Music returns, I turn up the dB level to help distort and emphasize this feature.