giant step

March 20, 2005 8:41 PM

one giant step for mankind...
posted by onkelchrispy (17 comments total)

Every now and then, something on the web simply amazes me. More rarely, that thing has Flash in it. Thank you very much for that, onkel. It was very playful and colorful, which is how I feel about Coltrane in the first place.
posted by kahboom at 8:59 PM on March 20, 2005

That was delightful!
posted by felix betachat at 9:01 PM on March 20, 2005

More rarely, that thing has Flash in it.
This animation was made using Maya. The presentation was Flash, but only for playback of the rendered movie.

Regardless, this was pretty frickin good.
posted by 4easypayments at 9:22 PM on March 20, 2005

(see also) [slightly related]
posted by shoepal at 9:31 PM on March 20, 2005

This was especially amazing around 60 years ago when the NFB's Norman McLaren did it.

Collaborating with jazz great Oscar Peterson, he produced Begone Dull Care (1949), using his method of painting images directly onto film to create an onscreen interpretation of Peterson’s music. The film received recognition and awards from festivals and organizations worldwide.

I can't, for the life of me, find any video clips online, but he was a master at interpreting music on film by painting on the film stock.
And then there were the films were he actually painted the sound onto the optical track of the film. Very cool.
posted by chococat at 9:41 PM on March 20, 2005

Very cool, and using a song I like, doubly cool.
posted by riffola at 9:46 PM on March 20, 2005

that was excellent.

and how great a teaching tool that would be when introducing people to jazz...
posted by Al_Truist at 10:44 PM on March 20, 2005

Rad..
posted by AloneOssifer at 11:40 PM on March 20, 2005

Wow. Amazing how synchronized the animation is to all those fast notes.
posted by Tlahtolli at 11:46 PM on March 20, 2005

Reminds me of the animation that went along with "Rhapsody in Blue" in Fantasia 2000.

Which is a good thing, a very good thing.
posted by WolfDaddy at 5:18 AM on March 21, 2005

Same here WolfDaddy... in fact i was sure it was the same guy until i just looked it up.

Very impressive that he got all that vector information to whirl around that easily, and full screen, too.

On a side note I <3 Coltrane.
posted by phylum sinter at 6:51 AM on March 21, 2005

Cool stuff. I'd always thought this approach would be a good way to teach music theory and/or music appreciation, being able to visually see patterns that may be more obscure when you're listening to them. I created a short film like this (Beethoven, not Coltrane) in college, with the little different-colored squares and lines, but it was incredibly laborious and of course I had to wait till it was all done before I could see if it really accomplished what I wanted. I wish we'd had Flash Maya available to us back in those ancient times.
posted by soyjoy at 7:27 AM on March 21, 2005

Gives new meaning to the phrase "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."
posted by fungible at 7:41 AM on March 21, 2005

Apologies... I flagged the post after I checked the link and saw some generic web page with another link to a guy's portfolio. I think the link everyone's talking about is really here, no? If so, it's amazing.

Thanks.
posted by aberrant at 8:00 AM on March 21, 2005

Isn't this a double? Or maybe it was linked to from Ask?
posted by kenko at 8:09 AM on March 21, 2005

kenko, it showed up on del.icio.us a few weeks ago and from there on a variety of other blogs. I feel like it has been in the blue before too, but damned if I can find it.
posted by shoepal at 8:45 AM on March 21, 2005

shoepal: It was in the thread you referred to!
Also neat: see an animation someone made for this song here.
posted by GeekAnimator at 8:53 AM PST on December 6
posted by tellurian at 2:42 PM on March 21, 2005