Classical Music, Visualized with Animations

November 11, 2017 8:05 PM

Stephen Malinowski of the Music Animation Machine creates beautiful animated visualizations of classical music, which enable viewers to see repetition, variations on a theme, structure, complexity, and other interesting properties of music.

If you're trying to figure out where to start, may I suggest:

Children -- a playlist of well-known songs, most under 5 minutes, showcasing a variety of animation techniques and musical structures (Begins with Pachelbel's Canon in D, animated in the round). A wonderful place to start!

Top Ten videos -- his greatest hits on YouTube

Christmas Songs -- if you feel seasonal

Large Ensembles -- if you like the visual chaos

Or just hitting the playlist page and looking for your favorite composer (Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Vivaldi, etc), genre (contemporary, romantic, patriotic), instrument (guitar, harpsichord), animation technique, or composition technique.

Previously: Malinowski's animations were featured 11 years ago on MeFi, when he had just a few available online (there are hundreds and hundreds now!) and arcane technical skills were required to access most of them.

posted by Eyebrows McGee (5 comments total)

I like these animations, also because the performances they use are usually good ones. I'm particularly partial to Philharmonia Baroque's rendition of Beehoven's 9th.

And I put them on on the living room TV from time to time. My kids will watch literally anything that moves on a screen if it's outside of "screen time", so I've used this trick to expose them to classical music and get them somewhat engaged.
posted by Harald74 at 11:19 PM on November 11, 2017

I happened upon a couple of these videos recently and very much enjoyed them but didn't stop to wonder how many more there might be in the same vein - I'll be delving into these links for weeks to come: many thanks for posting them!
posted by misteraitch at 11:22 PM on November 11, 2017

"My kids will watch literally anything that moves on a screen if it's outside of "screen time", "

I put this on while we were waiting for everyone to be ready to watch a movie, and the kids enjoyed the animations so much we never got to the movie! They watched for probably an hour and protested loudly every time I tried to change it.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:27 PM on November 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm young enough that I used to watch these when I was a KID. Thanks for the blast from the past.
posted by lilies.lilies at 9:23 AM on November 12, 2017

So good.
posted by King Sky Prawn at 10:57 PM on November 12, 2017