Tag: music

Entries for tag "music", ordered from most recent. Entry count: 11.

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# Handy Global Hotkeys for Music Control

Sat
28
Jan 2017

I now have a keyboard without "media" keys, so I came up with a set of global hotkeys that I've set up in my music player and consider quite handy. ("Global" means they work in the entire system, also when player application is not in focus.) I can't remember where do they come from, but I think it's possible that I've seen them somewhere. These are:

Ctrl+Alt+Insert - Play
Ctrl+Alt+Home - Pause
Ctrl+Alt+End - Stop
Ctrl+Alt+Page Up - Previous track
Ctrl+Alt+Page Down - Next track
Ctrl+Alt+Arrow Up - Volume up
Ctrl+Alt+Arrow Down - Volume down
Ctrl+Alt+Arrow Left - Seek back few seconds
Ctrl+Alt+Arrow Right - Seek forward few seconds

My favorite music player is foobar2000. To setup new global hotkeys there:

Select: File > Preferences
Go to: Keyboard Shortcuts
For each new hotkey:
- Search for appropriate action using "Filter list by" and select it. Actions for my hotkeys are:
  - Playback / Play
  - Playback / Pause
  - Playback / Stop
  - Playback / Previous
  - Playback / Next
  - Playback / Volume / Up
  - Playback / Volume / Down
  - Playback / Seek / Back by 5 seconds
  - Playback / Seek / Ahead by 5 seconds
- Click inside "Key" box and press your hotkey.
- Check "Global hotkey".
Close the dialog window using "OK" button.

I'm sure you can do this in other music players as well, like AIMP.

Comments | #music #windows Share

# Music Visualizations - Plans for the Future

Mon
14
Sep 2015

Last weekend I was showing my music visualizations on two parties. First one was in a club, projected on flat screen, while the second one was an open-air party (my 7th and last one in this summer season :) with the image projected on trees. For this one I had to prepare something different - simple, contrast shapes and single color only, so it could be clearly visible. Here is a small video:

It doesn't look like this because I wanted it exactly this way or because that was my "artistic vision", but just because showing some rotating images downloaded from the Internet and blending transformed feedback from previous frame was the easiest way to start with something interestingly looking.

Now I have tons of ideas to improve this program as soon as I find some free time. Next to some small technical tasks like refactoring code or simply adding new graphical effects, I plan following big TODO-s (with no particular order decided yet):

Video playback. Being able to show video streams instead of still images would be great, but is also hard to implement. I plan to use FFmpeg library for this purpose. There are other options as well. I'm afraid of performace of uploading each decoded frame from CPU to GPU, so maybe using Microsoft Media Foundation/DXVA (it seems to work with Direct3D 11) or DirectShow would be better, but on the other hand, codecs for various file formats could be a problem, while FFmpeg has its own codecs.
A second window with GUI to be displayed on laptop's screen, because right now I have only standard Windows console with output done using printf() and input taken from console commands (which is not a convenient way to control the program). Next to some buttons and other controls, an important feature would be to display in this window a small copy of the final image presented on the projector (so the operator doesn't need to turn around to see it) and some technical parameters shown in real-time (like current FPS, audio UV meter).
Music analysis. Right now I have some basic audio input implemented using Windows Multimedia/WaveIn. I want to switch to Core Audio APIs/WASAPI. Currently I only measure peak amplitude and visualize it on this shape in the center, but I could extract much more information from the audio input (perform FFT, detect beat), control more parameters with it (like alpha transparency of some image layers) and try to automatically synchronize visuals to the beat.
Some framework for parameters of different types (bools, ints, floats, vectors, strings, sub-containers etc.), where each one can be serialized to/from a file and exposed to GUI for editing. I guess all progammers love to implement this :) I also did it multiple times already, but this time it will be the ultimate, universal, all-encompassing solution ;) I want parameters to have constant value, to be animated in time according to some curve or to be evaluated from a function depending on some variables, like the data from music input. This way I could use the framework to describe elements of a scene (parameters like position, size, orientation, colors etc.). I already have such system implemented to some degree, but it definitely could be improved.
Support for some input device more convenient than laptop touchpad and keyboard, like a MIDI controller (or a smartphone or tablet simulating one) or... a Wiimote :)
Asynchronous loading of resources, like textures, in the background, on separate thread. Because I know one day all my resources won't fit into GPU memory and I will have to load them on the fly to prepare next scene while showing current one.
Video capture from a camera (or better camera with depth, like Kinect), plus maybe some processing with computer vision algorithms (like in OpenCV library).

Comments | #events #music #psytrance #vj Share

# My visuals on Headrush party in Protokultura, Gdańsk

Fri
03
Apr 2015

Next Saturday, 2015-04-11, you can see my music visualizations on Headrush party in Protokultura club in Gdańsk. There will be 3 scenes with various genres of electronic dance music, and the club is big and very good, so I'm sure it will be great party. My visuals will be shown on psytrance scene. Unfortunately I can't be there myself, but I'm sure my friends Wooffer and Brain Massage will handle setup of this system very well. Some random screenshots:

Comments | #psytrance #music #events Share

# Psychill Evening Vol 2 with my visuals

Fri
06
Feb 2015

On Friday, 13 February 2015 I'd like to invite you for second edition of Psychill Evening party in Paszcza Lwa club in Gdańsk, Poland. Once again the music will be "Psychill, Psybient, Downtempo, Psydub and Ambient", so basically more calm genres of electronic music. Once again I will be doing visuals on this party. See also my blog entry and video below from first edition.

I'm now working on my software to prepare some new stuff. Some random screenshots:

Of course this is a blog about programming, not about art or parties, so in the next posts I will explain some of the technical details behind this program.

Comments | #events #music #psytrance #vj Share

# PsyChill Evening - my first music visualizations

Sat
22
Nov 2014

Yesterday I had an opportunity - for the first time - to show my visualizations as a VJ on a music party. The party was called PsyChill Evening, took place in Paszcza Lwa, Gdańsk, Poland and its musical style was described as "Psychill, Psybient, Downtempo, Psydub and Ambient".

Just like DJ is someone who plays music, a VJ is an auxilliary role of someone who makes visualizations in real-time, displayed using a beamer. There is some software dedicated for this, like Resolume or ArKaos, but what can be more fun for a graphics software enginner than coding my own software? So I made one. Honestly, I planned to write program like this for years, while now I had to do it in just one week, right before the party. It's written in C++ using DirectX 11. Here is how the result looks like:

As you can see, the rendering here is not very sophisticated, CPU- or GPU-intensive. There are just some 2D textures transformed and blended together (plus feedback from previous frame, plus symmetry) - all fading in and out smoothly, as it was for chillout music. But that's not the point here. There is some interesting code under the hood, like the way a "scene" is described in memory with all these changes that happen over time. Time is expressed inside the program not in seconds, but in beats, so after setting right BPM (Beats Per Minute), it synchronizes nicely with the music. The movement of these textures, as well as color transformations are all procedurally generated and random, so it's somewhat different every time. Of course, there is much more to be done here. But now all I need is some sleep :)

I love electronic dance music, so I'm very happy I could connect it wih my profession - graphics programming :D

Comments | #music #psytrance #vj #events Share

# Music Analysis - Spectrogram

Wed
14
Jul 2010

I've started learning about sound analysis. I have some deficiencies in education when it comes to digital signal processing (greetings for the professor who taught this subject at our university ;) but Wikipedia comes to the rescue. As a starting point, here is a spectrogram I've made from one of my recent favourite songs: Sarge Devant feat. Emma Hewitt - Take Me With You.

Now I'm going to exaplain in details how I've done this by showing some C++ code. First I had to figure out how to decode an MP3, OGG or other compressed sound format. FMOD is my favourite sound library and I knew it can play many file formats. It took me some time though to find functions for fast decoding uncompressed PCM data from a song without actually playing it for all 3 minutes. I've found on the FMOD forum that Sound::seekData and Sound::readData can do the job. Finally I've finished with this code (all code shown here is stripped from error checking which I actually do everywhere):

Read full post »

Comments | #math #libraries #music #rendering #dsp #algorithms Share

# Sunrise 2009 in Kołobrzeg

Tue
28
Jul 2009

I didn't post anything on my blog in recent days because I've been offline and away from keyboard on my holiday in Kołobrzeg. It's a nice city at the seaside, but I haven't go there to spend time on the beach taking sunbath :) I've been on Sunrise Festival - a big, 3-day party with trance/house music. I've also made about 800 photos with my digital camera and cellphone. You can see some of them in my new gallery: Sunrise 2009.