Visualizing Piano Music with the Piano Spiral

An interesting visualization of Piano Music makes use of the repetitive design of the piano, 12 semitones on black and white keys, and maps it onto a spiral where each ring of the spiral indicates another octave.

In this representation, the notes with higher frequencies are in the center of the spiral, starting with C8 (as in the piano). Each radial block of keys represents a single pitch class, so octaves (when two adjacent notes of the same pitch class are played togeter) look like a pair of keys being pressed radially. You’ll see this a lot in the Scott Joplin videos I’m going to upload shortly.

An interesting approach that yields some neat graphics.  Not terribly interesting from a science aspect, but fun to watch.

This story written by Randall Hand

Randall Hand is a visualization scientist working for a federal research lab, aiding researchers to discover the insights buried within their terabyte datasets generated on some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. He also runs VizWorld.com .

Science music, spiral, visualization