Visualization Project Translates Classical Music Into Colorful Imagery

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The Four Seasons, Antonio Vivaldi

Self-described “designer, data geek, fractal nut” Nicholas Rougeux has merged open-source music with data visualization to create colorful imagery based on some of the most famous classical music scores in history. From Mozart and Beethoven to Chopin and Vivaldi, it’s fascinating to see how these well-known pieces translate into artistic data visualizations.

William Tell Overture, Gioachino Rossini

For Off the Staff, Rougeux relied on MuseScore (free music notation software which allows community members to share sheet music) and OpenScore (a project that aims to “digitize and liberate all public domain sheet music”). Interestingly, Rougeux himself can’t read sheet music, but he’s able to parse it, pulling out single notes from the scores. Each individual instrument is represented by a different color, resulting in the brightly hued imagery, which is available as posters.

Wedding March, Felix Mendelssohn

“Every time I extract data, I never know what it’s going to look like,” Rougeux tells My Modern Met. “I had some inklings for some pieces like Flight of the Bumblebee with its rises and falls but even that one surprised me.” To create his visualizations, Rougeux altered the traditional representation of scale, typically noted by the different clefs on sheet music.

The Four Seasons Winter, Antonio Vivaldi
The Barber of Seville Overture, Gioachino Rossini

“I did away with that and showed all notes in their natural position on the scale—distance from center—no matter how high (farther) or low (closer) they were. Essentially, while sheet music shows notes from different scales on the same staff, my project shows different staffs on the same scale—hence the name, Off the Staff.”

Symphonie fantastique, Hector Berlioz
Quintet, Luigi Boccherini

In terms of color scale, he typically tries several different shades and hues to see what works best, as he never knows the final result until the visualization is complete.

Piano Quintet No. 2, Gabriel Fauré

The self-taught web developer and artist hopes that Off the Staff will allow people to see music in a different way and reveal something hidden within the notes. By taking something people naturally consume using their auditory skills, he enjoys flipping the experience on its ear by appealing to different senses. Surprises are sure to be discovered and Rougeux appreciates hearing what people take away from his work.

Hallelujah, Messiah, George Frideric Handel

Off the Staff is a data visualization project that translates famous classical music scores into colorful imagery.

Flight of the Bumblebee, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Cannon in D, Johann Pachelbel

Each instrument in the score is represented by a different color.

1812 Overture, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Creator Nicholas Rougeux used open-source data from MuseScore and OpenScore to complete the project.

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