abstract

Spheres is an absolutely gorgeous, hypnotic abstract music video by Regis Hervagault:

42000 HD frames at 50p for a duration of 14 minutes, this is my own little space opera inspired by the teachings from Anaxagoras of Clazomenae. philosophy.gr/presocratics/anaxagoras.htm

Using a variety of software including open source tools and custom scripting, i designed a mesmerizing spaceball choregraphy to evoke atoms, DNA, seeds, spirals, fractals, etc…

The first draft screened as a backdrop for the robotic and live music performance by URBAN ORCHESTRA at the city council during the new year celebration in 2008 meeting critical acclaim.

Here’s the final director’s cut with an updated soundtrack and tighter edits to fit my original vision.

This reminds me of the amazing pairing of Ron Fricke and synthesist Micheal Stearns on movies like Chronos, except here, abstract images are used.

Give this a look and leave a comment with your thoughts!

MOOG + PACIÊNCIA

Slow animal, fast images.
Music and video by Arthur Joly.

Videographic Modulations for Meditation and Visualisation – music and visualizations by Jeffrey Siedler, from 1995.

via JeffreyPlaide:

Shortened from its original 21-minute version, this work is a visual and aural meditation.

The abstract images were intended to instill a calm, giving the mind a focus, much as would be accomplished by focusing on a mandala. The ambient music underlying the imagery was composed to create a relaxation of the body and is of a suitably unearthly surreal quality to bring about an aural complement to the animated visuals.

The images and music represent levels that transcend the world of appearances, the world of this reality. The images describe the harmonic patterns of the natural universe.

Created by analogue video synthesis, the imagery results in a complex cascade of dynamic modulating waveforms.

oubliettezombie demonstrates how to turn your thumb into a pad synth sound:

In this video, I take the sound of my thumb moving around on the microphone (Shure SM57) and turn it into an atmospheric pad sound.

The most important step in this process was scanning through the recorded sound and setting the loop points in such a way that the source sound became more interesting. After that, things like filters, envelopes, FM, etc. can be applied to really give it life.

All manner of found sounds contain individual waveforms that are far more exotic and complex than the basic waves found in synthesizers. Sometimes this is desirable, sometimes it is not.

If you know of other interesting examples of sound design, leave a comment!

This short video, Train of thought, is by Hans-Jörg Scheffler and features his work with Omnisphere.

Footage was taken looking outside the window from the Shinkanze on the way from Hamamatsu to Tokyo by my good friend Tommy Snyder.

I manipulated the raw footage in V-Track and composed the soundtrack with the new Omnisphere Softsynth from Spectrasonics for all instruments including the drums and vocals.

The vocals are a sample of a british boys choir singing the words Agnus Dei.

I totally deconstructed the syllables in Omnisphere to create a new texture.

Sheffler has several other abstract music videos for his Omnisphere tracks on his Vimeo site.