8/19 M.A.M. : Grosse Fugue Guitar Movie

I think of a Beethoven piece like a little journey.  Not very different from a movie of sorts, or a book.  That's one of the reasons I love Stephen Malinowski's Music Animation Machine (MAM Player).  Basically this is a piece of software which can play a MIDI file and produce a meaningful movie visualization of the music.  That iTunes/Windows Media visualizer?  Now obsolete.  I've been mesmerized by them sure, but ultimately they are completely useless when it comes to actually conveying any visual information with musical meaning.  The MAM player actually charts the movement and duration of MIDI pitches and durations in real-time.  It can also be set to visualize interval relationships and tonality!  Somewhat.  A (moving) picture is worth a thousand words so check out the Blogger video I made below...

In this video I loaded Bunji Hisamori's MIDI file of Piano Sonata 7 Mvment 1 into the MAM Player and set the display to "Part Motion BALLS".  I screen captured it using CamStudio but it's actually much smoother in its original form.  Anyways this animation looks like something that would result if Klee, Kandinsky and Beethoven got together to make a music video.  Each color represents a melodic line and each sphere represents the duration of a note.  There are about a dozen other display modes but this one is the most meaningful for me.
 

Grosse Fuge-ed Guitar Parts

OK now I combine the MIDI re-arranging abilities of Anvil Studio and the animation of the M.A.M. and you can get this bit of fun...("it might get loud")

(MIDI voices changed to 2 gtrs and 2 dbl basses)

MIDI sequenced by F. Sung,

Edited with Anvil Studio, CamStudio, Virtualdub, Adobe Audition

STRING QUARTET Op.133 "Grosse Fuge" (1826) 
("Guitar Version")

Listen to this 10 times in a row and you will either add 20 points to your IQ or go insane. Or perhaps both...

(Stephen Malinowski, the author of the MAM did a superb version with a real recording here.  No guitars though.)

Here's one more, to display the inverted color feature.  Not the best-sounding synth samples, sorry...
The Cello Sonata Opus 102.1, Mvment 4 (set to inverted colors)

Alternate Youtube Link

So here's this great free program where you can make your own instant Beethoven music videos!

Get MAM player here
Get MIDI files here. 

Also you may want to read my previous MIDI post which has many more MIDI links and info.