Magic Music Visuals

Hello Magic world. I am involved in a music project called "Carpet". We are based in Salisbury. After experimenting with various forms of visual media to support our live performances, I discovered Magic, and we have started using it in live performance and to create video from live recordings. Here is an example:
The sound recording is of the live performance of the music. We sent channels of audio to a Mac running Magic from the stage - one channel was a carefully positioned microphone, and the other came from an auxiliary send that was sending audio from the drum machine and a synth.

The video is fairly close to what was projected live, but I was able to tweak things slightly afterwards. I felt this was necessary as watching the video like this is different to watching the live performance at the gig, so I did a special "auxiliary mix" to generate this version. It is fairly similar to the original.

At the moment there are some other videos from the same gig on Vimeo, and I intend to post a couple more. I will add them to this forum in due course.

Please let us know what you think. We are new to this software, so any feedback would be most welcome.

Cheers. Simon.

Great music, and the responsive videos are a huge enhancement. Thanks for both!

I love the kaleidoscopic background here, but IMO the "floating spectrum" is a distraction that reduces the impact (especially with its asymmetry).

I find your other Vimeo "Carpet" videos much more engaging and hypnotic. An en-trancing Magic Carpet ride

Thanks Terry.. I see what you mean about the floating spectrum distraction. I was trying to separate the input of the guitar and the electronics visually in order to try and drive home to the audience the fact that the visuals were being driven by the sounds. You are right. I will take this onboard for the next show.

Thanks for the positive comments

Simon.

Hi Simon,

Simon of Carpet wrote:...I was trying to separate the input of the guitar and the electronics visually in order to try and drive home to the audience the fact that the visuals were being driven by the sounds.

Exactly what I want from my visualisations, a clear link between an element of the visuals and an element of the sound mix. IMHO you have achieved this effectively and beautifully in all the other elements of your visualisations. I really like the idea of giving an instrument an identifiable representation on the screen, please develop this further!

In case I didn't make myself clear, what troubled me wasn't the stylistic separation of the spectrum from the circularly symmetric elements, but its shape asymmetry & its motion asymmetry. I always end up mirroring a spectrum, and ensuring all duplicates are placed/moved/scaled symmetrically too.

I've been listening to your Dirt Sign track (looping in VLC player) as I write this.
Thanks again for your inspiring music and visuals,
- Terry

Example screenshots & attached Magic project showing my favourite way of making symmetrical spectra, the Translate module gives easy control of overlap (choice of whether to have the bass or treble on the outside of the spectrum).