Interactive Groove Visualization via Multithreaded Design

Abstract

“Groove”, the sense of rhythmic “feel”or musical “swing”, is one of the most essential factors for a good musical performance. Groove visualization can assist ones to acquire groove sensation and share impressive expressionsofmusic,regardlessofpersonal hearingability ormusicalsense. Inthisarticle,weproposeanintuitive visualization system called “SeeGroove2”, which converts MIDI musical inputs into graphical form interactively. Rhythm patterns are rendered to various shapes by plotting each played note as a point and smoothly interpolating them. Becauseshapeschangeinteractivelyasthemusicperformanceprogresses,theusercanvisuallyfeeltransitionsin the music. The Groove2 system was implemented in a multithreaded fashion, by coupling threads of input processing at 1,920 Hz and threads of rendering at 60 Hz.