Animusic - computer animated music

[ThatCrazyGuy]

I was plodding through StumbleUpon again, looking for something interesting. I eventually found Animusic, which is a company that animates MIDI music. They create the music using keyboards and stuff, and then run it through a program called MIDIMotion to automatically sync the signals to the video, so they don't have to do it manually. They have 17 tracks on two DVDs, the third one is  on the way. If they did it manually, they said on their site that they would still be on their first track, getting everything synced by hand, and even then it would be buggy. And MIDIMotion is their proprietary software. It's not for sale.

I think it used to be on PBS, once upon a time a long time ago.

Some guy on YouTube ripped the videos off the DVDs. These are simply astounding, I have them on my PSP, and I watch them all the time!

Animusic 1:

1 - Future Retro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd3LwxCzuGY

2 - Stick Figures

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km0-TStvuy8

3 - Aqua Harp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZvEFyCivzU

4 - Drum Machine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3vS3LGH5gs

5 - Pipe Dream (very popular, viewed 822,000 times, favorited 5500 times!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAvPRbh0jmE

6 - Acoustic Curves

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCGvbZdCVFE

7 - Harmonic Voltage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ine1etqrBMo

Animusic 2

1 - Starship Groove

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNC6PiLfiAg

2 - Pogo Sticks (has the base player from Stick figures in it, with two strings and wheels)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1gaPEDdllU

3 - Resonant Chamber

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1hqF9nqabQ

4 - Cathedral Pictures (based off 3 movements of Mussorgsky’s classical piece "Pictures at an Exhibition")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr5z2D2i2zs

5 - Pipe Dream 2 (remake of the original because of its popularity, same instruments, but playing a different tune and with different camera angles)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfu5VkfrhYc

6 - Fiber Bundles (supposedly it's music with fiber optics)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-HauiX-Ni0

7 - Gyro Drums

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AESFB93Bg7E

8- Heavy Light

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g5uL1Z764o

Enjoy!

EDIT:Uh...should this be in the video thread instead?

[Mr. Krystal]

Pretty cool. I've never seen all of them before. They aren't quite as good as I had hoped. He just doesn't really play my favorite stlyes of music.

[ThatCrazyGuy]

Yeah, I suppose. The techno stuff gets old after awhile, but it's still fun to watch. My favorite is probably Resonant Chamber.

I've seen all of them a bunch of times. I wish I could see some of the 3rd DVD like they did with 2 when it was in development.

It reminded me of an old VHS tape I used to watch when I was a kid called Imaginarium or something like that. It looked very similar to this. Then I found out it was the same guy, Wayne Lytle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA2hcJ3Owo4

The green things made me laugh. Note the comments. Everyone says it's total nostalgia. It looks like I'm not the only person on this planet who saw that tape, let alone remember it.

Remember, Imaginarium was made in 1990, and that's a long time ago when it comes to CGI. People were astonished by this, and gave it all kinds of awards.

On another note, the first video ever made by Animusic (as a company, it didn't exist in 1990) was a piece called Beyond the Walls. The bubbles make me laugh. It was made in '96.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu4fnzItU4E

I think that's all I can scrounge up.

[foxbird22]

Whoa...   Those are amazing!

I can't believe how awesome they are.  No wonder you watch them on your PSP all the time!  This was certainly a great find...thanks for posting these!  :D

[Mr. Krystal]

Yeah, I suppose. The techno stuff gets old after awhile, but it's still fun to watch. My favorite is probably Resonant Chamber.

I have a hard time saying that most of the Animusic songs featured above be considered techno. The only thing that might make it techno is the odd choices and combinations of instruments, but you could just as easily call that alternative.

[ThatCrazyGuy]

Y' know, I wasn't saying ALL of them were techno, just the things like Fiber Bundles and Harmonic Voltage and stuff like that. Those kinds are extraordinary the first few times, but after you watched them a lot, it doesn't have the feel you had when you saw it the first time.

The non-techno ones, like Resonant Chamber and both Pipe Dreams, can be watched a lot. I find something new in some of them every time I watch them.

One last thing, if you want to save YouTube videos to a portable device or something, you can use saveyoutube.com. In comes the URL, out comes a flash video file (.flv). You do have to turn the .flv file into a .mov or something with your favorite converter, though.

P.S. My router took a dive at my other house, so I can't post as often.

[Mr. Krystal]

Y' know, I wasn't saying ALL of them were techno, just the things like Fiber Bundles and Harmonic Voltage and stuff like that. Those kinds are extraordinary the first few times, but after you watched them a lot, it doesn't have the feel you had when you saw it the first time.

The non-techno ones, like Resonant Chamber and both Pipe Dreams, can be watched a lot. I find something new in some of them every time I watch them.

One last thing, if you want to save YouTube videos to a portable device or something, you can use saveyoutube.com. In comes the URL, out comes a flash video file (.flv). You do have to turn the .flv file into a .mov or something with your favorite converter, though.

P.S. My router took a dive at my other house, so I can't post as often.

.flv files can be played natively by VLC.

[RPGmaster2000]

Damn, those must've taken ages to create!  :)

[ThatCrazyGuy]

.flv files can be played natively by VLC.

Yeah, I know. I have VLC Portable on my jump drive that I have around my neck all the time. 

I just mean things like iPods and PSPs and other miscellaneous portable devices can't play .flv files, so they need to be converted.

Damn, those must've taken ages to create! 

It doesn't take as long as you might think. All the syncing to the video is done automatically and not by hand, so one would think that takes a LOT of time off the animation part and gives more time to the actual music.

Oh, and their homepage, animusic.com, is where you can buy all their stuff. They have an FAQ on the support page. They even have CD soundtracks.

The download page is cool, they have screensavers and wallpapers and an HD version of Starship Groove and Resonant Chamber in 480p and 720p by Apple, but you need a fast connection and a reasonably fast computer.

ATI made a real-time demo of Pipe Dream to show the power of the Radeon 9700. It's cool, you use the mouse to move the camera around. You don't need a Radeon card, just something about the same. I got a GeForce 7300 LE and it works fine.

Animusic says their DVDs are for sale at places like CompUSA and Good Guys.

[Four-eyed Vulpine]

I have a Firefox add-on that allows me to download and save embedded videos that you can't download otherwise.  Heck, I've got around 50 YouTube videos saved on my Ipod, along with other countless game soundtrack albums I've mooched off of Sol downloaded.