This is Music On An Oscilloscope - (Drawing with Sound) - Smarter Every Day 224

2.3M views · 7 years ago · explainer · evergreen

Smarter Every Day episode 224 explains oscilloscope music, where audio is made so that an oscilloscope in XY mode draws images and animations. Destin Sandlin visits the musicians who make it and shows how the sound turns into pictures.

HN people recommend it as a fun explainer of how drawing with sound works, and use it as the reference for how oscilloscope music is made.

“Smarter Every Day did a video with the same people from TFA that shows exactly how they do these.”

6 comments from Hacker News

j
@jcims2021 · in “Why machine learning struggles with causality”
I think we have a hard time disconnecting our personal experience with the observations we make. When we look at a photograph of a person riding a bicycle down a path, even if we've never ridden a bicycle we've likely been outdoors, stood on a path, felt wind when we moved, etc. We may not be able to accurately simulate the experience in our mind but we can get close. On the other hand, the starting point for an ML system interpreting that same image is essentially a stream of scalar values that tend to demonstrate multiple layers of periodicity (3-4 byte intervals for RGBA and then another layer per line of rasterized image data and yet another per frame if it's a video). Here's a quick experiment. Let the video linked below play for a five count (sound is essential but a bit intense so maybe moderate the volume first) so you have some confidence it's not just me playing a rude trick, then close your eyes for a five count. There's going to be a major change in the sound when you get near 'five', now try to imagine how the scene changed before opening your eyes again: link I think without any reference from an embodied perspective, we're asking ML systems to understand the sounds (which are also streams of scalar values that demonstrate periodicity) the same way we interpret the representation visually. (Also if you enjoyed the example above check out these two channels, some of them are mindblowing) link link And a fun video explaining it all - ▶ this video
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p
@peterwallhead2019 · in “Drawing with Sound (Oscilloscope Music)”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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a
@artsandsci2019 · in “Drawing with Sound (Oscilloscope Music)”
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@tyscorp2019 · in “Drawing with Sound (Oscilloscope Music)”
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b
@beaucarnes2019 · in “Drawing with Sound (Oscilloscope Music) [video]”
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d
@dylan6042024 · in “Oscilloscope Music N-Spheres”
as a follow up to my own post. I couldn't remember the video, but the YT algo found it for me[0]. Smarter Every Day did a video with the same people from TFA that shows exactly how they do these. I can't find any better evidence to show your "thoughts" being totally baseless. I hate double replying, but I was busy [0]▶ this video