Visualization
PERF’s central radial visualizer displays all active layers as concentric rings on a circular canvas. Active notes appear as colored arcs; perforated (removed) notes appear as faint dashed outlines. A rotating playhead sweeps through the circle, triggering notes as it passes. The visualizer is GPU-accelerated using instanced OpenGL rendering — approximately 5 draw calls per frame versus thousands with traditional rendering, maintaining 30 fps even with hundreds of simultaneous events.Color Modes
The color mode slider selects how pitch, register, interval, and harmonic relationships are mapped to color. Each mode draws from a different tradition of sound-color association.| Mode | What It Does | Lineage |
|---|---|---|
| Greyscale | Brightness maps to velocity/dynamics only. No pitch-color mapping. Pure structural visualization — like an architectural drawing or engraved score. | Monochrome notation tradition. Focus on rhythm and density without chromatic distraction. |
| Chromatic | Each pitch class (C through B) receives a distinct color from a perceptually uniform, colorblind-safe palette. All 12 pitch classes are visually distinguishable regardless of register. | Paul Tol’s qualitative color schemes for scientific visualization. Equal perceptual distance between colors. |
| Register | Color maps to octave register — low pitches are dark, high pitches are bright. Pitch class is irrelevant; only vertical position in frequency space matters. | Orchestral register thinking — bass instruments as dark timbres, treble instruments as bright. Spectral density visualization. |
| Interval | Color maps to the interval between each note and the lowest currently active pitch. Unisons and octaves share colors; wider intervals are more distinct. | Interval-class analysis. Forte’s pitch-class set theory — relationships between pitches rather than absolute pitch. |
| Tension | Color maps to a consonance-dissonance score. Consonant intervals (octaves, fifths, fourths) are cool/muted; dissonant intervals (tritones, minor seconds) are warm/saturated. The texture’s harmonic tension becomes visible. | Hindemith’s consonance-dissonance gradient (Series 1 and 2, The Craft of Musical Composition). Helmholtz’s roughness theory. |
| Schillingerian | 12 fully saturated colors mapped to pitch classes following Schillinger’s color-tone correspondence. Each pitch class receives a single, vivid, unambiguous hue. Bold, high-contrast visualization. | Schillinger, The Schillinger System of Musical Composition. Systematic 12-color mapping for visual analysis of pitch-class usage and distribution. |
| Scriabin | Pitch classes mapped to colors following Alexander Scriabin’s synesthetic color-hearing associations, as documented in Prometheus: The Poem of Fire (1910). C = red, G = orange, D = yellow, A = green, E = blue, B = pale blue, F# = bright blue, Db = violet, Ab = purple, Eb = steel, Bb = rose, F = deep red. | Scriabin’s synesthesia and color-tone theory. Prometheus: The Poem of Fire (1910) — first composition to include a notated color part (Luce). The clavier à lumières. |
| Rimsky-Korsakov | Pitch classes mapped to the key-color associations described by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in his autobiography. Keys evoke landscape and weather: C major = white, D major = gold/sunny, Eb major = dark/grey, E major = blue/sapphire, F major = green, and so on. | Rimsky-Korsakov, My Musical Life (1909). Orchestral color thinking — keys as landscapes. The Russian tradition of associating tonality with visual sensation (shared partially with Scriabin’s teacher, Safonov). |
The color mode is a visualization parameter only — it does not affect the generated MIDI output. Switch freely between modes to analyze different aspects of the texture in real-time.