Seeing the Music

May 26, 2016 5:52 PM

How the Toronto Symphony Orchestra uses graphic design to guide its audiences though its music

A deft mix of text and graphics, the guides can be read while listening to the performance, their layout visualising the thematic progression of the music, indicating the keys in use, what instruments feature and, using morse code-like notation, their duration.

posted by damayanti (9 comments total)

I went to a show there in October with my partner and these were a really cool way to follow along for someone like me who is not familiar with this type of music.
posted by torisaur at 6:08 PM on May 26, 2016

Wow, that's pretty neat. I took my son to see the Seattle symphony last year when they played Pokemon soundtrack music. I was amazed that it was a multi-media experience, and found that the entire audience was engaged and entranced by the experience. it seemed to me that the symphony , like many libraries, is finding a variety of ways to engage a new generation and remain relevant in this tech heavy age.
posted by OHenryPacey at 6:10 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Cool idea. Anything that helps people enjoy more kinds of music is a good thing.
posted by freakazoid at 6:20 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is fantastic.

I remember reading an Economist post about ways in which classical music could shed the association with elitism and appeal to people more broadly. Many of the strategies mentioned for getting people into classical music were directed at the transactional elements of going to a concert--last minute tickets, unusual venues, online streaming-- rather than the music. This seems like a great way to enhance the musical experience itself.
posted by Collaterly Sisters at 6:48 PM on May 26, 2016

That dot and dash notation reminds me of those karaoke video games.
posted by emeiji at 7:32 PM on May 26, 2016

I love the idea of this about a thousand times more than the traditional program notes that try to get you to engage with the music by creating some sort of narrative or trying to associate particular feelings with various sections of the music.

But I just tried a couple of these (Mozart Symphony 41 and Brahms Symphony No. 4) and got super lost trying to follow both of them. And I can actually read music well enough to follow an actual score.
posted by straight at 9:57 PM on May 26, 2016

This is exactly the sort of thing that helped me (a virtual non-musician and absolute non music-reader) finally click with some classical music. In my case it was synced graphical scores on Youtube which did it - this one of Beethoven's 5th was the first I came across; I clearly remember watching it for the first time with my jaw hanging increasingly open.

Much much more like this on the creator smalin's channel.
posted by protorp at 12:18 AM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Hey! I was also reminded of smalin's youtube chanel. My favourite is Arabesque #1.

Before opening the article I imagined that the symphony might be projecting similar kinds of visuals but I think that would be annoying to too many people. The printed guides are pretty cool.
posted by beau jackson at 7:47 AM on May 27, 2016

I'd echo the above comment about the difficulty of following the graphic during the concert. It's a great concept to start with but it looks like they left out the critical step of actually testing it with live users. They could fix this easily by projecting on a screen, the part of the graphic which is currently being "played"
posted by storybored at 1:33 PM on May 27, 2016