Modal Camera
2018/Music/ExperimentThe Modal Camera is an experiment in mapping the brightness of a captured image to a modal scale. Some musicians would equate the amount of flats or sharps within a scale to the brightness of its sound. Lydian has a #4, making it the brightest. Locrian is the darkest, as it has a b2, b3, b5, b6, and b7. You could list them from brightest to darkest like so:
- Lydian (#4)
- Ionian
- Mixolydian (b7)
- Dorian (b3, b7)
- Aeolian (b3, b6, b7)
- Phrygian (b2, b3, b6, b7)
- Locrian (b2, b3, b5, b6, b7)
In terms of what's going on in the background, I just average out the brightness value of all the pixels in the image, and then arbitrarily map that brightness value to one of the modal scales.
You can find a link to this experiment here.