Internet Gold: The Best Music Videos | Music Visualization With Physical Effects -- Science VS Music

In this first installment of my new series "Internet Gold -- The Best Music Videos" I ask you 

What does music look like?

Unless you are familiar with waveforms from having worked with an audio or video editor, you might think this is a strange question.

Or unless you have practiced a musical instrument. Or unless you have studied sheet music.

You see,

there are many different visual representations of music.

If you have watched a music video on YouTube, you might have seen a different kind of visualization -- in which some visual effects are applied to a more or less static background image -- and these effects depend on the volume of different frequencies of the music.  

"What does music look like?" isn't such an unusual question after all. Even though initially you may have thought that we only listen to music -- we actually do look at it (or representations of it) quite a bit.

We could even argue that looking at an orchestra playing might be another visualization of music. 

The video I want to present to you approaches this exact question from a totally different angle. It uses

physical effects for visualizing music.

The top YouTube comment to this video describes it really well:

When the DJ comes back from college with a physics degree.

I do happen to have a Master's degree in Physics and I couldn't agree more with this comment -- apart from the spelling of the word "Physics"... 

As stated in the beginning of the video: All the effects you see in the video are real. The effects are not computer generated. Let's watch:  

Pretty amazing phenomena, right?

Explaining the science behind all of them would be too time-consuming. But maybe, now you feel inspired to research some of the phenomena. Feel free to leave links to your findings in the comments. 

Which effect was or which effects were your favorite(s)?

Let me know in the comments!

Personally, I love the flames -- and I have actually seen and felt a "flame tube" like the one in the video in real life. You can actually feel the heat coming from the flames if you are close enough. And you can feel the change in the heat which results from the changing flames -- which in turn are due to the change in the sound waves that are the physical manifestation of music -- pretty amazing stuff!

Speaking of amazing stuff:

Stay tuned for the next installment of "Internet Gold -- The Best Music Videos"! The next topic is "Electronic Music -- Literally".