Matthijs Janssens

Long time no post!

This is a cover that I played and recorded solely for the purpose of testing a real-time audio visualizer that I programmed in MaxMSP and Processing. In comparison to most visualizers that only use one mixed/mastered sound signal as input for generating visuals, I use the midi from the piano notes and the sound signal of my voice separately as input data. This enables much more precise timing, placement and control. I basically draw one cord made by connecting 88 points (which represent the 88 notes one a piano) and every piano note triggers its corresponding point when pressed using its velocity as initial size. The sound of my voice (and some leakage from the piano key presses) control the visibility of the cord and the trail of the 88 particles. It took me a while to get MaxMSP and processing to communicate well and this is basically one of the first sketches that came out of my visual environment. I recorded the song at 3am, hence the rusty singing and piano playing ;) I hope to make more of these in the near future.

I just finished my third speedpaint of 2012 :) It took me exactly three hours to paint (do notice the exponential time growth in comparison with the previous ones... interesting...). I'm still using the same charcoal brush.

I used a photograph of Arved Colvin-Smith as a reference as I don't now anything about anatomy (yet). Although it's only my third speedpaint this year I do already feel major improvements in my drawing skill.

This is a realtime viewport grab (Xoliulshader 2 in 3dsmax and Grabviewport) of the low-poly version of my tractor with normal, specular, glossiness (specularstrength) and diffuse map (2048x2048). The normal and ambient occlusion map are baked with xNormal.

I'm quiet satisfied with the optimized model (around 10000 triangles) and the unwrap though the texturing is done very roughly in two hours... As soon as I find some spare time, I'll finish the texturing and make some UDK materials for it.

I'm currently working on a low-poly tractor (optimized for games, eeuh ... like farming simulator 2013 and such ...) with a diffuse , normal, specular and glossiness map.

In an attempt to clean my old hard drive I stumbled upon a small piece that I wrote back in march 2010 while having the opportunity to collaborate with the amazing Erik Bosgraaf.

I read a lot of Schönbergs music composition books and somehow I tried to create enjoyable music that uses quiet the opposite effects that Schönberg was suggesting though I always tend to use some melodic techniques from Brahms and Wagner.

For example: most (old) classical music keeps either its lowest or highest (or both) and loudest notes hidden until the pinnacle of the piece unveils itself... so... I constantly use high and low notes throughout the piece except in its 'climax' (bar 33) which is written very neatly and quietly. The piece is stacked with these contradictions. Harmonically, I experimented with structures that take overtones into account to create a lot of tension. hence the title of the piece.