Is there a TouchDesigner project for detecting builds, drops and energy?

General TouchDesigner Discussion
1

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to build an automated DMX lighting system for my technobasement using TouchDesigner + QLC+.

My goal is to create a lighting engine that reacts to the musical structure, for example:

Intro / low energy
Break
Build-up
Drop
High energy

I’ve already tested the built-in Audio Analysis CHOP and projects like Last Beat Standing. They provide useful outputs like beat, BPM, bass energy, etc., but I still can’t reliably detect builds and drops across different tracks. Absolute thresholds don’t seem to work well because every song behaves differently.

Before I spend weeks building my own system, I wanted to ask:

Does anyone know of an existing TouchDesigner project or component that already estimates builds, drops, or musical sections?

Any recommendations, projects, GitHub repos, or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

2

Unless you can characteristically determine the categories you want.. using the CHOP data out of Audio Analysis

Intro = low: 0-0.5 mid: 0-1 high: 0

I’d say that it’s not possible to determine these because inherently they’re subjective to the song, genre, etc.

Before worrying about automation, maybe try building the logic layer that will help you switch between these categories you want. Start with binding the categories to some kind of input and then work outwards from there.

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3

I have not gotten too deep into this yet but you might find Darien Brito’s EssentiaTD work inspiring:

You might be able to detect some musical sections if they differ dramatically in some way like BPM, loudness, spectral center etc. Curious if you come up with something cool….

Hope this helps.

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4

I would honestly spend the time building something that allows you or a friend to hit buttons to change the scenes. Much more fun! Humans are really good at this! Machines not so much.

5

I hear you. Simply cutting on the beat as a person listening can be pretty helpful. I like the human touch too, but some parameters are great to derive from the music. This is a difficult topic - helping visualize music or midi/audio react. Good luck!

6

With techno, it’s all about the grid.

You can be sure interesting things will happen on the downbeat every four, eight or sixteen bars.

The energy of a track can come from so many random factors. Just bringing in a high hat or changing a synth cutoff.

it’s definitely worth trying to put some music together yourself in a daw. Even very badly.

This really helps you understand what signals you’re trying to pull out.

The big issue is that your software is only going to know what’s happening after the fact. It can’t analyse something till it’s happened.

7

Yes and no. While I have not tried it out fully yet, Darien’s software has a mode for pre-recorded music that analyses offline at its leisure for a more accurate analysis. In other words it HAS already happened and therefore has more time to process and analyse.

I hope to learn how to use that feature for non-live pieces. Has anyone here on forum made good use of that yet?

Absolutely agree on this part. I do make music all the time in Live 12 and have experimented with using TDAbleton to control visuals a fair bit. A bit slow but tolerable latency for some effects, and very flexible. I have barely scratched the surface of what Ivan’s TDA can do, but have had some troubles with very large multi track Live sets. See forum for details. I am always interested in what others have done too with TDA so please comment guys anyone who uses it frequently on hints and tips. Cheers all!