Beethoven, Symphony 5





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Uploaded on Jul 15, 2009

Ludwig van Beethoven's Fifth Symphony 5, first movement, with a graphical score.

Q: Where can I get free sheet music for this piece?
A: Here:

Q: What do the colors in the bar-graph score mean?
A: The colors show which instruments are playing. Here's a chart:

Q: How did you make this video?
A: There were a lot of steps; here's a short summary. I found a recording I could license and made the arrangements to use it. I found a MIDI file that was fairly complete, and imported that into the notation program Sibelius. I compared it to a printed copy of the score from my library and fixed things that were wrong (b5_fullscore.pdf is a snapshot taken during this process; note that there was a piano part in the MIDI file --- not something in the real score). Then, I listened to the recording and compared that to the score, and modified the score so that the timings were more like what the orchestra was actually playing (see b5_timings_adjusted.pdf). I exported this as a MIDI file and ran it through my custom frame-rendering software. Then, I made a "reduction" of the score (b5_reduction.pdf) and colored it to match the colors I was planning to use in the bar-graph score (b5_reduction_color.pdf). Unfortunately, when I squished the bar-graph score enough to make room for the notation score, too much detail was lost, so I ended up deciding not to use the notation. Then I put all the pieces (rendered frames, audio, titles) together in Adobe Premiere and exported the movie as a QuickTime file. Then, I used On2 Flix to convert the final file into Flash format (so that YouTube's conversion to their Flash format wouldn't change it in unpredictable ways), and uploaded the result. The PDFs mentioned in this description are in this ZIP file:

Q: You seem to have uploaded many versions of this piece ... what's going on?
A: I started out with this one in 2009:
When YouTube supported higher resolution videos, I did a remake:
Then, I started experimenting with other graphics; this one uses a fisheye effect:
This one shows dynamics, using an "egg" design:
This one shows dynamics, using a "triangle" (rhombus) design:

Q: Could you please make a video of ________?
A: Please read this:



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