SeeGroove2: An Orbit Metaphor for Interactive Groove Visualization

Groove, the sense of rhythmic feel or musical swing, is one of the most essential factors of a good musical performance. Groove visualization can help players/listeners acquire groove sensation and share impressive expressions of music, regardless of personal hearing ability or musical sense. In this paper, we present SeeGroove2 as an extension of our previous system SeeGroove, by featuring a new groove visualization scheme relying on an orbit metaphor. Rhythm patterns are visually interpreted as various orbital shapes by plotting each played note as an orbiting circle and smoothly interpolating them. Thanks to the adoption of a module-oriented and multi-threaded architecture, the system can change the orbit shapes interactively as the music performance progresses, and thereby the user can feel groove transitions in the music on the fly.