Blue Sweater Society asked me to create an album cover for their EP that reflected the way the songs on the EP flowed together. With the idea of water colour in mind, we discussed the concept of incorporating technology to directly output a digital image from their music. If we could turn each of the songs on the EP into an image we could see the correlation between each of the tracks and their relationship with each other.

The core of the image is generated from a Spectrogram. A Spectrogram is a visual representation of the spectrum of frequencies of sound over a length of time. In this case a song from the EP.

A spectrogram of one of the tracks 'Draw Water, Cut Wood' looks like this:

The Spectrogram is blurred to create a smoother end result and is colour is shifted to a colour palette that better reflects the mood of the EP.

The post processed Spectrogram is then input into Cinema 4D as texture. To achieve the marbling effect the image is distorted using a large variety of Noise Distortion and Distorter Effect layers. The layers parameters are controlled by data from the song using a controller made in Xpresso. We used a variety of data including: Key, BPM, Length, Lyrics Word Count, Unique Words, Syllables, Average Syllables, Time Signature, Number of Stems, Date of completion as well as the spectrogram itself. As a result the image generated from the distortion becomes distorted in a unique way for every song.

This is the output from each song on the album:

From each of the images generated you can see similarities they share, such as the color, complexity, patterns and gradients.

The EP cover uses the same technique but using a combination of all the elements and data of the single covers to best reflect the album as a whole. The design of the cover was designed with minimalism and balance in mind to compliment the busy marbled image.

You can listen to Blue Sweater Society's EP, 'Draw Water, Cut Wood' here: