Piano & LED Strip Visualization
I’m just casually playing around on the piano here—nothing too structured. Mostly, I’m observing the light patterns that are generated in real time.
In this setup, I’m using the MAINFRAME MIDI visualizer connected to two LED strips. One strip is placed on top of the piano inside a diffuser, while the other is mounted behind the piano, facing the wall for some ambient backlighting.
Both strips are running from a single MAINFRAME unit through a splitter, which means they’re showing the exact same pattern. Splitters open up a lot of creative possibilities when it comes to spatial lighting setups.
The piano is connected to my PC via USB, with Ableton running in the background just to route MIDI to MAINFRAME. But MAINFRAME doesn’t need any special plugins, VSTs, or drivers—Ableton or any DAW is totally optional. There are lots of free apps that can handle MIDI routing if needed.
This particular piano only has USB MIDI, but if it had a 5-pin MIDI output, I could’ve connected it straight to the MAINFRAME B+—no computer necessary.
The visual output on the LEDs is fully customizable. You can tweak parameters like hue, brightness, position, decay, and more. The core of the patterns is always based on note length, but I’ve also added some modulation, so things like pitch and velocity can influence what you see.
For example, if I press a key harder, the lights get brighter. Higher notes can move the visuals through the color wheel. This combination—note length, pitch, velocity, and all the tweakable parameters—adds a lot of depth to the experience.
The thing is, I never fully know what the lights are going to do until I play. And that’s the beauty of it—the lights become a part of the performance. They react, they inspire, and sometimes they guide my playing.
It’s this interaction between light and sound that really excites me. MAINFRAME, especially when using modulation, was designed to create lighting that feels expressive—lighting that feels alive.
And that’s been one of the main goals of this project from the beginning:
How do you create an expressive lighting system?
