Line: a line art music visualizer for your Mac.

Line draws music with a pen: thin strokes on black that the sound bends, plucks and turns. It is the style that holds Wave, the scene that comes free with LIQUIDWAVE for Mac.

One idea: a line the music moves

A line art music visualizer shows less, and that is the point. Every Line scene is drawn in strokes: a waveform, a ring, a contour, a string, an oscilloscope trace, the edges of a solid. There is little color. Wave has a gold line and a cream one, Solids is ivory, the rest are white or gray on black. What changes is the shape.

The low end takes the largest motion, the kick and the snare each get a stroke of their own, and the hats fray a line for the length of a hit. Position comes from counters that only climb with the tempo and the loudness, so a line can speed up or slow down but never jumps back.

The scenes

In the order the app lists them:

Wave. The app's own mark, drawn live: two horizontal lines inside four corner brackets, gold above and cream below. The lower line reads the sub-bass and bass, the upper one the mids and highs. A kick makes the lower line jump and broaden, a snare makes the upper one jump, and in silence both pull flat from the outside in.

Ripples. Thin white circles spreading out from a small ring at the center, each tied to one of the seven frequency bands. A kick swells the core and sends a ring out of it, and a snare a thinner, brighter one.

Topography. A contour map that never stops changing: white lines over black, each with a faint gray echo like a print slightly out of register. Hills rise, close into rings and merge. The tempo and the loudness set how fast the land changes, and each kick or snare raises a hill with a ring of contours running out of it.

Strings. New in 1.1. A row of taut hairlines strung between two bridges, the bass at the edges and the top of the mix in the middle. A sounding string is drawn the way the eye sees one, as a pale lens with bright edges that closes back to a line as its band falls. The kick plucks an outer string, the snare one further in, and each kink runs to the bridges and back. A click plucks the string under the pointer.

Lissajous. New in 1.1. An oscilloscope in XY mode: one beam tracing a Lissajous figure, its phosphor glowing where the beam slows into a turn. Every sixteen beats the figure glides to the next ratio, 1:2, 2:3, 3:4 and on. The bass widens it, the kick punches it outward, the snare rings along the trace and the hats fray it.

Solids. Moved here from Graphic in 1.1. One Platonic solid in thin ivory wireframe, from tetrahedron to icosahedron, each held for under a minute and then folded into the next as vertices split and edges grow out of them. Every vertex is pushed by one band, and a kick punches the whole body out and tips it.

Waveline. An amplitude-modulated signal: a fast carrier inside two slow lobes, fading out toward the edges, a nod to a classic record sleeve. The bass lifts it, the kick stretches it wider, and as the music quiets it is pulled flat from the edges in.

Pulsar. Rows of stacked traces, each one hiding the rows behind it, another nod to a classic record sleeve. The bass raises the peaks, a kick punches the traces and a snare lifts the whole plot. Waveline and Pulsar close the style on purpose, like hidden tracks at the end of an album.

With different music

Line follows the shape of a track closely. A sparse piano piece leaves Wave's lines nearly straight and Strings barely open. A club track plucks a string on every kick and keeps Lissajous punching outward. Bass-heavy music widens Lissajous, swells Solids and raises Pulsar's peaks. The tempo sets the pace: Lissajous changes ratio every sixteen beats.

With Line chosen in the Styles panel and Shuffle on, LIQUIDWAVE plays every Line scene once before any comes round again.

What Line won't do

Much of Line goes still when the room does. In silence Wave and Waveline lie flat and every string stops; Lissajous draws in and its beam slows to a crawl. Ripples, Topography, Solids and Pulsar keep only a slow motion of their own. With no source running at all, Ambient Auto plays a score of its own, but a running source that hears silence leaves them still.

It won't fill a room with color either. For that, try Chroma or Metal.

Wave is free

Wave is free for good, and the free download includes one more scene you pick, from Line or any other style. One purchase unlocks the rest, inside the app.

The other styles

Line is one of ten styles across 60+ scenes. Graphic prints the music as pattern. Wire takes the line into 3D, as wireframe seas and a drumhead. Spectral reads it pitch by pitch, with an oscilloscope of its own. Every style is on the styles page.