A Reimagined Guidonian Hand

3 min readOct 18, 2021

MUSIC 256A Sound Peeking Visualizer

This visualizer is based off of the Guidonian hand, a mnemonic device used in Medieval Europe to help conductors direct singers before sheet music was used. In this system, each part of the hand refers to a certain note. The conductor is able to point at different parts of the hand to help, say, a church choir sight sing.

The Guidonian hand, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guidonian_hand and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBq-S_QdU2U

The Guidonian hand is much more complicated than my description, but, for the sake of this project, it’s essentially a really interesting way to depict sound with the hand. I ended up taking the bare bones concept of the Guidonian hand and applying it to a visualizer that, rather than directing live, man-made sound, actually creates computer-generated notes.

I wanted to create a more full sound than just bare notes, so I decided to model my sound after carnatic music. I looped a tanpura drone in the background, overlaid with a distorted LiSa version of the same sample (adapted from the example LiSa-load.ck). The hand itself draws from the red dye that Indian classical dancers often use on their hands to emphasize each movement and draw attention to the fingertips and palm. Each finger, upon movement, creates a different note.

The narrative of this visualizer is both part of the histories it draws from and the “narrative mode,” in which the hand runs through several programmed mudras, or hand motions that dancers use to signify specific objects and emotions.

The user is able to move the camera through the game and view the hand (and spectrum) from different angles.

User Controls

Finger movement: A (pinky), S (ring), D(middle), F (index), V (thumb)
Play narrative mode: N
Toggle on/off mouse-controlled camera angle: T
Move camera forward, back, left, right: Arrow keys