Ljómi
In developmentAurora to MIDI, in real time
Our flagship system takes aurora borealis footage, live or recorded, and turns it into generative music over MIDI. It detects green, pink and purple aurora hues, measures their intensity, movement direction, wave pattern and area coverage, then translates all of it into notes, chords and MIDI CC values.
Availability
Ljómi is not available to buy or download yet. The system below is built and running, and the demo is real footage of it working, but it is not packaged for release. If you want to use it, or want to know when it ships, get in touch.
See it working
How it works
Aurora colour detection
Detects three primary aurora colours, green, pink and purple, with configurable HSV ranges, so you can tune sensitivity to the conditions you're shooting in.
Brightness-driven harmony
At low brightness the system produces simple triads. As intensity rises it builds through seventh chords to full ninth chords, so the harmony tracks the aurora's energy.
Wave pattern analysis
Measures the coherence, wavelength and speed of aurora wave patterns and maps them to MIDI CC values, giving you continuous control data alongside the note events.
Per-colour MIDI routing
Each detected colour can be routed to its own MIDI channel, letting you assign different instruments or synth patches to green, pink, and purple aurora activity independently.
Configurable musical scales
37 scale types: diatonic modes, pentatonics, blues, jazz and symmetric sets, and world and synthetic scales. The root note and octave range are both adjustable.
Performance optimisation
Resolution scaling from 240p to HD, configurable frame skip rates, and MIDI value deduplication to stop message flooding, without breaking up the musical transitions.
Technical specs
What it needs,
what it emits
- Input
- Live camera or video file
- Resolution
- 240p to HD
- Output
- MIDI (notes + CC)
- Colours detected
- Green, Pink, Purple
- Scales
- 37 configurable
- MIDI channels
- Per-colour routing
- Latency
- Real-time
- Platform
- macOS
Technical fact sheet
The full signal path, the ten features extracted per colour class and how each is measured, the MIDI mapping layer, and a plain account of what the system does not claim.
Read the fact sheetUse cases
Where it earns its place
Live aurora viewing with a musical soundtrack that responds to what the sky is doing
Studio composition using recorded aurora footage as a generative MIDI source
Modular synth performances driven by aurora data via MIDI-to-CV conversion
Multi-sensory installations for science centres, planetariums, and exhibitions
Tour operators offering aurora trips with an immersive audio dimension
Input
Interested in Ljómi?
We’d love to walk you through the system, answer questions, or discuss how it fits your workflow.