Download the completed VDMX Project file for this tutorial.

Often when working with a DJ or other musician, it is the job of the VJ to keep the visual events in sync with the BPM of the music that is playing back. In some cases it is possible to get this information directly from the software they are using as MIDI Clock or MIDI Time Code, but otherwise to keep a beat clock in sync requires tapping out a tempo or manually dialing in a value.

One of the more powerful tools available to the modern VJ is Waveclock, a beat tracking application designed to listen to music from a microphone or line input and convert it to standard MIDI Clock that can be used as a master to drive VDMX and other VJ software. Waveclock is surprisingly accurate, with an emphasis on maintaining phase accuracy to keep the signal and visuals perfectly on beat. And as demonstrated in this video, it is also incredibly easy to use alongside VDMX.

For this tutorial we begin with enabling Waveclock to send MIDI Clock to VDMX by using the Clock plugin. From there, a step sequencer plugin is added and used to control the color parameter for a Quartz Composer composition playing on a layer. As a final step, an audio analysis plugin is used to adjust the radius size input for the composition to show off using the MIDI and audio capabilities of the two applications simultaneously.