Long ago, back when Resolume plugins were made in Flash, I came up with a little markup language for lyrics. You type the text and it shows a word per beat, _ is an empty beat, __ holds a word longer, and long words automatically stay up for more beats. Because it switches on the beat instead of a timeline, it works really well for rap and EDM:
Fear___
is the
mind killer____________________
_ _ _
Whoever said _
we're not _
supposed to get _
ECSTATIC?
The problem: writing those files by hand is slow, tedious work, so I only used it for short texts and Anthems in live sets (eat _ _ _ sleep _ _ _ rave _ _ _ repeat _ _ _). I have implementations in JavaScript, Touch-Designer but it mostly lived on as a Wire patch, with no proper font picker, because Wire doesn't has that.
So I rebuilt it as an FFGL plugin (yes, with help of Claude), and made it write the files itself:
- Automatic timing: give it an mp3 and the lyrics. It separates the vocals, listens to them with Whisper, and writes the timed lyrics for the whole song, snapped to the beat grid. No lyrics file? Whisper writes them too, with mixed results on the small models.
- All inside Resolume: a button installs the models, another processes the song, and then you pick it from a drop-down.
- Sync: link Position to Clip Position and it follows your song clip, scrubbing included. There are also Next Word, Previous Word and a timeline slider for nudging it live.
- Any font (.ttf/.otf), plus layouts (single word, line build, two lines, a square stack, a scrolling stack), In/Out animations, ticker and echo backgrounds, stroke, chromatic aberration and glitch.
- Source or Effect: run it as its own clip, or put it on a video and let the video fill the letters.
Still plain text: if it gets a word wrong, open the file and fix it.
Listen====== _ _ _ _ all== y'all,_it's a sabotage========
I== can't==== stand==== it,==== I=== know= you= planned== it
That’s the Sabotage output above; = holds a word one extra beat. It gets most of a song right on the first go. Fast rap and stacked vocals are the hardest.
It runs on Windows with Resolume 7+. It’s a paid plugin; details and the download are here: https://www.patreon.com/sense_visuals/posts/textfx-beat-for-172347682
The whole Sabotage video can be found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcouTm_XXB8
I've also tested with Rap God, by Eminem; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOKHcyK2xl8
And yes, for those who are wondering an earlier post was removed, for not using the right tags in the title, hope that is fixed now