What it does
Pattern Lab is a single-page web app that uses your device’s camera to track the brightest light source in frame — a pen flashlight, a phone torch, a bright LED on a baton — and renders the path it takes as a fading trail on screen. The result is a real-time visualization of the conducting pattern you actually drew, separate from the one you intended.
It’s the conducting analogue of a cellist watching themselves on video, or a pitcher reviewing release-point footage. Most conducting students think they’re drawing crisp 4-pattern ictuses. Pattern Lab shows them what they’re actually drawing.
How to use it
- Grab a pen flashlight or any bright point source.
- Dim the room.
- Open the app, grant camera access, conduct in front of the lens.
- Adjust trail length, color palette, and detection sensitivity to taste.
Built for
Open-ended use — undergraduate conducting classes, ensemble warm-ups, individual practice. Especially useful for working on ictus precision and pattern shape in 6/8 and other compound meters where the difference between a clean conducting figure and a mushy one is hard to feel from the inside.
Status
Live. Runs entirely in the browser — no data leaves the device.