Accompanying an otherwise rote Jon Pareles piece about how Diplo and Skrillex made a hit with Justin Bieber, is a remarkable video.

Alongside interview snippets of the three artists run graphics of the various sounds. The graphics change as the sounds change and as the track is explained and built over the course of the video. It’s a great example of using a visual medium to explicate audio. I can’t embed it here, so click this link to see it:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/08/25/arts/music/justin-bieber-diplo-skrillex-make-a-hit-song.html

(It’s also amazing to catch glimpses of Skrillex manipulating Ableton on his laptop. The speed and deftness the result of thousands and thousands of hours staring into a very different visual representation of music)

Bonus: A Disney version of a similar impulse:

(Parenthetically, this NYT video is also a great illustration of the future of the web. Note that the URL is a regular .html page. But there is no Flash video player here. They’re not embedding anything in a window. Assuming you have a modern browser and you have scripting turned on, it’s adaptive and plays full-screen no matter what device you use.)