Beginner: need help generating the right graph.

Hello, thanks for taking the time to look at my question.

I need to create a surface/topographical type graph, I have no idea where to even begin to get what I want.

1) I need to create a GRID structure which will later take on data. This grid should be a rectangular grid with an X axis that is 150 squares large by a Y axis that is 88 squares tall... I need a Z axis that is 7 squares.

2) this GRID stands for X (discrete events/time), Y (the 88 keys of a grand piano), Z (the energy of an attack/dynamic contour which can be at 7 different dynamic levels).

3) I then need to be able to enter XYZ data which I've compiled for about 150 different events (X axis) which would show the exact piano notes being played (Y axis/88 sized grid) while also showing the dynamic/attack contour of each entry.

That is all I need to do more or less, alongside a few other things like, color the Z axis on a scale from silence to very strong attack, etc.

Drawing this is pretty simple for me, but, being that I want to generate a few of these and that they will end up having a bunch of data points, I think it best to just figure our a way to move this into a program like MATLAB.

Any help is welcome!

Answer 1

[Christine Tobler]

I'm afraid I don't quite understand the question. It sounds like you have a 150x88 matrix containing integers from 1 to 7, which you would like to plot. This can be done as follows:

   X = randi(7, 150, 88);
   surf(X);
   colorbar

(will look pretty bad because the numbers in my example are completely random). Was this your question, or is it about how to get the matrix into MATLAB?