When thinking about the way sound is used in animations, it is interesting to consider the use of animation in music videos. In this context, rather than being used as a tool to accentuate what the audience is looking at, it is the music which is at the centre, and the animation should work to emphasize that.
One recent example which I think works well is Blinkink's video for the Arctic Monkey's song Do I Wanna Know? which (in some scenes at least) literally just animates the vocals and instruments of the track, showing white oscilloscope lines on a black background. As the song progresses, multiple sound waves in different colours are used to represent harmonious vocals, before the lines distort into characters, cars and other moving figures. Yet the song is rooted by its strong bassline, and consequently the animation always returns to the pulsating oscilloscope, and there is always the sense that any shapes and figures that we may see are drawn out of the line of sound waves.
What stands out to me about this partnership of music and animation is that the animation is constructed so sharply around the beats of the music. While viewing examples of animations which visualise sound, I was irritated by Walter Ruttmann's Lichtspiel Opus 1 as there seemed to be little or no correlation between the sound and the visuals; the shapes may have reflected the tone of the instruments, but in my mind they just didn't seem to respond to the rhythm of the orchestral music. Blinkink's animation, on the other hand, has a strong sense of musicality, with the figures' movements corresponding exactly with bass and drum beats.
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