MUSIC

10 Cool 

maneiras de

criar música com tecnologia

JOEL WEIDENFELD 2Sonification is the process where scientific and mathematical data is used as a formula for creating sound and music. It can be data of any kind, such as the traffic patterns of a street, or an amount of customers shopping in a particular store over a month. The fluctuations in the numbers are what create the music, and most of the pieces getting made sound great; you usually wouldn’t be able to tell it was made from data unless someone told you it was.

10atrações para Sounds

This awesome new iPhone app created by Perry Hall takes the image from your phone camera recorder, uses data from the varying shades of light, and translates it into sound. Brighter images give brighter sounds, and darker images give darker ones, turning any environment into a dream-like and atmospheric soundscape. The technology works well enough that the sounds change just as gradually as the light does, creating a near-perfect movie soundtrack effortlessly. The experience borders on creating synesthesia, which is a blending of the senses, making you hear colors and see sounds.

9Fractals freaky

Composer Gustavo Diaz-Jerez used the numbers 

generated in the Mandelbrot set, the formula credited

 with discovering fractals, which are systems of endless

 feedback. The result is one of the most spaced-out and 

weird sounds you’ll ever hear. Caution—don’t play on high 

volume, as the song starts off quiet and gets increasingly

loud and could possibly blow your speakers.

8Music From The Sun

Robert Alexander has a background in classical composition 

and now uses his skills at his job as um especialista em

 sonorização for the Solar Heliospheric Research Group.

 In his current project, he samples data from The Solar 

Heliospheric Observatory, which is a Nasa spacecraft used

 to measure and predict solar flares. With this data he makes 

ethereal choir vocals and epic drum beats that make you feel 

adventurous, as if you were traveling through space. The 

drums are partially based on a sped-up version of a 26-day 

rotation of the sun.

7sonificação Máquina

Dennis P. Paul has invented a new way for anyone to criar 

música através de sonorização . It is basically comprised 

of a vice with a rotating clamp, a high-precision 

distance-measuring laser, and custom computer software. 

By putting any small or medium-sized object in the clamp and 

spinning it, the laser reads the distance variations on its 

surfaces and turns them into the audio frequencies in the 

customized computer program. With some more development,

 the frequencies can become musical instruments, making good compositions from any household things like shoes and 

shampoo bottles.

6Planta Soa

An organization named Community Music Wales has been 

developing a project called Estatísticas de som , which

 harnesses plant data to make unique sounds. They measure photosynthesis through temperature, moisture, humidity, and 

light levels over a 24-hour period. Matt Jackson composes 

the data into electronic songs which show how each state 

of the plant has a different sound to it. Poor condition for the

 plants results in a dark and down-tempo beat, while good 

conditions result in a brighter, more upbeat song.

5Pi Canção

Tom Dukich took the endless number pi, or 3.14, up to 1,000 digits andtransformou-o em uma canção . He assigns an instrument to a specific number when it pops up and makes a really unique piece. While this one is a bit obscure and not that melodic, it’s still interesting to see how it can be done. This idea of using math formulas to make music is smart, and could be easily used for something more complicated, such as fractals.

4Higgs Boson batida

GEANT, a high-speed research network for the European Union utiliza dados do bóson de Higgs in their composition. The spikes in electron volts determine the position of notes on a bass, piano, marimba, xylophone, and some percussion instruments. The songs is similar to the pi song, though less scattered and more happy-sounding. It’s probably not going to win a Grammy, but with the songs that do win, maybe it should be in the running.

3Album do Universo

Mickey Hart and his band create songs using vários dados do universovarious data from the universe. In his songs, he uses his audio samples rendered from the cosmic microwave background, various galaxies, pulsars, supernovas, and other astronomical forms and events. The new album,Mysterium Tremendum vol. 2, utilizes these sounds and blends it with musical styles like rock and trance in a unique way that is only paralleled by a few at best.

2Tide Sounds

The Design Rhythmics Sonification Research Lab is a group that focuses on turning historical and scientific data into music. Marty Quinn, a classical composer and computer programmer, has a good method of sonifying the data. For example, when describing how he created a piece based on tide readings in Venice, he says that the flute pitch is based on the wind direction, while the French horn is based on the temperature of the wind. He has many interesting pieces, like the song made from 110,000 years of ice core data, or the musical interpretation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

1Microbial Music

Peter Larsen, a biologist at the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory is turning miles of microbial data into music in an attempt to better understand the relationships that microorganisms have with each other. He doesn’t tweak the data in any way to make it sound more like classical music, so it is a bit off at times, but still sounds good for someone who plays no musical instruments himself.

I hope that by reading this article you have seen that not everyone who makes music needs to be an experienced musician to make pieces that sound good. If you have a good idea, a solid way to implement it, and you can make something you enjoy listening to, then you are just as much a musician as anyone else who plays an instrument.