Music from the Galaxies

So here's an astrophysicist making music. Her name is Dr. Fiorella Terenzi and she...well, read this:

“I jam with the cosmos. I jam with sound coming from the Jurassic time of earth, 180 million years old sound and this is a fantastic feeling. We think of the universe as very quiet and silent, instead it is an active place, a place where everything is being created constantly. The process started by using an antenna - the antenna is pointed to the celestial object. We receive radiation, radio waves. The celestial objects are ‘singing’ at a very high frequency that we can not hear. So I shift the frequency down and then I listen to these cosmic modulations. I look for chords, I listen carefully. I listen to what the galaxy is singing and playing in this random chaotic background, and I jam with the galaxy. That is my galactic music. When you look up, you see Orion; this fantastic constellation. But Orion was this mythological hero, you know - the warrior, the lover. But I’m not afraid to say ‘hey, I’m fantasising about Orion like my celestial lover.’”

-Fiorella Terenzi

Terenzi: Described by Time Magazine as a cross between Madonna and Carl Sagan...

I'd like to say that that paragraph was going well for a while, but anyone who claims to start and introduction with 'I jam with the cosmos' in such a hippy/spiritual type way (as opposed to the likes of Stockhausen who was verging on insanely eccentric) just makes me roll my eyes. The Universe is very quiet and silent, without the technology of light to sound conversion. And there's something I just don't like about the term 'celestial object' (especially coming from someone with PhD in astrophysics)... and I really don't need to know about her fantasising over Orion her celestial lover.

However, in a lecture given to Brevard College in Florida (available for free on itunes), I do like this comparison she gave of radio astronomy to music:

"I really wanted to hear the stars and quasars and a lot of the galaxy. How can you hear light? How can you hear infra red, x ray, gamma ray, UV light? Very simple, because this electromagnetic radiation has the same parameter of music and sound. It has frequency (high pitch, low pitch) and intensity (loud, soft). So that’s very easy. Once they are decoded in the same way, I can find a key to interpret the radiation. Think about the intensity of the frequency - the vibrations per second. So my voice is probably modulating at around 440 vibrations per second. If you are a soprano you probably go up to 4000hz - very high pitched, definitely. Now when you go up to the Universe , take a look at this number: millions to billions of hertz. Hydrogen is 1420Mhz, galaxies - billions to a thousand billions. You can’t hear this frequency. That’s totally inaudible. We can hear 20hz (20 vibrations per second) up to 20 000hz…. Everything else is silent for us. That doesn’t mean there is no sound. So now, sound and light have the same parameter. Great, I have a key to translate everything. I can take those high frequencies and turn them into something I can hear, I can detect."

Terenzi's album Music from the Galaxies was released in 1991, so probably the first of it's kind. The data was taken from a galaxy named UGC6697 and is quite an unusual galaxy and one of interest to many radio astronomers. It was perhaps the most appropriate galaxy to use in Terenzi’s music ; its characteristics include a marked asymmetry, peculiar rotation curve and a high star formation rate - all of which are interesting from an astronomers point of view while adding an distinctive element to the music. Terenzi then uses each of these sounds to create seven pieces, each highlighting the characteristics of particular events. Here is the track listing:

Sidereal Breath
Galactic Beats
Stellar Wind
Plasma Waves
Collision
Radio Core
Cosmic Time









I'll not go into a breakdown of each piece; I like this album because I appreciate the sounds radio telescopes can capture...but can't help feeling that by track 3 most people will lose interest. I really do feel that there is only so much that you can do with these sounds, as their variety is limited. Changing and manipulating them wouldn't make sense on this particular album.


I feel that good electronic music is focused on the envelope of sound and how that is presented - the stereo panning to create a sense of motion and the reverbation used to create the vast and empty atmosphere of space do that well. The recording effects are what makes the length of this repetitive album more interesting.

Aquarids

The Aquarids meteor shower takes place between 28th-30th july (this year, right on the eve of a full moon - how inconvenient). However it will be possible to view meteors from this shower from the 20th july - making it possible to see some shooting stars during my outdoors performance!

I've began writing 'Perseids under a Devon Sky' today, despite the beautiful sunshine and chorus of birdsong outside my window telling me what I'm missing out on! Composing Music by William Russo has some great instructions on techniques that I'd like to brush up on. Scherchen's Handbook of Conducting is a great guide for both composer/performer, and Cambridge Companian to cello/violin should help me out with any techniques issues (being a piano player and everything).
Watch this space.

yah!

I always have a sense of pride when stumble upon something new...

http://www.olsondecariduo.com/science-and-music/creativity-in-science-and-music


couldn't have found it if i'd been looking for it.

Carmen of the Spheres

I got caught in the black hole of wikipedia yesterday, (you 'wiki' something silly, that you want a basic explanation of, then find an interesting link to something else, and another linked word on that page, etc...) and I ended up on the page explaining 'Musica Universalis'. Then there was another link (this is going somewhere, I promise) to a composer's page, by the name of Greg Fox. He has written a piece with a really cool concept, and here's what he's about:


"My approach in "Carmen of the Spheres" is to try to literally hear the planets as they orbit the sun. Obviously 365.25 days is a good deal slower than the average sound wave!! However there is a wonderful principle in acoustics, at the very least for humans, and that is that when you double the speed of the wave, the "flavour" of the pitch remains the same. The implications of this are obvious for things like "octaves" - an F# is an F# is an F#. However we can only hear certain frequencies - broadly speaking something like 50hz (ie. a pressure wave hitting the ear drum 50 times per second) up to (depending on age and exposure to loud noise!) around 5000hz, perhaps higher. Meaningful musical inflections are available for much of this range to differing extents, with chordal harmony being possible from approximately 300hz up to approximately 2000hz. Once the trick of doubling the frequency takes the sound-wave outside what we humans can hear, we have to take nature's word for it that an F# is still an F#, but there's no reason to suppose that it's not equally true. Therefore if you have the planitary orbital period enough times, you should find the "pitch" of a planet orbiting the sun (or rather that pitch raised several (in the region of 36 to 40) octaves!! (Obviously this metaphor has limits: doubtless planets do not orbit with ABSOLUTE reliability, though perhaps the 'errors' in orbital period become "small enough" once the wave has been sufficiently sped up!!)

Anyway so the method is to take the orbital period of the planets in seconds, divide and divide and divide by two until the frequencies can be heard. This gives us six octaves' worth of "planet notes" for each planet.

This approach could yield a variety of types of music and types of project. However for this specific piece I decided to further increase the "consilience" of the method by applying the same data to duration. A little higher up the scale of halvings, the periods are long enough (and short enough) to be useful as durations, so those are the durations I used."

-(http://homepages.tesco.net/gregskius/carmen.html)

I really like his logical and impartial approach to composing music. Plus, these pieces are free to download!! Thank you Greg Fox!

Thoughts on composition

I've been thinking more about my compositions; with my proposal approaching I'd really like to be lucid in outlining my plans.

I do prefer writing pieces that musically try to depict an event of some sort, such as writing a piece about a black hole therefore the timbre could get incredibly more dense... or the idea I had for using the data I recorded during the Geminids meteor shower. I have written pieces that are based on observations too, and I translate what I see into music. Come to think of it, I don't just sit down and write a pretty little piece then name it after a star... there is actually a process behind it. So perhaps I'll look at music that uses similar methods for my dissertation to give the two a stronger connection...

I did it!!!

I spotted the International Space Station! I walked to a field where I would have little obscurity from buildings/trees, took out my trusty compass, and double checked these directions:

LOCAL DURATION APPROACH DEPARTURE
DATE/TIME (MIN) (DEG-DIR) (DEG-DIR)

Wed Feb 03 07:12 AM 10 above S 13 above SSE

It was still quite dark and since this was the third attempt at sighting it, I took my small laptop with me and turned on the program Stellarium which was able to map out degrees and directions accurately. To be honest, it just looked like a normal satellite. But the point was, it wasn't. It was so nice to watch it go by.

I even waved...

Sounds of the Universe... or are they?

I gave my presentation today, and got lots of helpful feedback. A lot of my classmates seem interested and enthusiastic about what I'm doing, and I've been told to check some things out.

Michael Maier:
German alchemist (1568 - 1622). I googled him and have found something he's written called 'Música hermética', which seems promising.

John Hall suggested I check out Sun Ra and the Arkestra. I listened to a sample and it's very Jazz (I don't like Jazz!) And like the crazy Stockhausen, Sun Ra claims: "I never wanted to be a part of planet Earth, but I am compelled to be here, so anything I do for this planet is because the Master-Creator of the Universe is making me do it. I am of another dimension. I am on this planet because people need me". (http://www.elrarecords.com/sunra.html). Seems interesting but I'm not sure if I'll need this....

Mark also informed me that one of the IT guys had taken a few courses on astronomy so I emailed him and he seems happy to help if I need any information.

Everyone has been really positive and some of the more complicated questions got me thinking. I was challenged about the idea of radio astronomy as sounds. Technically it is light, converted into sound, so it's not really the sound of the universe. I should firstly make it clear that I'm not advertising these sounds as the modern day version of the music of the spheres; the two are very different. Secondly, just because we can't hear this without the aid of technology, who's to say it can't be heard by other alien species (sorry to get all L. Ron Hubbard on you, but why limit what's possible to the confines of human ability when we're talking about the Universe?). This made me think of a radio programme about dolphin echo location and the idea of using sound as a means of visualising something. But humans can't make use of SONAR without technology.

The sounds attained through radio telescopes aren't just converted for the fun of it. Yes, the radiowaves received in the form of light, and this data is used to study astronomy.

But perhaps my stronger argument here is not the notion that we are 'listening to the universe', but rather that we are 'tuned in' to it, and that astronomers also use this converted sound as scientific data - so I am using what astronomers consider scientific data as a musician. It's one to be careful about.

Kronos Quartet

I can't believe I've only found this now!:


Sun Rings (2002)
for string quartet, chorus and pre-recorded spacescapes

1. Sun Rings Overture
2. Hero Danger
3. Beebopterismo
4. Planet Elf Sindoori
5. Earth Whistlers
6. Earth/Jupiter Kiss
7. The Electron Cyclotron Frequency Parlour
8. Prayer Central
9. Venus Upstream
10. One Earth


Just need to get my hands on a recording....

Makrokosmos

This week I attempted to learn Spiral Galaxy from George Crumb's 'Makrokosmos'. I have come to the concrete conclusion that this spiral shaped score is just completely illogical. It just won't do! I don't have a head that spins 360 degrees vertically on my neck.




All that aside, this is a very cool piece, which explores the full range of the piano beginning with the depth of the lower piano and introducing some unusual sounds that are cuased by the objects placed on the strings. It quickly jumps to the higher strings where a haunting and displaced melody (akin to Morton Feldman, I can't help feeling) on the upper middle register is introduced before it descends into a series of falling dissonant chords. It ends with a poignant melody on the upper register, fading out to an eerie end. The depth and harmonies featured in Spiral Galaxy demonstrate a richness of sonorities and the profound notes of the lower register hint at the emptiness and vastness of space that even a huge galaxy can find itself in.

Electro(lux)

Today I was doing some shopping and as I reached into a fridge to grab some milk (it was an aisle of large open refrigerators) I heard a pleasant humming sound emanating from the fridge. The one next to it was also humming and the two created a pleasantly wavering interval. I stood there for a while leaning into the fridges and figured out the interval as a minor 6th but it was by no means a pure interval; other electronic humming behind the two louder hums deraged it. I began then to think about frequences, and the physics of music.

I might use these inadvertent sounds in some of my own pieces, such as creaking sounds of a telescope or perhaps i'll record some friends next time we're all lying under the night sky picking out constellations. I'm still in the experimenting stage with electronic music, because at Queens you were either a BMus student or a sonic arts student. There were few who crossed the divide. But I wasn't going to cover my ears and pretend it was another faction, especially not now.

Remember that sound?!

I've been checking out some electronic music recently (a piece by a composer named Pete Stollery), and was listening to this one piece that dealt with capturing the sounds of this old whiskey distillery that was son to close, and so it was important to record these familiar sounds before they became extinct.

This got me thinking about sounds that used to be familiar to me that are no longer around. I thought about the dial telephone my family used to have, or the familiar sound of a tape deck buttong being pushed on my old hi-fi, the tapping of my mother's typewriter, and the sound of waiting for your dial-up internet to connect. All these once familiar technical sounds are also extinct - even though some of them had only been created years earlier. Technology is moving so fast that these once everday sounds are barely given the chance to be redolent through more than one generation (I've lived in four decades, two centuries and two millenia, and the growth in technology that I've witnessed in my lifetime has been exponential).

Just think of all that oversized equipment and slow powered computers used to man the first moon mission.

I bet that someday, we'll come up with smaller pieces of technology to replace those massive radio telescopes and even the hubble telescope. The problem is that radio telescopes just seem to be getting bigger, so that radio astronomers can reach out even further into space.

There is one noise that hasn't really changed - I guess it wasn't really invented, but rather discovered. Still, the technological means of attaining it are still about. Static noise.

Yes, with the implementation of digital tv, that is one way of making this extinct. But we still hear it through radios. 1% of that noise is radiation from the centre of the milky way. So lets hope that digitalisation doesn't block us out of regularly tuning in to the galaxy (whether we know it or not).

Star Music

Apparently this is what Stockhausen came up with to describe Anton Weberns Piano Variations. I had a listen to opus.21 mvt II, and I get it. There's no clear cut pattern to it and you never know what not you're going to hear next.. A bit like what you see when you look up at the stars.