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.