Very Cool Visualization of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.

Stephen Malinowski is a programmer and musician who has spent the past 40 years working on a "music animation engine" to help visually represent the structure of pieces of music in a way that makes sense even to those who might not necessarily understand music theory.  The above piece is his latest, a visualization of Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring", which, as it happens, celebrates its 100th anniversary today.

[via NPR]

The Higgs Boson Translated to Music

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've undoubtedly heard of the recent confirmation of the existence of the Higgs Boson, also known as "the God Particle".  Researcher Domenico Vicinanza, who also happens to be a musician, took it upon himself to translate the data set that proved the particle's existence into music.  You can read more about it in this article from the Atlantic.

How the Sound of "Silence" Helped Create the World's Fastest Random Number Generator

Here's an interesting article from Science Daily detailing how a group of scientists are listening to the vacuum of space.  Previously believed to be empty, they're finding that the area is actually occupied by sub-atomic particles that spontaneously appear and disappear.  This "noise" has actually proved very useful in creating an insanely fast random number generator.  Check it out...

[via Science Daily]

Hearing the Japan Quake

Fascinating and terrifying:

"In this recording of the 2011 Japanese earthquake, taken from measurements in California, the quake created subtle movements deep in the San Andreas Fault. The initial noise, which sounds like distant thunder, corresponds with the Japanese mainshock. Afterwards, a continuous high-pitch sound, similar to rainfall that turns on and off, represents induced tremor activity at the fault. This animation not only help scientists explain the concept of distant triggering to general audiences, but also provides a useful tool for researchers to better identify and understand such seismic signals in other regions.

Georgia Tech Associate Professor Zhigang Peng has converted the seismic waves from last year's earthquakes into audio files. The results allow experts and general audiences to "hear" what the quake sounded like as it moved through the earth and around the globe."

[via GeorgiaTech on Youtube]

Was Stonehenge Inspired by Sound?

Stonehenge, a mysterious monument located in England estimated to have been built sometime between 3000 - 2000 BC, has puzzled scholars since its discovery. Many have speculated that the arrangement of the gigantic stones was inspired by the heavens and the alignment of the stars.

However, scholar Steven Waller has a different theory - that the arrangement was actually created to disperse sounds in a compelling way. Check out this interesting article via the BBC for more info.

The Science of Sad Songs

Adele swept up at the Grammys last night, and part of how she got there was her tear-jerker ballad "Someone Like You". The Wall Street Journal has a very interesting article on what makes songs effect us emotionally.

[via The Wall Street Journal]

The Science of the Hit Single

The LA Times has an interesting article and interview a team of European scientists who have used computer analysis to quantify what it is about hit songs that make them hits. Maybe the days of computers writing hit songs instead of people are closer than we thought.

[via LA Times]

Striking an Oil Drum at 1,000 Frames Per Second

[via MusicOfSound]

Sounds "Invented" for Specific Purposes

Sound can have powerful psychological effects on we humans. So much so, that many of the sounds you hear every day are actually "engineered" for a specific purpose. Check out this interesting article on 5 of these sounds you may have never known were created in the lab...

[via HumansInvent]

Scientists Believe Sonic "One-Way Mirrors" May Be Possible

I feel like we're starting to enter an age where our scientific progress is going to make some groundbreaking discoveries. Not just things that help us in day to day life, but things that utterly shatter our preconceived notions of how the world around us operates.

For instance, a pair of Italian scientists have come up with a mathematical formula that seems to suggest it would be possible to construct a material that allows sound to pass through one way, but not the other. Thus, people behind a wall of this material would be able to hear you, but you wouldn't be able to hear them. The implications something like this could have for espionage is pretty staggering, but more importantly, it has given us a new way of looking at sound and challenges some of what we believed before.

So in honor of this interesting discovery, I thought the video for Clock DVA's "Sound Mirror" would be an appropriate accompaniment.

[via Geekosystem]

Scientists: Brain Reacts to Music Like a Drug

Here's an interesting article in the L.A. Times about the chemical effects music has on the brain. Specifically, they've found that listening to your favorite piece of music boosts levels of dopamine in the brain of the listener in the same way that addictive drugs do. I find this kind of interesting in light of the article I posted a little while back about the connections between depression and creativity. Maybe at the end of the day, we musicians are all just dopamine addicts.

[via L.A. Times]

Interesting Article on Musicians and Depression

The Guardian has an interesting piece about the link between musicians and depression. This has long been a sort of "chicken-or-egg" discussion I've found fascinating. Do creative people create because they're depressed or are their mitigating factors about being creative that cause or worsen depression?

I think it may be a little of Column A and a little of Column B. On the one hand, creative outlets are an attractive way of dealing with personal demons, often giving a sense of catharsis to the creator. This is only broadened when, for example, one can get up in front of a venue full of people, and get positive feedback on one's self-expression. There is a sense of feeling not so alone - of feeling understood, even if only superficially.

On the other hand, much of what goes along with being a musician, reinforces the negative emotions. Most accomplished musicians I know are never satisfied with their work. There is a sense of "chasing the dragon", or seeking some imaginary ideal of perfection they most likely will never reach. Heaven forbid you receive a bad review or feel like the message you're trying to convey has been lost on the audience. Add in the conditions of touring (night after night of little sleep, excessive drinking or drug use, eating shitty food), and you have a recipe that would test even the most cheerful demeanor.

Depression is something that runs in my family and something I've dealt with on and off for a long time. I can honestly say that I think music has saved my life on many occasions. Even when the deck seemed stacked against me, even when I've felt my most hopeless, I've taken comfort in the fact that I can sit down behind the keyboard and lose myself for an hour or two.

Of course, history shows us that creativity in itself isn't some sort of panacea. We've lost countless brilliant artists, writers, and musicians before their time because their pain was too much for them to bear. But I like to think having a creative outlet at the very least gives you a leg up on those who don't when it comes to getting through hard times.

What do you think? I'd love to hear reader's thoughts on this topic!

Unexplained Sounds

I obviously can't speak for everyone, but I think part of what draws some people to electronic music is the exploration of new sounds. Creating mysterious, new sounds that have never been heard before is pretty awesome, you've got to admit. The only problem with this is that it assumes we've all heard it all before - that there's nothing in our natural surroundings that we have heard before. When you consider how narrow the human range of hearing is, though, it seems obvious that there are most likely millions of sounds we've never heard before because they're too low frequency, too high frequency, too fast, or too slow

Fortunately, there are scientists from all over the world studying just these sort of sounds, and I personally find it really fascinating. It you want to find out more about The Bloop, The Hum, and Slow Down, among others, this Wikipedia entry is a good first place to check out. And if you enjoy that, check out this older entry I wrote about Number Stations or this one I wrote about Backwards Music Stations. (Granted, both of those are generated by man and not nature, but I still find them fascinating.)

Cool Presentation on Audio Myths

Via EthanWiner on YouTube:



Here's one strictly for the geeks. Very nice hour long presentation talking about how we perceive audio and how some unscrupulous companies exploit our feelings about sound into some incredibly hilarious, overpriced products to bilk the underinformed (the jar of stones is my favorite).

NPR Story on the Loudness Wars

NPR just ran a new story on the Loudness Wars in which engineer Bob Ludwig does a pretty good job of explaining the phenomenon in terms anyone can understand.  A good article to share with your non-musician friends.

Does Making Music Turbo-Charge Your Hearing?

Wired recently posted an interesting article about research that shows that musicians can pick out conversation from noisy environments better than non-musicians. I guess the idea is that since musicians learn to deconstruct music into its individual parts when they listen to it, they are better able to do the same when listening to speech in loud places. I suppose a bit of touring will give you ample practice at that, too. This definitely doesn't apply to me, though. I have a terrible time hearing what people are saying to me in a loud club. Maybe I'm not actually a musician!

Video from Notes & Neurons Panel @ World Science Festival

This is a couple months old, but I just came across it.  It's an interesting panel discussion with people like musician Bobby McFerrin and author Daniel Levitin with numerous demonstrations on how music works with our brains.  In five parts.

World Science Festival 2009: Notes &  Neurons, Part 1 of 5 from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

World Science Festival 2009: Notes & Neurons, Part 2 of 5 from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

World Science Festival 2009: Notes & Neurons, Part 3 of 5 from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

World Science Festival 2009: Notes & Neurons, Part 4 of 5 from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

World Science Festival 2009: Notes & Neurons, Part 5 of 5 from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Sounds of the Universe

Just over a decade ago, scientists discovered that the earth has a distinct, low frequency 'background hum' constantly ringing at about 10Hz.  Although many theories were put forward, until recently, no one knew for sure what the source of this sound was.

But now Wired magazine reports that the mystery has been solved.  The source of the sound is apparently caused by ocean waves of equal size traveling from different directions and colliding, thus causing a unique type of pressure wave to hit the sea floor.  As it turns out, the majority of this 'humming' originates off the Pacific coast.  The real question is, who is going to sample it, transpose it up into the range of human hearing, and turn it into a kick-ass dubstep bassline?

Interesting Demo of Damage Over-Cooking Your Audio Causes

If you've read this blog with any regularity, you've probably heard me bitch about the Loudness War, or the practice of bands and record companies pushing for louder and louder masters in the interest of being louder than their competition. The problem with this is that to achieve this end, you basically have to squeeze all of the dynamics out of it which, aside from sounding crappy, also fatigues the listener's ears. I've often wondered if this might be part of why people don't buy music like they used to - listening to all of this over-cooked audio is tiring out their ears and as a result, they don't listen to as much as they used to.

Anyway, there's an interesting article over on RecordProducer.com demonstrating another reason over-compressing your music to the point of clipping is bad: you're adding clicks and other artifacts to your audio.

Scientists Make Ambient Music with Brain

Gizmodo has a cool article about a Connecticut scientist who has translated various MRI images of the human brain into MIDI resulting in eerie ambient 'music'. Changes in brain activity are created through the use of various stimuli and custom software allocates specific note values to different parts of the brain. Thus, when different parts of the brain are stimulated, different series of notes are triggered.