The Earth is a Musical Instrument
In 1996, geophysicist Frank Scherbaum teamed up with composer Wolfgang Loos to release "Inner Earth: a seismosonic symphony" (Traumton Records), a recording of natural seismic signals from the earth that Loos creatively rearranged for the CD.
The remarkable sounds that are produced - at once electronic and natural - are strange and mesmerizing.
As Scherbaum writes, "The fault beats, the volcano whistles and howls, and the Earth rings and hums.
" Scherbaum's website, "The Earth As Musical Instrument," discusses the relationship between music and seismology, and offers a short excerpt from the "Inner Earth" CD.
The percussive, spectral structure of earthquake signals are typically rather boring, according to Scherbaum, showing acoustically interesting features only in unusual cases.
Volcanoes, however, are another story.
The spectrum of their tremor signals - believed to be generated by instabilities within the magma system - show regular frequency spacings similar to that of a flute.
He has posted a sample signal from Mount Arenal in Costa Rica, transposed into the audible range for the human ear.
You can hear how the frequency changes over time, in essence creating a melody.
Crudely stated, earthquakes are drums and volcanoes are flutes.
Other composers have taken a different approach to interpreting the musicality of the earth.
Sonification is the process of translating any type of data into sound.
Percussionist Marty Quinn collaborated with seismologists at the University of New Mexico to write "The Seismic Sonata," a sonic rendering of the 6.
7 Northridge earthquake that struck southern California in 1994.
Rather than use the actual sounds of the earth, Quinn mirrored the seismographic representation of the quake by mapping data values to a range of expressive sonic elements.
The musical results are not as compelling as the source material used in the Scherbaum/Loos collaboration, however.
Similarly, Italian composer Gabriele Rossetti and geologist Alessandro Montanari turned geologic data such as magnetic susceptibility, metallic ion concentrations and helium isotopes from the Italian Apennines into music titled "Balla Con La Terra" ("Dance with the Earth").
The remarkable sounds that are produced - at once electronic and natural - are strange and mesmerizing.
As Scherbaum writes, "The fault beats, the volcano whistles and howls, and the Earth rings and hums.
" Scherbaum's website, "The Earth As Musical Instrument," discusses the relationship between music and seismology, and offers a short excerpt from the "Inner Earth" CD.
The percussive, spectral structure of earthquake signals are typically rather boring, according to Scherbaum, showing acoustically interesting features only in unusual cases.
Volcanoes, however, are another story.
The spectrum of their tremor signals - believed to be generated by instabilities within the magma system - show regular frequency spacings similar to that of a flute.
He has posted a sample signal from Mount Arenal in Costa Rica, transposed into the audible range for the human ear.
You can hear how the frequency changes over time, in essence creating a melody.
Crudely stated, earthquakes are drums and volcanoes are flutes.
Other composers have taken a different approach to interpreting the musicality of the earth.
Sonification is the process of translating any type of data into sound.
Percussionist Marty Quinn collaborated with seismologists at the University of New Mexico to write "The Seismic Sonata," a sonic rendering of the 6.
7 Northridge earthquake that struck southern California in 1994.
Rather than use the actual sounds of the earth, Quinn mirrored the seismographic representation of the quake by mapping data values to a range of expressive sonic elements.
The musical results are not as compelling as the source material used in the Scherbaum/Loos collaboration, however.
Similarly, Italian composer Gabriele Rossetti and geologist Alessandro Montanari turned geologic data such as magnetic susceptibility, metallic ion concentrations and helium isotopes from the Italian Apennines into music titled "Balla Con La Terra" ("Dance with the Earth").
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