How about using data to create danceable electronic music? For this year’s re:publica at the Reeperbahnfestival in Hamburg, SoniFriday created several tracks based on a bunch of data sets. One of the tracks – „Anthropocene“ – uses data from the sun, the economy and the climate. Read more about the musical concept behind it here.
The goal of SoniFriday’s performance was to explore experimental and fun ways of creating danceable music using data. Alongside three different tracks from Berit (stay tuned!) Christian created a 15-minutes live-coding performance that combines data sonification with algorithmic composition. It consists of four parts, each of which uses different data sets to build and define the musical structure behind it. The progression of the track itself is coded live throughout the performance with Sam Aarons‘ Sonic Pi.
Here’s more about the data and the musical concepts behind each part:
Part 1: The sunspot cycle
The sun has its own activity cycle. This can be measured by the number of sunspots per year. Sunspots are dark fields on the surface of the sun and are caused by strong magnetic fields in the surroundings. The more sunspots, the more active the sun is. Every eleven years, the number of sunspots increases and then decreases again – this is the sunspot cycle.
The first part of the track uses the data from this cycle to control various elements of the music:
- Conga: The rhythm of the conga is controlled by the data of the sunspot cycle. The higher the number of sunspots, the more intense and faster the rhythm becomes.
- Synthesizer: After a minute, a synthesizer begins to play chords. Throughout the song, the synthesizer’s filter cutoff rate is controlled by the sunspot cycle data. This creates an wavy soundscape over the conga rhythm. Thus, the sunspot cycle becomes audible.
- Bass: As with the conga, the rhythm of the underlying bass is also controlled by the sunspot data. But that’s not all: the higher the number of sunspots, the greater the range of the scale from which the bass randomly picks notes.
- Pluck-Sound: Towards the end, a guitar-like sound begins to play a high melody. It goes up and down. The melody follows the sunspot cycle: the higher the note, the higher the number of sunspots.
The underlying beat does not follow any data – it is composed like any other beat: It’s meant to support the song and create a drive that (hopefully) makes you want to dance.
Part 2: Capitalist promises (from 6:42)
While the first part is composed in 4/4 time, which is perceived as more natural, the second part is composed in 5/4 time. At the start of part two, the 5/4 is overlying the 4/4 rhythm of the sunspot cycle, creating a polyrhythmic beat. So to speak, the beat of capitalism “falls” slightly out of the natural rhythm.
Two data sets are used in the second part: Global GDP and the number of people worldwide earning more than 30 dollars a day. This illustrates the capitalist promise that greater wealth or economic power will supposedly reduce poverty (which of course can be questioned).
The intensity of the music in this part of the performance is based on the increasing dynamic of the two datasets:
- Metallic percussion: At the beginning of the track, metallic drums pound like the hammering sounds of machines or industrial halls. Throughout the track, the intensity of the metallic percussion follows the GDP data. The more intense the hammering, the higher the economic power.
- Piano: At a certain point, a piano begins to play. It follows the two data sets: As with metallic percussion, the rhythm – or the number of notes per bar – is determined by the GDP data. The range from which the piano randomly picks its notes is controlled by the other data set, the number of people earning more than 30 dollars a day. The piano plays the capitalist promise, so to speak: The more intense the piano rhythm, the higher the GDP, the broader the scale of the notes, the more people have more than 30 dollars a day.
- Bass: The bass is composed in the same way as the piano. Its rhythm follows the GDP, its note-range follows the 30-dollar-a-day dataset.
- Drums: The kick drum also follows the GDP value. The other instruments (snare, hihat, …) do not follow any data.
- Organ-like sound: Towards the end, an organ-like sound fades into the track. While its chord remains the same, its cutoff rate is controlled by the GDP data. The higher the GDP value, the sharper it sounds. Like a mantra, it keeps repeating the GDP data as a measure of economic growth as he fades into the third track: Crisis.
Part 3: Crisis (from 10:50)
This part is based on one of the first sonifications SoniFriday did (This is fine). Its easy to understand: The higher the notes, the higher the global temperature or the CO2-value. Like the first one, this part is composed in 4/4 – but the bass-sound still follows the 5/4 time of the second part.
This track is simple, it consists of two sounds that follow different datasets from the whole performance:
- Synthesizer: There are two synthesizers playing simultaneously: The first one represents the temperature data, the second one represents the CO2 data. The melody of the two synthesizers follow the corresponding data sets, e.g. the higher the temperature, the higher the note of the first synthesizer, the higher the CO2-value, the higher the note of the second synthesizer. The synthesizers are also controlled by the sunspot cycle data set. It controls the cutoff frequency of the two synthesizers. Thus, the synthesizers essentially follow the natural rhythm of the sun in their sound design, but increase in melody due to the rising temperature and CO2 levels.
- Bass: While part 3 is composed in 4/4 time, the deep, humming bass sound still follows the 5/4 time of the second part. Its notes are determined by the global GDP: The notes rise with the GDP. The bass thus forms the foundation for the melody of the climate crisis of the two synthesizers.
The underlying kick drums, hihats and snares don’t follow a data set. They are basically a four-to-the-floor rhythm to make the sound more danceable.
Outro (from 14:50)
In the end, only an organ-like sound and rain can be heard. The outro is based upon SoniFridays‘ sonification Rain of the Century. The rain-sound is created by a self-written synthesizer in SuperCollider. It emulates rain-sounds based on precipitation-data that was gathered during the flood in July 2021 in Germany. The organ-sound also represent this dataset: the sharper the sound of the organ, the higher the precipitation-data.