Music from the Earth

Having begun to play with large NASA data sets I was curious as to how I could parse the data sets. I wanted to learn how to store wave forms in the .wav file format so I decided to parse a global height map as music, or more accurately an audio wave form.

I wrote a few small programmes to change to original data format into a more readily parsable format. I then wrote software that outputs .wav files from the preprocessed data.

The output sound file is many Gb as more that 933 million data points were used. The sound plays out over many hours, sounding like a rock rolling, which is as expected. The Mid-Atlantic ridge provides a repeated 'drum' beat, with mountainous regions adding further depth to the sound. Listening to the entire file takes a long time but in its progression the changing topology of the Earth can be heard. It is the growth and changing of the sound that is of interest to me, mountain ranges can be heard to rise and long undulating plains add bass to the sound. As a piece of music there is much to be desired however I have already given the sound files to a music producer who is generating audio samples from the file for use in electronic music. I look forward to hearing the results.

The three links below are taken from different latitudes as indicated by the file name. Due to the large file size I cannot host the full files in .wav format, I can however make these available to you individually, please contact me if you are interested in the uncompressed full files.

I decided to take this a step further and generate .mid sound files where each data point is represented by a piano note rather than part of a wave form. These files take far longer to play so I have segmented them further, they are far more musical than the .wav files however long periods of flat land equate to long periods of the same note which is unappealing to the ear.

The example of the generated .mid file represents a trace running from the ocean bottom, over the Peruvian Andes and into the Amazon Basin. The bass sound of the sea bed rapidly turns into the high tinkling of mountain tops before ending with a long undulating variation of a few notes as the land flattens

I hope you enjoy the samples. I am open to suggestion on this project. I can turn almost any data into sound so I think in the future I may try turning different images into sound. I currently am using my ability to generate .wav files to store engineering waveforms.