What happens when you mix data science and music?
LJ: I would like to investigate how to use real-time sonification (and or real-time sound alteration) to find the most effective ways to transmit useful information to humans in the form of music.
While it’s possible to simply substitute midi notes for numbers, the resulting output often tends to discordant noise. I’m interested in turning complex data into musical constructs (not just linear sound analogues) while highlighting the intent behind the information. I think this approach could leverage the information-rich quality and emotional density inside music.
LET’S MAKE A THING! The Nasa Datanauts are Sonification personified! Shall we start with something easy that will work? YES PLEASE!
Make a first draft of this document: DONE 9 APR 2018
Make sure this document makes sense NOTFIXED
brainstorm ideas on what would be fun and easy as a first sonification project DONE JUN 2018
What does everyone love to do? What are people good at? Team List! ACCEPTABLE VARIANCE OF MUSIC/CODING KNOWLEDGE
decide on a simple use case where we can play with some ideas DONE JUL 2018
choose attributes we’d like to be notified about DONE SEP 2018
work out the tools required for analysing our data set IN PROGRESS
decide when the attributes reach a point where notification becomes important
work out how to notify the next program to start the sonification process IN PROGRESS
create a trigger program that will play sounds at the appropriate times
work out what kind of sounds would work in what context and attach the sounds to events IN PROGRESS
create a plugin, website, app etc that does what we want it to do
It works!! Celebrate our first victory!
NEXT PROJECT IDEAS
Make a first draft of this document: DONE 9 APR 2018
Make sure this document makes sense (Please read below: is everything in the right order? Does any of this seem impossible/ not worth doing? Is there anything worth adding? Other stuff? How do we work out that we’re all happy to proceed ? )
brainstorm ideas on what would be fun and easy as a first sonification project (any and all thoughts welcome! We can put them below this heading unless we just throw them into the RocketChat)
What does everyone love to do? What are people good at? Team List! (List of team capabilities and what would we like to learn more about, and where we think we can contribute, that way we know who to ask about something. Self promotion massively encouraged)
NB anyone with better MD experience, feel free to make this in to a table Name stuff you can do | things you love | music/sound inclinations
LJ Rich non-linear music composer Roller Coasters right now, drum n bass, classical, EDM, Ambient sound design, sonification ideas SciFi / Learning Coding physiological/psychological music responses installation building / presenting lock picking Masters degree in Music (with acoustics)
NAME STUFF THINGS SOUND INCLINATIONS NAME STUFF THINGS SOUND INCLINATIONS NAME STUFF THINGS SOUND INCLINATIONS NAME STUFF THINGS SOUND INCLINATIONS NAME STUFF THINGS SOUND INCLINATIONS NAME STUFF THINGS SOUND INCLINATIONS NAME STUFF THINGS SOUND INCLINATIONS
decide on a simple use case where we can play with some ideas (for example: email subject keywords? RocketChat trigger words? PCAP data? twitter sentiment? ) DONE PCAP DATA
choose attributes we’d like to be notified about (Ideally without looking at something for maximum impact … for example: did we spend money or are we being emailed just another social media update, or someone has said something important?) DONE BASED ON CSV FILE
work out the tools required for analysing our data set (for example: a plugin for gmail? a JSON file querying program? could we use sentiment analysis?)
decide when the attributes reach a point where notification becomes important (for example: when an email comes in with one of our chosen keywords?)
work out how to notify the next program to start the sonification process (would we create a new database that would be called or simply send raw data somewhere?)
create a trigger program that will play sounds at the appropriate times (in the first instance we’d play back some pre-recorded sounds that I (or others) can create, eventually it would be good to get the data involved in music creation)
work out what kind of sounds would work in what context and attach the sounds to events (email example: cash register / fruit machine noise? // sentiment analysis: major key for good news / minor key for bad news? )
create a plugin, website, app etc that does what we want it to do (may involve app development, or simply Max For Live plugin for ableton)
It works!! Celebrate our first victory! Can it work anywhere else?
NEXT PROJECT IDEAS
sonification of more attributes live sonification where the data simply comes out as raw unfiltered sound. likely not music Live sonification where the data directly affects pitch / orchestration / timbre i.e. data becomes part of the composing process Experiments on how many different sounds people can identify with relatively little training force-mapping to pitches / timbres given real time data - what do we want to listen to and how