What the ‘God particle’ sounds like
Jul
12
Posted by Anthony Ruff, OSB in Music: Chant |
You’ve probably heard about the so-called “God particle.” Now they’ve simulated the sounds made by it. You can see the musical notation here.
Hmm, it doesn’t sound at all like Gregorian chant. What will Jeffrey Tucker do with this?!
awr
Tags: God particle
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#1 by Jeff Rexhausen on July 12, 2012 - 6:15 pm
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Sounds like an gospel alleluia by an angel chorus that is overcome with excitement about the good news!
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#2 by Charles Culbreth on July 13, 2012 - 9:24 am
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I’m glad to have checked this out, Fr. Ruff. I wonder if you should add “humor” as a tag to “chant” though.
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When I went back to school for post-grad I took an astronomy course because everyone knows that math/science course requirements weed out music majors! This was in the mid-80′s, and the prof was going over the syllabus and among the suggested final projects he used as examples he listed and explained was one that no one had ever attempted, a musical rendition of any particular astral phenomenon.
Long story short, just like a dancer in “Chorus Line” I thought “I can do THAT!” Our music dept. had a good recording lab with the then latest synth and recording soft and hardware. So I chose the Crab Nebula. Basically I made some sort of schema and criteria that would quantify the spectral analysis of aspects of the elements constituent to the nebula/nova, the pulsation rates, yada yada. Then it became an issue of assigning pitch and rhythmic values, along with some “invention” regarding approximations of which sound frequencies and what we now simply call “patches” would best mimic those criteria.
Prof went through the roof when I handed him the cassette and paper, got an A+, and to this day I have no clue whether any of it had any actual credence.
Trying to actually convert science to art, feh. I liked what I’d produced, but still think that Ligeti’s “Atmospheres” suffices as the definitve representation of the cosmos. And I doubt CMAA will program that for any colloquium Mass in the near or far future.