{"134541":{"#nid":"134541","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Making Music with Real Stars","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EWhy stop at the dark side of the moon to make music when you can look thousands of light years into space? That\u2019s what a team of Georgia Tech researchers have done, using data from two stars in our galaxy to create sounds for a national recording artist.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOver the years, researchers in Georgia Tech\u2019s Sonification Lab (SonLab) have converted numerical data into sounds to analyze stock market prices, election results and weather data. When the reggae\/rock band Echo Movement called wanting to turn the movements of celestial bodies into music, SonLab looked to the heavens.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThe Sonification Lab receives a lot of requests to convert scientific data into sound, but this one was truly unique,\u201d said Bruce Walker, a professor in the Schools of Psychology and Interactive Computing. \u201cIt\u2019s not often that we have a chance to help an actual star compose music.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAlthough pitches, tempos and rhythms could be created and tweaked, the band insisted that the finished product remain true to all data and feature a musically appealing, \u201cheavenly\u201d sound. With those restrictions in place, the musicians and Walker\u2019s team of students went to work with existing data gathered by NASA\u2019s Kepler telescope. Focused on a binary star (Kepler 4665989), Kepler recorded its brightness levels for more than a year. The star dimmed and brightened each time its companion star crossed its path, providing varying brightness measurements.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThose numerical values were loaded into our Sonification Sandbox software to create sequences of sonified musical pitches,\u201d said Riley Winton, a psychology student and leader of the project. \u201cThe process put us on the right track. When the band reviewed it and requested timbres instead of pitches, we audified the data.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn other words, the team played the varying brightness levels as waveforms to create a different sound. The lab then cleaned the signal and removed some of the ambient sound before sending audio pitches to the band. Echo Movement looped the sounds and composed them into a four-part harmony.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFor the final step, the students used a different binary star (Kepler 10291683) to adjust the timbre even further by adding a tremolo effect. This created a shuddered, natural sound rather than a flat, computerized noise.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.gatech.edu\/inc\/hgFile.php?fname=4-melody.wav\u0022\u003Efinal result\u003C\/a\u003E is a melody that will be used in the \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.gatech.edu\/inc\/hgFile.php?fname=lho_introsamplemedia.mp3\u0022\u003Eintro\u003C\/a\u003E of Echo Movement\u2019s song \u201cLove and the Human Outreach,\u201d which will be released in September.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cPeople have made music with space sounds before, but largely using pulsars and space events that can be recorded in the radio spectrum. We wanted something completely off the chart,\u201d said band member David Fowler, who was encouraged by Edna DeVore at the SETI Institute to look at the Kepler Mission. \u201cDiscovering planets around other stars is a relatively new science worthy of everyone\u0027s attention and digs deep at the core of humanity\u0027s most basic quest to orient itself in reality,\u201d he said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe Georgia Tech team will present the sonification process at the International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD) in Atlanta June 18 \u2013 21, 2012.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe project\u2019s goal, to create an authentic, aesthetic sound, was a success. The melody is further proof that sonification can be a valuable tool when working with large data sets.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cSound is the best pattern recognition tool we have,\u201d said Walker. \u201cInstead of visually scanning through a long list of numbers, looking for patterns or random occurrences, sometimes it\u2019s easier to create an audio file and listen for them. Very interesting patterns can often be discovered by using sound.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"Kepler Telescope star data creates musical melody"}],"field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EOver the years, researchers in Georgia Tech\u2019s Sonification Lab (SonLab) have converted numerical data into sounds to analyze stock market prices, election results and weather data. When the reggae\/rock band Echo Movement called wanting to turn the movements of celestial bodies into music, SonLab looked to the heavens.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Georgia Tech\u0027s SonLab uses Kepler Telescope star data to create music"}],"uid":"27560","created_gmt":"2012-06-11 13:07:06","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:12:22","author":"Jason Maderer","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2012-06-12T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2012-06-12T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"134551":{"id":"134551","type":"image","title":"Bruce Walker 2","body":null,"created":"1449178671","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 21:37:51","changed":"1475894763","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:46:03","alt":"Bruce Walker 2","file":{"fid":"194769","name":"09p1012-p1-904.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/09p1012-p1-904_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/09p1012-p1-904_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":1675524,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/09p1012-p1-904_0.jpg?itok=JJxTkwuy"}},"134601":{"id":"134601","type":"image","title":"Riley Winton","body":null,"created":"1449178671","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 21:37:51","changed":"1475894763","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:46:03","alt":"Riley Winton","file":{"fid":"194770","name":"winton.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/winton_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/winton_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":74447,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/winton_0.jpg?itok=ZlJO9NGa"}}},"media_ids":["134551","134601"],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/sonify.psych.gatech.edu\/","title":"Sonification Lab"}],"groups":[{"id":"1183","name":"Home"}],"categories":[{"id":"135","name":"Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"1937","name":"Bruce Walker"},{"id":"926","name":"College of Architecture"},{"id":"4896","name":"College of Sciences"},{"id":"171210","name":"Sonification Lab"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EJason Maderer\u003Cbr \/\u003EMedia Relations\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:maderer@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Emaderer@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-385-2966\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["maderer@gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}