Earth Notes: Adventures in Sonification

Updated 2025-02-11 18:44 GMT.
By Damon Hart-Davis ORCID logo.
Data into sound for science and fun #sonification #house #EDM
water sounds GarageBand screenshot
Helping absorb data through the ears, with the aim of making some of it (maybe with a little human help) danceable...

Scripts

Data

2023-05-21: Autogenerating House Energy Data Series

As of today, with the (V4.3) script textToMIDIv4p3-consolidated, I am also generating and publishing 'house' MIDI versions. That includes some minor tidy-up such as padding data tracks to whole phrases, the phrase being the intro/outro time (or 1 if no intro/outro).

2023-05-22: V4.4

I have tweaked the (V4.4) script to adjust instruments and volumes for 'house' textToMIDIv4p4-consolidated. I have updated the energy series page to use V4.4.

Here is an MP3 sample (monthly PV generation):

52s "20230522 V4p4 house gen M" Uploaded . Downloads:
  1. • small lo-fi very low-bandwidth audio/opus mono clip 102kB (16kbps) +
  2. • lo-fi low-bandwidth mono clip 296kB (46kbps) ++
  3. • stereo clip 816kB (128kbps) +++

2023-07-04: V5.1.0

Monthly grid imports 2009-10/2023-04, 4-bar sections, automated verse/chorus structure from the V5 Java statsHouse implementation on GitHub, with GarageBand "dripping cycles" manually selected for the main data voice.

MP3 encoding via Audacity:

59s "20230704 V5p1p0 house imp M" Uploaded . Downloads:
  1. • small lo-fi very low-bandwidth audio/opus mono clip 117kB (16kbps) +
  2. • lo-fi low-bandwidth mono clip 288kB (40kbps) ++
  3. • stereo clip 1356kB (188kbps) +++

2023-07-10: V5.2.5

Yearly grid flow. No non-default voices used, no manual tweaking.

MP3 encoding via Audacity:

131s "20230710 V5p2p5 house flow Y" (captions) Uploaded . Downloads:
  1. • tiny audio/midi track 10kB +
  2. • small lo-fi very low-bandwidth audio/opus mono clip 396kB (24kbps) +
  3. • lo-fi low-bandwidth mono clip 848kB (53kbps) ++
  4. • stereo clip 3228kB (201kbps) +++
  5. • hi-fi lossless audio/flac stereo clip 13998kB (875kbps) +++++

Published as a podcast episode.

2024-05-27: V5.3.x: RSS Feed Efficiency Data

RSS feed efficiency as drum beat pairs with velocity proportional to bytes/hits per hour slot. For data up to , prepared with statsHouse-5.3.1.min.jar -feedHitsSummary type 1, and with MP3 generated by GarageBand 10.4.11:

86s "20240530 byHourSummary1" Uploaded . Downloads:
  1. • tiny audio/midi track 3kB +
  2. • small lo-fi very low-bandwidth audio/opus mono clip 168kB (16kbps) +
  3. • lo-fi low-bandwidth mono clip 425kB (40kbps) ++
  4. • stereo clip 1351kB (128kbps) +++

With a tweak to play low toms for hits in skipHours (ie night!), with V5.3.2:

86s "20240531 byHourSummary1" Uploaded . Downloads:
  1. • tiny audio/midi track 3kB +
  2. • small lo-fi very low-bandwidth audio/opus mono clip 168kB (16kbps) +
  3. • lo-fi low-bandwidth mono clip 427kB (40kbps) ++
  4. • stereo clip 1351kB (128kbps) +++

Using V5.3.3 exported .dat output, in the spirit of [zong2024umwelt] audio-led rendering, via gnuplot WIP script (snapshot):

20240608 byHourSummary1

IN PROGRESS

References

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~1630 words.