Music Made With Sounds of Outer Space
Energy sources in the atmosphere, such as lightning, can produce sounds (sferics, tweeks, and whistlers) in the very low frequency (VLF) radio band.
Objects in space - the Sun, planets, stars, quasars, pulsars, galaxies, and active galaxies - all produce signals that, if received (usually through radio astronomy dishes and processed), can be used by a musician as the basis for any kind of composition imaginable.
Scientists with an interest in space-based sounds include:
- Don Gurnett.
- Stephen P. McGreevy.
- Alexander Kosovichev, a Stanford scientist whose researches into the sun's oscillations (and who uploaded the sounds to the net) encouraged Stephen Taylor (see below) to create his album.
- Dr. Fiorella Terenzi has created several works that use sounds derived from celestial radio signals homepage, Space.com entry.
- NASA produced a CD in 1992 from Voyager 1 & 2 recordings of electromagnetic fields processed with digital sampling techniques.
Artists/bands who have included such sounds in their works include:
- Terry Riley, along with the Kronos Quartet, in their album Sun Rings, which used "sounds of the planets recorded by the Voyager mission on its journey to deep space" .
- Stephen Taylor, in the album The Heart of the Sun.
- Robert Schroeder's album Galaxie Cygnus-A used interstellar noise from the distant galaxy in the title
Read more about this topic: Space-themed Music
Famous quotes containing the words outer space, music, sounds, outer and/or space:
“I know, it must have been my imagination, but it makes me realize how desperately alone the Earth is. Hanging in space like a speck of food floating in the ocean. Sooner or later to be swallowed up by some creature floating by.... Time will tell, Dr. Mason. We can only wait and wonder. Wonder how, wonder when.”
—Tom Graeff. Young astronomer, Teenagers from Outer Space, after just seeing the invading spaceship through his telescope, and dismissing it (1959)
“On the first days, like a piece of music that one will later be mad about, but that one does not yet distinguish, that which I was to love so much in [Bergotte’s] style was not yet clear to me. I could not put down the novel that I was reading, but I thought that I was only interested in the subject, as in the first moments of love when one goes every day to see a woman at some gathering, or some pastime, by the amusements to which one believes to be attracted.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
Was once a child who among beasts has lain—
‘Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee.’”
—Dame Edith Sitwell (1887–1964)
“The Dada object reflected an ironic posture before the consecrated forms of art. The surrealist object differs significantly in this respect. It stands for a mysterious relationship with the outer world established by man’s sensibility in a way that involves concrete forms in projecting the artist’s inner model.”
—J.H. Matthews. “Object Lessons,” The Imagery of Surrealism, Syracuse University Press (1977)
“Shall we now
Contaminate our fingers with base bribes,
And sell the mighty space of our large honors
For so much trash as may be grasped thus?
I had rather be a dog and bay the moon
Than such a Roman.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)