In the midst of everything going viral all around us, my friend @abstracta.audio pointed me toward Eric Drass’ sonification of the DNA sequence of the Corona virus. The National Institute of Health has released the transcript of the sequence, which can be found on their website https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN908947.3 Eric, who makes all kinda wild art at Shardcore.com, assigned note combinations to each letter of the genome sequence (ATCG in various iterations) and you can listen to it (and upload the midi file) here: http://www.shardcore.org/shardpress2019/2020/02/28/the-sounds-of-covid-19/
I am fascinated by his process and hope he will give me an idea of how he did it. I am very interested in using notes/pitches/frequencies to sound out data. Eric created a 16 note scale. The top four notes and the bottom four notes are the same notes one octave apart. The eight notes in the middle do not repeat. Each measure of the midi file has 4 beats, the first beat has 2-3 notes stacked, then these notes repeat singularly over the 2,3,4 beats. How this relates to the DNA sequence I have not figured out.
Anyway, my remix begins in the middle of the midi file. There are five voices assigned to voice the midi notes. Percussion, pizzicato strings, and some other odds and ends of sonic dross. I slowed the bpm way down to 100. The piece sounds mincing, impish, serious and ominous in places. AND, you want it to end before it actually does!
Have a listen – it runs a bit over 6 minutes.
Jude's Soundlings 