» Hum

Music of the Spheres

Los Doggies — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 21:12:29 +0000

At the atmosphere’s edge, where spiders, moments, gods, and all the other silent things live, the black noise―black as space, but golden as ever―travels on nothing to nowhere for light-years, like measures of rest that seem to last an entire score, it strips the babble off a baby, flattens wineglass song, and rips the screams out the maw of a dying animal, spreading uniformly forever, to its furthest reaches and depths, where here and there, the silence is greeted by giant humming rocks like hollow unstemmed noteheads, and singing stars that hum after death like posthumous box-sets, and the nervous noise of all sentient beings below, who rock themselves to death with death rattles and death growls, and rage, rage, rage with musical machines, against the dying of the light and sound.

In the distant Perseus cluster of galaxies, there is a black hole that emits a single note―a very low inaudible B-flat, 57 octaves below Middle C, with a frequency of 10 million years. While it’s true that space is a vacuum and for the most part your outer spacious screams would be as silent as God’s, there are stray bits of gas and dust that allow sound waves to travel. The gas around the Perseus cluster acts as a medium for the black hole’s sound waves to be measured.

Drag over the B-flat on the left. If you hold the cursor in the center of the notehead, you’ll get sucked into the B-flat event horizon, which incidentally sounds like a Q Bass. If you move the cursor away from the notehead, the tone will decay, keeping the fabric of reality intact.

There are all sorts of hums out there in the heavens. The Earth makes a number of different hums―the Taos Hum and other regional drones that are only subjectively heard by certain people, the electromagnetic hum of the Schumann Resonance, the Electric Hum of Power Grids and other machines, and the chirps and whistles of the polar lights.

The Earth Tone is the keynote of our planet, except it isn’t a sound at all. It’s the pulsing of the Earth’s geomagnetic field. Lightning strikes in our atmosphere create standing waves in the extremely low frequency portion of the electromagnetic spectrum (the kind of phenomena you can see). This is the same band our electric brains use. The frequency spectrum of the Earth’s magnetic field is identical to that of other organism’s brains when viewed on an electroencephalograph. The fundamental mode of the Earth is around 7-10 Hz, which is in the alpha band of our brains―a calm, and restful state of minds, allowing escape from the usual beta bustle. When converted into sound, the Earth’s tonic is a low B, two octaves below bass clef, and nine ledger lines below the staff. If you had antennae for ears, this is what you would hear all day―a Great Farting rising up from the crust, and fizzling down from the firmament.

It works like this you see:

It seems the Universe is heavy on the B-Tones, at least on our pale blue dot. Not only does the Earth hum a low B, but the eighth overtone of the Earth is around 60 Hz―the same frequency that hums from the North American Power Grid―and now this black hole on the other side of the Universe is also humming a flatted B. Why the bees even buzz sharp B’s, and maybe their third eyes are receiving Persian waves. I wouldn’t be surprised, if it turns out the cosmos are a large holographic bassoon blown by some crazy alien who keeps us bound to Concert B-flat.

So get out there and fuck the silence kids! It’s time to go a-caroling…
After all, it ’twas Jingle Bells that ’twas the first song played in space. They say the spheres still vibrate in sympathy with that dashing little song.

iFart computer sounds :) (o)- – -

Los Doggies — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 17:04:54 +0000

What are the most popular sounds around us? Are they musical or noisy? Artful or aleatoric? Do you hear more birdsong than pop song? Is the human speech around you monotonal, monotonous, or musical? Do you wear headphones all day, or does your own cortex hallucinate music for you?

Friends, there are no more insidious sounds out there than the perpetual music of our machines. Along with the Grid Hum and corporate earworms, the synthetic sounds of personal computers earn their place in the Industrial-Musical complex. These are the most popular sounds around us – neither words nor lyrics, nor melodies, nor even our own effluvia surround us so much as these perverse atonalities. The computer literacy involved in turning these presets off, combined with the hopeless habituation of users to their presence, makes the following samples some of the most played sounds on Earth ever. Unlike the B-flat hum, which will drone on into the twilight of humanity, we have the choice right now to silence this digital flatulence.

Behold the Mac fart!

This farting sound is actually attached to the volume controls on an Apple computer, so that every time you turn it up or down, it fires off a fizzle of these pathetic robotic imitations of our beautiful body score – that big ass brass, like a Spike Jones concert, perfectly blending comedy and music.

There is an analogous sound on a Window’s machine, the so-called “System Notification” that resembles a lip-pop – another offensive natural sound that emerges from our bodies. Now why would a Gates, or a Jobs, want to make machines that reproduce our flatus for us? The answer lies in the Doomsday Seed Vault.

For all their irksome qualities, these body-based synths are nothing compared to the truly tonal variety, such as the Window’s “Asterisk”. This is another of a million alarms that come ready to rock each PC. Like the Hum of American machines, it is a B tone.

What kind of instrument is that? Does it sound like any instrument you can even name? It’s pure computer tone.

Please, people: Get in your control panels and turn this shit off. I can shut my eyes from the horrors of this world, but I ain’t got no earlids!

The Loudest Note in the World

Los Doggies — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:25:40 +0000

With the ears of an angel, the loudest sounds you’d hear in outerspace coming from Earth would be noise. Ocean noise is the loudest, followed by lightning, volcanoes, and industrial noise. These pitchless rhyhms rule the soundtrack of our planet.

The loudest musical tones you’d hear would also come from machines, that of the electric power grid, or mains. The electric hum produced from power transmission is ubiquitous and provides the keynote of our lives. It’s the inescapable tone, if you use appliances, live near street lights, work in a factory, or do pretty much anything.

Because of differing voltages in the East and West, there are two dominant tones found in the power system.

In North America, the Grid plays a 60 hertz tone, halfway between a B and Bb. In Europe, the Mains plays a 50 hz tone, about a quarter tone sharper than a G.

Our aural angel would mostly hear this G tone from outerspace, because the European voltage is most popular throughout the world. The map below shows the distribution between the two tones. The red denotes the flat B, while the blue denotes the sharpG.

Between the two power tones is roughly a minor third interval. Go back up top, and simultaneously sound the two power tones.

The loudest interval to angelic ears is the minor third.

From outerspace, the G Minor reigns supreme, providing harmony to the oceanic and industrial riddim. It is our planetary chord. If the cosmos run anything like in Close Encounters, then the Earth’s G Minor Chord will function diplomatically.

The Minor is known as the "sad chord". This is because there are more dissonant overtones at play, than in a major chord.

Happier right? Babies like major better than minor. They should know, because they know nothing.

Angels prefer the minor though. Cause they live in outerspace.

Epilogue:
The soundtracks of our lives are provided for by machines. Once upon a time, the birds sang songs louder than anybody. But for now it’s:

Power tones! Power tones!! Power tones!!!