Sonification: The Music of Data

[@breebree5045]

A great video that displays sonification of data in action is “The Planets are Weirdly in Sync” by Steve Mould. It shows how sonification can make data more legible to the human brain than visual data!

[@PlantWave]

Great work! I disagree with the footnote about it not needing to sound good. For a monitoring system to be useful, its important that it be ergonomically viable. People need to be able to listen to it for a long period of time and enjoy doing so. With that, scaling and texture are important. CC values can also be used instead of notes to allow for non-melodic monitoring in parallel to melodic monitoring. Been doing this for about 10 years. There are definitely different design approaches for different situations, but I think the value of harmony is pretty crucial for this tool to be useful to humans.

[@thiagogomes3226]

I can't see how listening to the sonification is faster or better than using computers to find patterns on the raw data. No harm intended in the comentary

[@mitchelltillman3277]

You can't always rely on computers to be automatic right off the bat for novel applications. Good scientists always manually examine their data first, visually or with audio. Sometimes it's not about being *able* to see the data, but rather that maybe audio is more helpful in a certain case (like with the repeating DNA codes).

[@schmirlimm]

When working with data often the first step is to get an "overview" over the data. e.g. make a scatterplot or similar. 1) some people cannot see and therefore could use sonification as an alternative. 2) There might be applications where the sonification just gives an additional understanding of the data, similarly as a different way of plotting the data helps in understanding.

[@andrescoca983]

an example would be anaesthesiologists - they need to keep track of oxygen levels in the patient under surgery while having the machines (and the screens) behind their back. So they can't see but they can hear the pitch going up or down.

[@Emily-priv-video-archive]

could help visually impaired scientists

[@FugalQuease]

it's still "using computers to find patterns". The comparison is more with visual plotting. Human hearing involves some forms of signal processing that might reveal things that are hard to see on a plot. For example we analyse onsets to distinguish different consonants, revealing differences that are not easy to see in a plot. Sonification is a way of exploiting that.

[@testxy5555]

very nice intro for data sonification. is there any software that does this for beginners?

[@twominutemusictheory]

That's a great question. Let me do some digging around.

[@jmfs3497]

@@twominutemusictheory So far I have found one called Two-Tone that seems to still work. Others are using Python to convert .CSV files to MIDI.

[@Mvavid]

Amazing video

[@actossinestesicos5934]

thanks

[@Acoustic-Rabbit-Hole]

The Acoustic Rabbit Hole 1 second ago I want to share with you all that these “sounds” are a sham. There is no relation to an actual object or area of resonance. The size and shape of the body make the pitch. The pitches in nature , or in true composition are NOT arbitrary. You are hearing here a computer programs relating highs and lows of data as pitches of highs and lows. It’s fools good. I have the true answers here on my channel. No one wants to hear the actual truth. We want to be deceived