Make Music from Pi
October 13, 2008 – 6:58 pm
Paul Slocum from Texas seeds his music from pi and creates a never repeating, never ending streamof calculated house music
A creative musician created a program that creates a never ending stream of house music from the never ending stream of the numerals from pi
From Paul:
“The software progressively calculates the sequence of digits in pi, starting at 3.14 and progressing towards infinity. As the program calculates the digits, it feeds the results into an algorithmic music generator containing my structural criteria for house music. The resulting piece of house music is infinitely long and static and never repeats itself.
The number of processor cycles required to calculate pi increase with the number of digits it is calculated to. After months or years of playing the song, any fixed computer hardware will be unable to calculate the digits fast enough for the song to play continuously.
The rate that the number of processor cycles increase per pi-digits is bound by the formula Z*log(N); however based on Moore’s Law, processor power per dollar increases at an exponential rate – doubling every two years. BY upgrading computers regularly with market trends, the song can be played indefinitely.”
The beauty of the arts is present in mathematics, so its interesting to see how this individual tries to interpolate pi into a one of kind house music composition. Give it a listen to see if it truly is art, or just a stream of randomized boops and beeps.
Similarly, pi10k is a website where you can seed your own notes and let pi have its way with it.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if some music prodigy figures out the melodic pattern that mathematicians could never figure out and unlock the secret of pi!?
We can dream, can’t we?