Mass Spectrometry Music

In 1999, Cyril Smith, a Stanford professor of physics, played the (cacophonic) music of thyroxin during a convention, but the performance was immediately suspended because many people in the audience suddenly experienced tachycardia [rapid heartbeat]. What happened? The music had reproduced one of the effects of an excess of thyroid hormone: thyroxin overdose.

— Reported in The Basic Code of the Universe by Massimo Citro (citing C. Smith, International Conference, Hidden Properties of Water, The Polyclinic, Medical and Surgical Department, Napoli, 1999.)

I had stumbled across this on X a few years back, and ever since then I have been interested in this idea of converting hormones, and other chemical data into sound. To this day I am not quite sure how Dr. Smith made that sound, and the idea warrants skepticism, but I do find it to be an interesting way of experimenting with audio. I ended up building a pretty neat (at least I think) web application around this concept. I'll briefly discuss the journey and some of the more interesting details.

I'm no expert in DSP or chemistry, but I know my way around building some basic python scripts and using DSP related tools like max/msp. Naturally, that is where this project started.

In my research I had come across mass spectrometry data, which had similarity to my own understanding of additive synthesis. The spectrometry data being just a list of m/z values and intensities - this complemented perfectly with my understanding of audio - just a bunch of sine waves which are just frequencies and volumes. The commonality being they both are just two columns of data. All I had to do was convert the spectrometry data into audio data.

73.04018778 16.07
75.05583784 2.04
84.08132432 1.26
162.0555035 1.79
186.1242518 7.24

Early experiments with this were rather manual, but this was the foundation of what eventually became...

Mass Spectrum to Audio Converter

English Suite No. 3 in G minor Prelude (BWV 808) — Johann Sebastian Bach

Based on a MIDI sequence by Gary Bricault. Original source: jsbach.net

Concerto in F "in the Italian Manner" for Solo Keyboard (first mvmt.), BWV 971 — Johann Sebastian Bach

Based on a MIDI sequence by T.L. Hubeart Jr. Original source: jsbach.net

Above are two tracks made via oxytocin mass spectrum data. I chose some Bach pieces, as I thought the harpsichord-like character of the sound was fitting.

One of these days I plan to release an album centered around this concept. The process has been a bit challenging, as the restrictions I have set for the album (using spectrum-generated sounds as the primary sound source) are quite limiting. Below are a few tracks that I like so far.

Iridin

Adenosine

Thyroxin

I don't think I'll be causing tachycardia (at least I hope not), but the idea has proved to be a useful framework for artistic exploration.

Everything vibrates and emits elastic waves that can be translated into sound, so everything plays music with those little bells that are molecules... Each substance has its own sound.

— Massimo Citro, The Basic Code of the Universe