The Sound of Molecules – Have you ever wondered what a molecule SOUNDS like? If you have–or if you haven’t but are now curious–then you may be interested in hearing “The Sound of Molecules,” premiering on Jacobs School of Music Concert this Sunday, Dec. 5th at 8 pm in Auer Concert Hall. Undergraduate chemistry and music composition double major Walker Smith has composed this work, and all the sounds in the piece come from spectroscopy data of molecules that he and his research group (Prof. Kevin Brown’s lab) have synthesized! Walker has described his piece below:
What do molecules sound like?
It may seem like an absurd question, but I have always wondered if there was a way to convert the activities of molecules—their rotational, vibrational, and translational motion—into sounds.
I have pondered this for a while, but one day I met the current love of my life:
Melinda Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy. NMR Spectroscopy is an analytical technique that chemists use to understand the structure of molecules, but it can also allow us to HEAR molecules! NMR produces characteristic waveforms for different molecules, and writing these data as audio waveforms allows us to recreate the literal sound of the molecule.
In this work you will hear several molecules, all of which were made right here in the Indiana University Chemistry building, inside the organic chemistry lab of Professor Kevin Brown.
With me as your tour guide, I invite you to don your lab coats and safety goggles as we dive into the microcosm of the atomic world and take a bath in the symphony of stochastic sounds and chemical cacophonies created by the mayhem of molecular motion.
This work will be on the Jacobs School of Music’s Center for Electronic and Computer Music Fall Concert on Sunday, December 5th at 8 pm in Auer Hall (200 S Jordan Ave, Bloomington, IN). His work will be featured alongside many other exciting works involving electronics in an 8-channel surround sound speaker setup (arranged especially for this concert), works for instruments and live electronic sound manipulations, and pieces using machine learning motion-tracking algorithms to allow a performer to create music in real-time by making specific hand gestures.
If you are unable to attend the concert in person, it will be livestreamed at the following link: https://iumusiclive.music.indiana.edu/
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