The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music

Inspired by The Pudding's lo-pi radio, which turns the digits of pi into an endless stream of lo-fi music, I decided to see if I could create something similar for landscapes. The result is The Sound of Music: an experimental map that turns the shape of the land into a musical composition, where the hills really are alive with the sound of music.

The map lets you explore locations around the world and listen to the music generated by their terrain. As the landscape is drawn, notes are played to create a musical interpretation of the contours. You can watch the terrain take shape while listening to the melody it produces. And because the music is generated from the elevation data, different landscapes produce different compositions.

The project began as an adaptation of yesterday's 30DayMapChallenge map. I wanted to take that original contour-map experiment a little further, so I switched the elevation data over to Mapterhorn. This means the map is no longer limited to the particular location and elevation data used in the original version. Mapterhorn makes it possible to generate terrain for locations anywhere in the world (just add a lat,lng to the end of the URL). I also decided to add another dimension to the experiment: sound.

So how does a landscape write its own tune? The map translates different characteristics of the terrain into musical instructions. Elevation helps determine the pitch of the notes, with higher ground generally producing higher sounds. The length and complexity of the contours influence the duration and intensity of the notes, while their position across the landscape can influence where the sound sits in the stereo field. The contours are effectively providing the musical score.

There is a little more to it than simply assigning a note to each contour. The geometry of the landscape is also used to determine the musical character of the composition, including its scale, chord progression and tempo. This gives each location its own musical fingerprint, with the aim of making a rugged mountain range sound quite different from a gentler landscape.

The result is a map that lets you listen to the landscape. Pick a mountain, explore its contours and hear the music that it makes.