Interesting article here, called A Little Light Music. Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead is working on a project called “Rhythms of the Universe,” where he’s attempting to make music of the sounds of the cosmos. There are some sound samples in the video embedded below.

If there’s anyone who seems right to tackle a project like this it seems that Mickey’s the guy. I highly recommend Mickey’s book Drumming at the Edge of Magic: A Journey into the Spirit of Percussion, to anyone who’s never read it. In this book he talks about percussion and spirituality and using percussion as a spiritual bridge or stairway to ascend to timeless spirit realm; really a beautiful book but also a great study on the ethnomusicological aspects of percussion that inspire him.

I do think that trying to sonify the cosmos is kind of silly because the cosmos already is full of sound, even if there’s no sound in space, but nevertheless the concept is neat and the sounds created thus far are kind of spooky and vaguely reminsicent of Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer’s musique concrete, as well as John Bullitt’s Deep Earth Dome work.

One Response to “Timeless music of the cosmos.”

1. Randy King says:

   March 8, 2010 at 2:45 pm

   I copied something that he was on… I thought his ideas were neat…