Harmonic Series Drones

• Harmonic Series Drones is an extension of several of my music compositions. Over the past few years, I’ve been very interested in data sonification, writing several pieces that turn real-time weather data into music. This library was created using a drone generator that turns weather data into sound. I built this drone generator for my piece Sitka for piano and seasonal electronics.

• Instead of pulling weather data from Sitka, Alaska, as I did in the piece, I used 2016 daily temperature data from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a fragile place wrapped up in current political drama and now open to drilling. This library is a sonification of 2016 temperature data in ANWR. The highest global temperature on record was recorded in 2016 (2016 Global Climate Report). It is even worse in the Arctic where temperatures are warming at twice the rate of lower latitudes (2016 Arctic Report Card). With this library, you’ll be able to hear the warming, and I hope this library helps to draw attention to the rapidly changing environment of the Arctic.

• Each of the forty-eight drones corresponds to the average temperature of a day in 2016, with twelve drones from each of the four seasons. The drones are built from pure tones made from tightly filtered pink noise. These pure tones are then stacked in harmonic series relationships. For instance, a winter drone might consist of the fundamental and four lowest partials. A summer drone could have the fundamental and partials seven, fourteen, and thirty-two.

• The drones stand on their own without the story. If you never knew they started with weather data, you would still find a variety of pure, rich, microtonal drones with enough variety to fit the mood of any project.

2% FOR THE ENVIRONMENT:
• Two percent of the price of this library is donated to an environmental cause. I view it as an “artist royalty” for the planet!