Climate Change Music

The Covid Chronicles – A concept album about covid and how it changed our perspectives

May 4, 2022 — Leave a comment

As a musician, I really enjoyed the collaboration with other musicians. Playing with multiple musicians, and bands, exploring new rhythms, musical genres, and places. That was not only exciting but also rewarding. The reward always came through learning from others. I honestly think, the more you play better you will be, the more you play with other musicians better we all will be. 

Before the Covid pandemic, I had a band and we were playing music about climate change. The project was great and so much fun to do it. It was an audiovisual project where when playing live the songs would be synchronized with a video. The plan was going accordingly to the expectations but then Covid arrived with lockdowns, uncertainties, and only virtual music. 

To fulfill my creative needs I started a concept album telling the story of how covid changed our lives (for better or worse). After a lot of work and effort (and of course fun!), finally, the 1st song of my Covid Chronicles album is out. I recorded during the pandemic and it is about the pandemic (kind of inception). I played all instruments and my friend Aybars recorded the drums. Because I really like the multimedia concept below you can check the video:

Video of Icarus dreaming, the 1st song of the album Covid Chronicles.

The second song is planned to be released in the summer so stay tuned!

Using Cellular Automata and Climate Data to Generate Visual Art

August 21, 2019 — Image — Leave a comment

After the recording of the first demo with my band Mundo Kumo where we create music inspired on per reviewed papers about climate change, it was time to create some of the videos that we will be using on our live show. My initial idea was to use computer generated art combined with real climate data. I had experience with coding and complex artificial intelligence algorithms however not much experience using artificial intelligence (AI) to generate art.

The code used here was developed using the python language and it can be downloaded freely on my github repository called AlgorithmicArt. Although this was the initial idea about the videos,  the idea changed a lot after and we are not using all the videos explained here. However they are still a really good starting point.

When doing a little bit of research on the topic i found that Cellular automata was probably one of the easiest way to start. The concept of cellular automata was created by the mathematician Stephen Wolfram and some of the rules are very similar to the majority vote model used widely on statistical mechanics.

The first intuitive step is the use of the one-dimensional cellular automata (the easiest to implement and understand) . Thus picking a cellular automaton rule, it is possible to create a picture similarly to the pictures found on the internet.

Frame248.jpeg

 

To make things a little bit more interesting, a video can be made showing the evolution of the cellular automata grouping sequential gifs. This can be done using different alternatives. For example using ubuntu and the imagemagick package:

convert -delay 20 -loop 0 *.jpg myimage.gif

The final video is a thing like this:

The second step is to add the climate information in the code and combine with the cellular automata. I used global temperature anomalies from NOAA. I maped the colors based on the range of temperature anomalies. Thus, the colors (global temperature anomalies) and the evolution of the cellular automata are connected:

Next post I will talk about two-dimensional cellular automata.

 

How I am Making Music about Climate Change

November 2, 2016 — Leave a comment

People often ask me how I am doing my music about climate change. What are the foundations of you work? What are exactly you talking and writing about? I will try to clarify a little today.

In my music I have to main aspects, the physical aspect and the human/social aspect. The physical aspect is what it is happening or what it will happen physically with the environment. This is what I am using to write the music. Musical notes, chords, changes, rhythmic are my artistic interpretation of the physical aspects.

The second aspect is the human/social factor, or what is happening or will happen with us, humans. How we are reacting to those changes. What it is changing now for us, what it is not changing, etc. This is what the lyrics are about. Books like Tropic of Chaos, give some insights what is happening right now with us, humans and the social aspects of climate change. This book talks about how climate change is acting on humans’ social aspects in Africa, Americas and parts of Europe and Asia. It also gives some historical background and some possible future scenarios (some of them more chaotic than others).

Now, the recordings are on full speed and it won’t take long to release the first song. I hope you enjoy it.

More information about the book:

http://www.christianparenti.com/

One of my major challengers in writing my climate change music: explain that winters won’t disappear any time soon

February 24, 2016 — Leave a comment

In general for the public, the concept of climate change is that the world is warmer than a few years ago thus winters will no longer exist and it will be summer all over the year. This is one of my biggest challengers, how to explain with my music this common misunderstanding of climate change.

First the change of seasons are a combination of different factors, but the main factor is the position of the Earth in relation to the sun. The world is getting warmer and there are different theories about who is the responsible for that (CO2, sunspots, etc.). However this does not mean that it will be only summer all over the globe all the time. Winters won’t disappear any time soon.

I’ve been reading some people comments about the misunderstanding of cold temperatures and climate change. For example when a cold temperature is recorded somewhere and someone says that climate change is not happening because of that specific low temperature. Unfortunately,  things are more complicated than that.  The seasons won’t easily disappear. What it is expected to occur is that in some places winters/summers for example will have more severe temperatures. Droughts and blizzards are more expected. However, in other few places it will be less severe and in others it won’t change.

Glaciers are a great example of those changes. Most of the world’s glaciers are melting and losing mass. However a few of them are gaining mass and some of them are with relatively unchanged mass. In addition snow is still falling on the places that the melting glaciers are located but the warmer temperatures are melting more quickly the snow.

Those are some examples of what I have to consider when writing my music. How I should incorporate those factors. Honestly, that is the fun part!

Doing the Climate Change Progressive Rock Opera and the Plan B

January 20, 2016 — Leave a comment

Last year I wrote in my instagram post: “Part A,B,…J?H? 11bars? 6bars? Wait, normal songs only have A, B and maybe a C. Am I being too progressive?” The whole Alphabet ? Sometimes it is easy to imagine that the composition of the album is the hardest part. Indeed, that is probably the most important part, but reality hit me hard and doing almost everything by myself take time. In my last post I set a deadline for a possible release of the first song of my progressive rock opera. December of last year, that was my initial plan A and it was kind of reasonable. However I’ve found more difficulties than I expected. First after composing a song, and if the song is technically ready to record (technically because until the music is released it can be always improved and rearranged), it does not mean that the hard work is done. Recording is the next step. As so far I am recording all the instruments and programming the drums, it is a lot of work. Does that mean that I will give up? Of course not, but it is taking more time than I expected.

I remember when I was watching the documentary Rush: Beyond the lighted stage and they mentioned that Rush tried to record “La villa strangiato” in one take but they couldn’t. Taking apart the comparison with the semi-gods of progressive rock and the time they recorded that song, I had to take similar approach. Instead of release the first song with almost 20 min long, I will divide the song in two parts. However live I will play the song without cuts. I’ll post more details about the recording process soon and I am sure it will worth it the wait.

The journey of music and knowledge

October 2, 2015 — 1 Comment

Since I started my progressive rock project I’ve been receiving great support. Thank you all. It’s been an amazing journey.  In this small post i will try to describe how’s been.

It’s been a pleasure to record the album for two reasons. First finally i have the opportunity to play my favourite musical genre, of course progressive rock. I am using crazy effects, creating different atmospheres with easy and hard parts, expressing myself as an artist, and creating an amazing story. Second, because of the readings I am doing, I’ve been learning so much about the world, climate, climate change and consequences. Oh boy, so many books and papers. So much to learn about how the world is interconnected.

The project is beautiful but it is not easy. There are lot of difficulties. As a musician, the first challenge after the songs are ready is the recording process, and it is not an easy task. Why? Mainly because of money. Recordings demand time and money. To do any recording, even the simplest one (with good quality), some minimal equipments are necessary. Also it is a lot of work. These are the two main reasons why professional musicians (and studio engineers) don’t like to play (work) for free. However, this is another topic lets get back to my process.

I’ve done some sessions before, so I have good equipment to record my bass. Therefore, almost all the recordings can be done in a home studio. In addition, it is cheaper than any professional studio, right? True, but the home studio won’t simply appear in my desk out of nowhere. That was my first hit. Even if I am able to record everything by myself (which mostly i can do anyway but some musicians friends will contribute), I still don’t have the whole equipment necessary to record the whole album. This is slowing the process a bit because I don’t have all the money necessary to buy everything at once. Therefore, I am not only recording the songs by parts but also buying the necessary equipment by parts (used and new).

This is only the first bump. It is certain that I will have more bumps during my journey which is part of the job. So far the songs are (in my rumble opinion) becoming awesome! My plan is to release the first song by December. Lets see if i can keep this deadline.

The Sound of The Arctic Ice Death Spiral

April 13, 2014 — 2 Comments

Much of the Arctic Ocean is covered by sea ice which varies in extent and thickness seasonally. The Arctic sea ice extent has been shrinking (during the summer) and growing (during the winter) over decades (achieving the maximum in April and the minimum in September). However a sea ice loss has been observed in recent decades. For example the average ice extent for March 2014 was the fifth lowest for the month in the satellite record which supports the idea of sea ice decline.

Monthly March ice extent for 1979 to 2014 shows a decline of 2.6% per decade relative to the 1981 to 2010 average. Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center

In 2012, Peter Wadhams published a paper talking about how fast sea ice decline is happening:

Arctic sea ice extent had been shrinking at a relatively modest rate of 3-4% per decade (annually averaged) but after 1996 this speeded up to 10% per decade and in summer 2007 there was a massive collapse of ice extent to a new record minimum of only 4.1 million km2. Thickness has been falling at a more rapid rate (43% in the 25 years from the early 1970s to late 1990s) with a specially rapid loss of mass from pressure ridges. The summer 2007 event may have arisen from an interaction between the long-term retreat and more rapid thinning rates.

But what is exactly the Arctic ice death spiral?   Continue reading

Can We Hear The Sound of Our Warming Planet?

April 4, 2014 — 1 Comment

Does it sound weird for you? Great you are not alone. I had the same reaction but guys from University of Minnesota combined music and environmental data.

It is not new that our planer is warming.  Ok, lets stand on the shoulders of giants (I hate when someone uses those quotes and I don’t know where it came from). In 2010 J. Hansen and his fellows scientific friends published an article at Reviews of Geophysics. They used the Goddard Institute for  Space Studies (GISS) (NASA) analysis of global surface temperature change. Yes, there are different groups of scientists doing different analysis of global temperatures. So when you hear someone saying: “scientists said that average global temperature is rising”, it is a specific group using some specific data (not always they work together). However these analysis are not totally independent because they must use much the same information (same satellites,  meteorological stations, etc). Roughly speaking, they complete each other. Continue reading