Microcosmic Music - A New Level of Intensity

by Susan Alexjander, MA

Editor's note: None of the senses operate separately, of course; we perhaps imagine that to be so because the use of words or numbers to represent what they do is so easily confused with the reality of the direct experience. Representational systems are themselves experiences, but the consciousness in which they arise is infinitely more vast, complex and interdependent than that. That having been said, composer, musicologist and sound designer Susan Alexjander, in collaboration with biologist David Deamer, has uncovered and developed a listening experience that startles, amazes, delights and touches in the deepest and most inexplicable ways. She writes about it here with fascinating clarity, but the true brilliance in this can only be appreciated in the listening.

All day and night music,
A quiet, bright reed-song.
If it fades, we fade.

- Rumi

Is the body creating music? Are we, as the composer Charles Ives felt, walking, talking musicians, capable of creating our own symphonies? The answer seems to be an increasingly obvious "yes," as we study the body, its brainwaves, heartbeat, rhythms of blood circulation, endocrine cycles, right up to the microwave level of organ vibration. On the fastest level, we reach the rates of vibration of infrared light, as molecules and their atomic structures vibrate and jiggle, stretch, and bend. If these movements are happening, can they be recorded, can they be heard? If so, what would they sound like? Random noise? Melodic?

It was with these questions (as a composer) that I approached Dr. David Deamer, a cell biologist at the University of California, Davis, in 1988. Dr. Deamer had published two tapes based on a measuring of the rhythm of the four DNA bases (adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine) as they traveled along the helix (DNA Suite and DNA Music). He had discovered some charming patterns that made sense to the ears and the body, which recognized the movements as music, somewhere between statis and chaos.

I proposed that we try to measure the actual molecular vibrations of the bases that make up all of DNA as we know it, as it appears in all life forms. To my astonishment, Dr. Deamer explained that the vibrations were easily measurable, using an infrared spectrophotometer. By exposing each base to infrared light and measuring which wavelengths each base absorbs, it is possible to identify a unique array of approximately 15 different wavelengths for each base. Since each base has a slightly different atomic structure, it will vibrate in a unique manner. As the atoms of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen receive the light, they absorb some of it, depending on their vibrational frequencies, and those absorbances can be measured, plotted on a graph, and read as numbers. These numbers, in turn, represent a wave-length "scale" on the light spectrum, but very fast, very high. If we see those numbers in relationship to each other, in other words, as ratios, then we can translate them into the sonic spectrum and have a corresponding set of ratios in sound. This is exactly how an ordinary scale works on any musical instrument. The sound of the scale depends on the relationship of adjacent tones to one another.

The question naturally arises at this point: If the ratios are actually those of light vibrations, how can they become sound? This is not a difficult to achieve as it might seem. The answer lies in the fact that we are working with ratios and correspondences. Light, of course, is not sound. The two manifest on the material plane in different ways. But, there may be a common archetype to which they both relate, and this archetype may be found in the relationships among various rates of vibration.

Although not common, except perhaps in infants, there are a number of people who hear color or see sound. This crossing of the senses, so to speak, is a process known as synaesthesia.

Perhaps we can gain insight into this matter by taking a different approach. Consider the following koan (of sorts): Sound works by pushing molecules in the air, causing vibration. What happens when the sound vibration is faster and tinier than the smallest molecules? What do we call it then? Where does "the sound" go?

An important key to understanding how we can actually hear high, fast, light vibrations is the Law of the Octave. This law states that any vibration of sound (or light) can be doubled or halved, and the same pitch (or light frequency) will result, but what changes is the octave of the sound (or radiation). A simple example: Orchestras tune to the concert pitch A, which is established at a frequency of 440 hertz (cycles per second). Playing the same note at 220 or 880 hertz results in a tone we immediately recognize as an "A," but it sounds either an octave lower or higher than the concert A as such. By taking a very rapid vibration of light and halving it many times (about 35 iterations), we can bring this vibration into the range of hearing. In this manner we can get an idea of what all those light "pitches" might "sound" like if we heard them within the octave range of our sense of hearing. Hence the sound is relational, poetic, if you like. But, is it musical?

From an artistic perspective I believe it is. My first tape, Sequencia, was recorded and published in cassette form on Earth Day, 1990. This music for synthesizer, tabla, cello, violin, and voice, is base entirely on a tuning system created out of my work with Dr. Deamer. There are some astonishingly beautiful combinations which arise out of the total number of about 60 pitches that we measured. Most of the pitches are micro tonal, that is, their frequencies occur in the areas between the half-tone, or half-steps, of our normal musical scale. It should be recognized that our equal-tempered scale is a crude one. Micro tonal pitches are nothing new, however, in that some cultures have long histories of their use. The most familiar of these, of course, are the cultures of the Indian subcontinent and the Far East, as well as the Middle East.

Many of the DNA "pitches" are tightly packed, or extremely close in frequency. Yet, there are curious leaps, larger intervals of almost minor 7ths. (The layperson may get an idea of this range by performing the following exercise: Sing "There's a place for us" from the popular film musical West Side Story; the first two notes are a minor 7th.) Each DNA base, however, is very similar to the other three, with only subtle differences. And if we are laying out pitches from low to high, the span for each base is about two and a half octaves. We can therefore state with a high degree of certainty that we are creating wondrous combinations of light and sound within our bodies, playing off of and in relationship to each other.

Some listeners, but not all, report profound reactions to the tunings. They describe an expansiveness, an opening, a naturalness in reaction to them. This leads to the interesting possibility that through listening we are somehow setting up a corresponding reaction to the light patterns that are already in place. Are we touching some part of ourselves that is alive and singing? Is there an aspect of us that is coming into resonance with intelligence and possibly even memory? And if so, what is it about the particular ratios involved that might help us access that intelligence? Is some lower fundamental at work, generating the tunings as overtones? Are the sonic patterns relating to other areas of the body in any orderly way that we can perceive? The implications of our findings and the reactions of the listeners to the tunings open heretofore unsuspected vistas of possibilities.

Perhaps by looking at vibrations through the sonic filter we can discover relationships and mystery that have been hidden in their connectiveness - hidden in the exquisite continuum of our life essence, the quiet bright reed-song