SMART NEWS

From Tweets to Tunes – Musicians Sonify Twitter

A group of musicians is reading your Tweets, and turning them into music

Contributor

September 11, 2012

Sonification is all the rage right now. You can listen to music made out everything from Olympic finishes to the pollution of cities, including CERN, NYC taxis and earthquakes. And now you can be a part of that music generation: one group is turning Twitter feeds in to music.

In the U.K., programmer Daniel Jones, composer Peter Gregson and the ensemble Britten Sinfonia have developed a system to turn tweets into songs.

The group analyzed each tweet for mood and topic and turned those factors into the rhythm and intonation of each individual message. Their algorithm, called The Listening Machine, runs all day and night and you can watch the live data as it comes in on their website.

Of course, they’re not the first people to turn Tweets into tunes. Here’s a song based on Twitter music trend data.

And here’s a sonification of tweets with the word “osama” in them shortly after his assassination.

You can make your own, too: learn how here.