Thing-a-day 17: Binary Clicker
Today’s device translates the wonderful world of binary into sound. Inspired by THINGS – COUNTING IN BINARY ON YOUR FINGERS by Bre.
Listen – Day17-Binary_Clicker.mp3
Download – day17.max.zip (requires Max 5)
For Thing-a-day 2009.
UPDATE: Added a Creative Commons License to the mp3.
Day17-Binary_Clicker.mp by Jacob Joaquin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
February 18th, 2009 at 12:39 am
[...] over at Thumbuki was inspired by the binary video to turn transform binary counting into sound. I saw this and [...]
February 18th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Very cool.
How many notes is it playing on each count? It sounds like more than 1 but less than all of them (for instance, 127 does not sound like 7 notes). I assume the first beat is silent (00000000).
Have you considered releasing a (much) slowed down version to count along with more easily? I think this would be great for teaching the patterns in binary numbers.
February 18th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
@Rick Regan
Thanks!
It only plays one note per count. The original idea, which I may still do, was to create binary tones based on the harmonic series. So if the value was 21 and the base frequency was 100, that tone would consist of a 100 Hz, 400 Hz and a 1600 Hz tone. 00000000 is silent.
What I have considered, and have decided to do is create a stand-alone app with a more user friendly interface so that people can play with it themselves, including the ability to change the tempo. I’ll be able to do with for OS X, but I’ll need to find someone who can create the app for Windows.
Keep an eye out over the next couple days, as it shouldn’t take me too long to do.
February 18th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
So the one note played is the rightmost 1 bit, right? I made a bar chart with x = the counter value (1 to 255) and y = the position of the rightmost one bit (1 to 7, from lsb to msb). When I look at it while listening to your song it follows the heights of the lines.
As for the tones, another idea could be to leave it as is — one note per count — but use 8 octaves instead. Those parallel the powers of two nicely, doubling the frequency at each bit.
This sounds like something I should talk about on my blog.
I look forward to the Windows app.
February 21st, 2009 at 8:04 am
Yes, the bit on the right is the 1 bit.
I just posted an upgrade. It now includes 10 bits instead of 8, one for each finger. Users can now set the duration, amplitude and frequency for each individual bit. I think after another pass or two, I’ll be ready to create a stand-alone application for all to use.
February 22nd, 2009 at 12:26 pm
[...] is what it sounds like to count from 1 to 255 in binary (music courtesy of Jake Joaquin). It’s so simple, reflecting the simplicity of binary code; yet it speaks volumes about the [...]