Sferics, Opus 1

Pierre Archambault

ATMOSPHERICS (Sferics). If humans had radio antennas instead of ears, we would hear a remarkable symphony of strange noises coming from our own planet. Scientists call them "tweeks," "whistlers," and "sferics." Earth's natural radio emissions are naturally-occurring electromagnetic (very low frequency radio) signals emanating from lightning storms, aurora (The Northern and Southern Lights), and most importantly, the Earth's magnetic-field (the Magnetosphere).

Sferics Opus 1 is a sound art composition that I created by transforming the web broadcasts from the VLF radio receiver at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Once the recording was completed, I selected sections of the Sferics; Tweeks; Whistlers, etc. for their rhythm, harmonics, and sonority and then transformed them into music through the use of a MIDI converter. The result is a composition entirely founded upon the atmospheric voices of earth.

To listen to a live radio transmission of NASA’s atmospherics visit:
NASA Online VLF Receiver

Pierre Archambault is an Associate Professor of Sound at Emerson College, Boston. He is a music composer for documentary film and an audio engineer whose most recent credits include the ADDY award-winning DVD production of the solo concert of the Rolling Stones’ keyboardist “Chuck Leavell Live at the Douglass Theater.”