hashmusic — handmade generative blockchain music
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tldr// I created an album of psychedelic ambient music based on the melodies inherent in the hashes on a blockchain. I am releasing this album as an NFT collection. It sounds gorgeous, and it was made in a cool way. If you want to know more, read on. Who am I?
I wanted to hear what the blockchain hashes sound like, and they surprised and inspired me. I mapped their curves to different scales and pitch-spaces. I explored them in different ways — I sang them, I played them on the piano and guitar, I sketched code to spin them out in different rhythms and patterns. I ultimately devised a full-studio instrument around them, which I’ll describe later on, and recorded an album.
The exploration is ongoing, but the first chapter is complete — hashmusic 1/hashflowers — an album / NFT collection, 100 handmade generative pieces based on the melodies of the first 7 blocks on the ethereum chain.
What is a hash / why do I care
A hash is a cryptographic translation of any data into a number of fixed length. You can hash a word or a novel; both will return a hash value with the same number of digits. The same input will always produce the same hash value. It is a one-way conversion — you cannot recover the input by looking at the hash.
(And if you are thinking about hashish, you are not wrong.)
You can hash anything. For example:
SHA256 hash of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (all 864 pages): F937EA05854FFA4E5C3F4C845B843EBD0DB3C8054C434ADBC7CA244632072654
What do you feel when you look at this value? I feel confused but attracted, a bewildered awe. What is that? What does it mean? It doesn’t contain Anna Karenina, but it represents it: if you move a period in the novel, it too will change in lockstep. It is AK’s doppelgänger in an unknowable universe. An impossible maze of a fingerprint.
What would it be like to to explore that universe, to get lost in that maze? This idea attracted me like a dark alley.
To the eye, it’s impenetrable. But what might it be to the ear? The song of this hash tells you nothing about Anna Karenina — or does it? Only Anna Karenina could create it. Is it like an old shirt that smells like your lover? You can’t reconstitute them from the smell, but you can enjoy them in another, unseen reality.
Why Ethereum hashes
The ethereum blockchain is the backbone of our new art culture and market, and hashes are the backbone of a blockchain. For this first album, I went to the source — the first few blocks on the chain, from July 30, 2015.
To read this hash as a melody, I first choose a scale to map it to. This scale is dorian mode, a major scale except the third and seventh tone are flattened. Mapped, it looks like this (the letters a-f represent scale degrees 11–16):
This sequence of pitches then becomes the DNA for the music that follows. The notes always and only fall in this sequence, but are refracted through a kaleidoscope of sounds.
My approach: handmade generative art
I’ve done a lot with code and music over the last decade. Many of my concert works, such as Bloom Suite, Facets, Night Corners/Flowers, and Flows, grew out of in experiments in code, and I’ve coded installations, live performances and the VR experience Movements.
When we think of ‘computer generated music’ we first think of an Instant Music Machine. Write the right code, press go, and poof, finished music appears. For many, this total automaton (like the famous Emily Howell) is the holy grail. There is something ‘pure’ in the idea of this — pure code, a pure idea executed purely. A musical Turing Test, striving for an passable imitation.
It’s not satisfying — to me at least — because of the way I am a musician. Coding is one of my skills but I have many others. I can sing and play instruments, learn a song by ear, build a studio, mix an album, write music straight from my brain onto paper. To make my best work, I draw as many of those skills together as I can.
I think of my approach as handmade generative art. It’s a middle way between traditional creation and pure generative code.
It is ‘generative’ in the sense coined by Brian Eno; rather than designing an end result, I design systems that I can only partially control, and explore the music that arises.
But it is handmade in that I don’t make a machine, flip the switch, and stand back and mint a thousand variations. I give myself a role in that system, because I like being part of the process. I’m there, in real time, hearing and responding and shaping every second as it comes into being.
How I made it
The generative system at the heart of hashmusic uses code, a computer, a synthesizer, and a studio full of hardware audio processors and effects, and a human. Here’s how it works.
I wrote a program to intercept and modify MIDI notes played on the keyboard of my Moog. Whatever note I actually play is replaced by the next note of the hash sequence. This guarantees the integrity of that melody, no matter what I play — I can only produce the hash melody in the correct sequence. Some pieces play the sequence once and then end; others loop it. I allow octave transposition, so if I play a high note on the keyboard it would play the next note of the hash melody transposed to that octave.
The program then routes each note to a different software instrument, hosted in a DAW. I limited my palette to six instruments, a collection of contrasting pianos, bells, gongs, and a celesta. The notes are routed one by one to different instruments in various cycling patterns by my code.
Then I route each of the six instruments through a different path in the studio. Each instrument goes to different hardware gear — compressors, tone amps, and effects, including a Bricasti M7 reverb, OTO BIM, BAM and BOUM, Strymon Volante, and other guitar pedals. They then flow together into a looper, either the Chase Bliss Blooper or Mood or both, to build a background layer of memory in each piece, a 7th voice. Occasionally I let the Moog speak as well, the 8th voice. I’m getting a lot faster, but it still takes about 4 hours to set up.
The result of this octopus of a setup is a keyboard instrument like none before. It sounds like a tightly rehearsed band playing melodies in hocket, but where every instrument is on a different planet. One note will resonate as if it’s in a cavern, the next slap back in a small digital room, the next will echo and degrade as if on vintage tape, the next sounds like a lofi LP, and so on.
It’s a kaleidoscope of sounds and spaces brought into a single, impossible image.
How I play it
Playing this instrument is a bewildering and delicious experience of knowing and not-knowing, control and surrender.
When I play a note, I don’t know what pitch will come out, or what instrument it will come out of. All I can control is phrasing, rhythm, and register. I am listening deeply and responding to what I hear. I lean over to adjust the effects, playing them like instruments. I choose what to loop and what to layer as I hear it. I soak up the sound.
In this state of heightened attention, each piece is improvised in real time, directly to master. There’s no post production, fixing, or fussing — like Jackson Pollock paintings, they are records of action, faithful to the unrepeatable moment.
What about the planet
I am concerned about the energy footprint of the blockchain. These pieces are minted on Ethereum, which is taking this problem seriously and is poised to make enormous improvements in efficiency with the transition to Proof of Stake. If this turns out not to happen, I will purchase carbon offsets.