NASA Data to Cosmic Disco: Sonification Jam with Noah Pred

Noah Pred launches a deep space music mission using NASA datasets and celestial imagery to power a disco-driven sonification jam in Ableton Live. Explore how planetary motion, proton data, and galactic visuals become musical tools for a cosmic audio journey.

Galactic Grooves: Turning Space Physics & Deep Field Imagery into Disco Vibes

In this session, Noah Pred dives into the interstellar end of experimental music, turning raw NASA data and deep space imagery into rich, pulsating layers of cosmic disco using his powerful sonification toolkit.

Opening with a track co-produced with The Mole, he builds from a 16th note disco bassline driven by a mysterious “fig five” proton dataset from NASA. Using the Data Synth, Noah sculpts dynamic waveforms from imagery like galactic deep fields and comet streaks, adjusting filters, envelopes, FM, and even bias to pull musical depth from visual inputs.

But this is no dry scientific experiment. With Ableton Live as the canvas, he layers pads, leads, and cosmic echoes using:

• Solaris modulators (driven by planetary orbits and rotations)
• Data MIDI sequences from gravitational readings
• Typewriter text sonification (“space is the place” becomes a riff)
• And image-to-audio mappings that flip across X and Y axes for texture shifts.

Using tools like Expand to reflect incoming MIDI with autonomy, and X-Relay to gate, mute, or transpose musical ideas, the whole jam session becomes a living, evolving performance. OSC control from a mobile gyro app adds gestural input for even more expressive potential.

Wrapping up, Noah sequences and refines the generative ideas into an arrangement, demonstrating how the sonified elements can become playable, structured, and deeply musical compositions.