Homework 1

For this project, I chose to use data from the Half Moon Bay Tide Tables. The data set is comprised of the respective heights in cm of every low and high tide for 2015. Tides come in and out roughly 2 times a day and modulate according to the position of the moon(I think...).

Here is a link to my .wav file

To me, this data set has 2 voices that move counterpuntally. If you imagine seperating the high and low tides into an upper and lower voice, it seems like they are moving gradually(for the most part), and you can easily recognize their movement. Each "voice" slowly oscillates up and down as its respective tide height varies over the course of the month and year. Occasionally, there is some clipping within the audio, this is explained by super low tides that are actually several cm below sea level and recorded as negative values.

Here is a link to my data set

For my chucK sonification of this data, I deviated from the starter code by decreasing the reverb, cutting the float rate in half, and changing the wave form to sawtooth. Although these are pretty minor adjustments, I felt that they helped illustrate the data. My data set is fairly long, upwards of 1500 values I think, so shorting the float values allows the listener to hear the data a faster rate, and it makes the "two voices" I mentioned earlier more identifiable. As I increased the float rate, the existing reverb amount made the audio too "muddy," so I decreased it by 80%. As for the Sawtooth decision, I thought that a sharper wave made everything a little more crisp.

Half Moon Bay is an incredibly beautiful place, and it is about a 40 minute drive from campus. The Tide Pools at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve house many different bizarre creatures that you cannot see upclose many other places. If you decide to go, make sure to check the online tide charts and visit when lowtide is below 1 ft. The lower the low tide, the further you can walk out on the rocks and see the different critters.