The CMS guitar turns to the Dark Side

A long long time ago ... I came across the scores for the Star Wars soundtrack, one of my favorite pieces of music and a strong inspiration for me since I can remember. As I was dissecting the arrangements it was pretty natural for me to transcribe everything for guitar. I even started recording the whole Main Theme "guitar orchestra", but that project has been on hold for several years now, since I decided to do the Imperial March first.

The idea for this arrangement was to not just blindly reproduce the original orchestral parts on guitar, but to do something that makes more sense in a guitar+bass+drums situation. On the other hand I wanted to retain as much of the original parts as possible, and not just take the main melody and make a fitting heavy metal backing track.

Well, I'm happy with the final result. :)

I decided to play the main melody on the CMS guitar and to film these parts I went to the CMS Experiment itself. The backdrop is a 1:1 scale photograph of the CMS particle detector, you can appreciate the size and the beauty of the thing in the video:

P.S. the song is also available for purchase on Loudr ;)

Higgs Sonification: the musical score

In case you wanted to see/play the tune yourself, I've made a pdf file with the tab, available here. Remember, the rhythm guitar here is tuned in Drop D!

This is the first page:

In the Press: Higgs Metal Sonification

The video is getting quite some coverage and managed to accumulate 100k views in a week! Here is what I came across so far (will be adding more links as I spot them)

Internet (US, UK and other English speaking):

• http://www.metalsucks.net/2015/04/15/video-particle-physicist-turns-higgs-boson-discovery-metal-music/
• http://io9.com/and-now-the-higgs-boson-discovery-played-as-heavy-meta-1697742720
• http://www.popsci.com/what-does-higgs-boson-sound-video
• http://nerdist.com/rockin-physicists-turn-the-higgs-boson-into-heavy-metal/
• http://www.networka.com/man-composes-metal-song-with-higgs-boson-particle-data
• http://www.metalinjection.net/video/one-scientist-translated-the-higgs-boson-discovery-into-some-riffy-metal?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=one-scientist-translated-the-higgs-boson-discovery-into-some-riffy-metal
• http://blog.physicsworld.com/2015/04/17/heavy-metal-higgs-meet-the-publons-stephen-hawkings-galactic-tour-and-more/
• https://www.thecirclepit.com/2015/04/physicist-translates-higgs-boson-into-metal-music.html
• http://sputniknews.com/science/20150419/1021102739.html
• http://rocknycliveandrecorded.com/not-with-the-band-music-particles-or-the-music-of-the-universe.html

Facebook (the most active ones):

• https://www.facebook.com/sciencedump/posts/1064378450257258
• https://www.facebook.com/physicsworld/posts/10152743983906121
• https://www.facebook.com/cern/posts/808581549229192
• https://www.facebook.com/CMSexperiment/posts/10153177566788433
• https://www.facebook.com/PopSci/posts/10153229168546411
• https://www.facebook.com/ATLASexperiment/posts/855229707847793
• https://www.facebook.com/Fermilab/posts/10153311091858969

Switzerland:

• http://www.20min.ch/wissen/news/story/Cern-Forscher-machen-ploetzlich-Heavy-Metal-15833575

Mexico:

• http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/ciencia/2015/boson-higgs-heavy-metal-104269.html
• http://www.sopitas.com/site/469438-cientificos-transcriben-el-bosson-de-higgs-en-heavy-metal/

Poland:

• http://www.focus.pl/kosmos/jak-brzmi-bozon-higgsa-w-wersji-rockowej-blog-12455
• http://www.antyradio.pl/Newsy/Duperele/Heavymetalowy-wyklad-o-odkryciu-bozonu-Higgsa-2528
• http://www.wykop.pl/link/2500907/polski-fizyk-heavy-metal-i-bozon-higgsa-co-ich-laczy/

Germany:

• http://www.scinexx.de/wissen-aktuell-18777-2015-04-17.html
• http://www.spektrum.de/news/wie-wuerde-die-entdeckung-des-higgs-bosons-als-metal-song-klingen/1342515 
• http://www.metal.de/heavy-metal/news/higgs-boson/60929-so-klingt-die-entdeckung-eines-elementarteilchens/?genre=

Russia:

• https://nplus1.ru/news/2015/04/17/HiggsHeavyMetal

 Romania:

• http://www.metalhead.ro/stiri/fizicianul_piotr_traczyk_transforma_particula_lui_dumnezeu_in_muzica-aid-132652-l-1 

Hungary:

• http://index.hu/mindekozben/poszt/2015/04/15/ha_azt_hitte_volna_hogy_a_higgs-bozon_felfedezeset_nem_lehet_villanygitaron_eljatszani_tevedett/ 

Italy:

• http://www.focus.it/scienza/scienze/il-bosone-suona-il-rock
• http://www.wired.it/scienza/2015/04/16/bosone-higgs-riff-metal/
• http://www.truemetal.it/news/al-cern-il-bosone-di-higgs-diventa-un-riff-metal-73955

Brasil:

• http://whiplash.net/materias/curiosidades/221907.html

China:

• http://www.huanqiukexue.com/html/newqqkj/newwl/2015/0423/25334.html

Higgs Boson Sonification

The sonification experiment video is out!

I wrote a small guest post for The Cylindrical Onion, the blog of the CMS experiment. You'll find some more details about the sonification process there.

Higgs boson goes Metal

I have a little "sonification" project coming up. Its a short piece of music made by transforming data from the CMS experiment into notes. I chose two plots that were shown during the announcement of the discovery of the higgs boson at CERN, on July 4th 2012.

The top plot above shows the signal of higgs decay into two photons, as you can see it will correspond to a descending run. I generated the musical score by assigning notes from the chromatic scale to numbers of entries in histograms. The result has a rather abstract "harmony" and in fact it sounds quite heavy metal. The higgs decay into four leptons (the lower plot above) has a lot of bins with zero entries - corresponding to pauses - so it fits perfectly as a rhythm guitar riff. This riff is played on the CMS guitar.

Cover Girl

Remember the photo session in the CMS cavern? One of the pictures is now on the cover of the January edition of Physik Journal. There is also an article about the connections between music and high energy physics inside - including of course the CMS guitar. Very cool!

Jamming underground in the CMS cavern

Last week I showed Jonah Kohn, Google Science Fair winner (13-14 category) around the CMS experiment cavern. Since he's also a guitarist, we arranged a little surprise for him and had an impromptu jam session with the CMS guitar!

photo: Max Brice/CERN

Now that was major fun! We jammed for 10 or 15 minutes, going through various rock "standards" and just jamming on improvised riffs.

And the guitar got to see CMS in person finally too.
Read more in the CERN news!