Inspiration
One of our members encountered a .txt file of the 11th human chromosome and thought, "hey, there are probably some cool patterns in this sequence." Another member is really into music theory, and thought they could play some audio files based on patterns encountered. Then MadHacks came up, and they said, "let's go for it."
How it works
We used Java and the audio-editing software Audacity to read a simple text file containing the nucleotide sequence of chromosome 11. We read the file searching for encoding sequences between the codons "ATG" and "TAA," "TAG," and "TGA." We then played piano chords (edited using Audacity) depending on amino acid pairs encountered from a returned string of amino acids.
Challenges I ran into
Once the sequences looked right, and we finally got it to play audio files, we realized the notes sounded terrible together (at the time, we played a single note that would go up a certain number of steps depending on the first base in an amino acid). Like really bad. Like we should have renamed our project to the human garbage song. But we didn't. We played piano chords instead of a single note, and we set up a chord progression. It sounded much better when we did that.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
There was some sense of a musical pattern being played in under 12 hours.
What I learned
Finding the right files to manipulate can often be harder than the actual coding.
What's next for The Human Song
Optimizing the text reader is a huge priority to reduce the time it takes to return an encoding sequence to begin playing music. Also a better GUI/UI would be nice.
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