For this assignment, I wanted to create music that showed the prion infecting another protein. I decided to do this by starting off with a slow and steady rhythm and then moving on to a faster and faster one as … Continue reading
Even though I was not able to come to class to hear the lecture on music, I found it very interesting to incorporate the sequence of PrPSc into a song. I created a song on Finale Notepad (a music software that … Continue reading
In my attempt to compose a prion sequence, I chose the Octapeptide Repeat Region because it is somewhat mysterious in its repetitive pattern. Compared to rest of the sequences that are appear very complex and erratic, I wanted to represent the octapeptide uniformly 4×4 which was a response to its geometric name repeating the eight amino acid sequence. Thus, I included to render this geometric function through the sound of a synthetic instrument (synthaltered keyboard) that I used to compose in Mac OSX Garagband programme. PQGGGGWGQ PHGGGWGQ PHGGGWGQ PHGGGWGQ PHGGGWGQ CDGGGGAGF CEGGGAGF CEGGGAGF CEGGGAGF CEGGGAGF The musical piece itself is very basic, but after having spent the time with revising biochemistry, and reflecting on the information from last class, the way I see the prion structure when I hear the piece is reminiscent of this learning process. I think I would like to go deeper scientifically, mathematically, and musically with the composition in the future. The slow pace of the piece reflects the association with the length of the octapeptide: in this case I wanted to make a connection to neurodegenerative symptoms. Within a given species, repeats at the amino acid level are not always perfect. In addition, it has been researched that mutations with extra repeats can cause Creutzfeldt-Jakob … Continue reading
I wanted to create the musical effect of one infectious prion propagating slowly, as it duplicates and converts each consecutive normal protein at a time. I had some trouble using Pure Data also, and resorted to Audacity. Even with Audacity, … Continue reading
The way amino acids are connected through a chemical reaction was very interesting to me. I aimed to represent the peptide bond that connects them through that chemical reaction as the short and repeated pattern, which breaks the seemingly continuous … Continue reading
I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Professor Johnson’s lecture this week involving prions and music. I would never had thought that prions and other biological compounds could be converted into musical tones and notes. Professor Johnson’s presentation showing different sounds associated … Continue reading
This piece was created in Audacity by importing a raw data file of the PrPC and PrPSc proteins to explore what a healthy protein and an infected protein would sound like against each other. The PrPC file fluctuates in tone … Continue reading
My piece this week was a live performance piece, and because including an MP3 of my piece wouldn’t really fully demonstrate the live components of my work, I’ve included a Youtube video instead demonstrating my performance of the piece, as … Continue reading
In this short musical piece, I wanted to construct something that initially was almost completely patterned with a few blips. This is to represent the way that the proteins need to be folded nearly identically. I added piano layers to … Continue reading
Like my classmates, I found PD Extended difficult to use; I had a desire to study MIDI and other sonfication programs prior to this experience, and I still do, but not as much. I realized that making digital music is … Continue reading