| A Line From A Pale Blue Dot |
| Electronic Realizations for Guitar and Computer, volume 7 |
| A Line From A Pale Blue Dot Total Time: 6:00:00 In the book "2001: A Space Odyssey", Arthur C. Clarke discusses the solitude of space travel. I had been pondering the idea for an obscenely long piece of music for quite some time. I had recorded approximately 18 hours of music and was in the process of editing. I had the idea of taking the parts that fit and combine them, with the different parts drifting into each other. The overall theme of the piece was that of taking a long journey and looking out the window. I am scared to death of airplanes, but it's the quickest was to get to Italy. One time on the return trip, I was drugged with sedatives and Dramamine and spent the day looking out the window at the Atlantic Ocean. It was so beautiful. 40,000 feet and it looked like textured glass. The question was, if this was going to be about a long journey, then what would the journey be? What could happen, where could one go in 6 hours. A drive to Atlanta, a walk to the Auscilla River, or a flight to Vancouver? I began to think in terms of "where would the music go?" Knowing radio waves travel the speed of light, I calculated that over a 6 hour period, the radio waves in a continuous broadcast would travel roughly 4 billion miles. The next question was "What is 4 billion miles from earth. So I do a Google search for 4 billion miles from earth and discovered the whole Pale Blue Dot thing. The probe Voyager took a photograph from 4 billion miles out, which is the furthest photo ever taken of earth. So, basically, if I can ever get a radio station to play this on some late night show, it will theoretically form a continuous line from earth to the edge of the solar system. I think it is a great description of how far does light travel listen to this, and travel at light speed, and you'll be out past Neptune. Sample calculation: speed of light = 299792458 m/s = 6.475517093 * 10 exp 12, 6,475,571,093 km (6 hours) or 4,023,669,776 miles (6 hours) 4 billion miles at the speed of light 186000 miles per second 11160000 miles per minute 669600000 miles per hour 4017600000 miles in 6 hours. Composed, arranged, performed, recorded, manipulated, treated and produced by Oenyaw. Recorded March-August, 2007. Equipment and software: Epiphone Sheraton, Fender Stratocaster, DanElectro Black Coffee Distortion, Morley Volume Pedal, Line 6 Modulation Modeler, Line 6 Delay Modeler, PAIA Quadrafuzz (thanks, Chris!), Lexicon Omega Desktop Recording Studio, E Machines T2542 Computer (RAM upgrade 768), Cubase LE, Polderbits Sound Editor, All Audio Converter V1.50, Windows XP. Copyright 2008 David Wayne Higgins |
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