8
Kansas State Engineer
On the morning of Sunday, Nov. 3,
1996, 40 cars pulled into a parking lot in
Oklahoma City. Waiting for them was
Wayne Coyne, frontman of the experi-
mental indie rock group Flaming Lips,
with a box full of cassette tapes and a
bullhorn. As the cars pulled in, he di-
rected them to their predetermined lo-
cations and gave them each a cassette
tape. This was one of the “Flaming Lips
Parking Lot Experiments”.
After one practice run, the real
tapes were passed out: 40 separate re-
cordings which, when played from the
strategically placed automobiles’ stereo
systems, would combine to form a sonic
landscape containing guitars, synthe-
sizers, voices, mosquitoes, car horns,
in a piece called “Sleepin’ on the Roof”.
The result has been described as a
“sound so fluid and full that it was al-
most a tangible presence in the air...”
Such a complex feat of sonic ma-
nipulation is a prime example of the mod-
ern relationship between music and en-
gineering. Music—the manipulation of
sound to evoke emotion—begins with
manipulation: with engineering. “I think
there are some definite connections be-
tween music and math,” said Aaron
Lindh, a freshman in mechanical engi-
neering and jazz saxophonist. “When
improvising in jazz, for instance, it takes
a great deal of logical thought to deter-
mine what tones will be harmonically
desirable.”
Modern string instruments such as
the guitar, harp and piano began as an
achievement in mathematics and phys-
ics. Pythagoras, whose name is attached
to one of engineering’s favorite formu-
las, noticed that taut strings produced
harmonious
tones when
plucked if their
lengths were in
whole number
ratios. One of
the most ear-
pleasing of
musical inter-
vals, the per-
fect fifth, was
defined as the
interval be-
tween notes
produced
when the
lengths of the
strings in-
volved had a
ratio of 3:2. The
other two most
audibly satis-
fying intervals,
the fourth and
octave, are
produced by
string lengths
with ratios of
4:3 and 2:1, re-
spectively.
A look at engineers and how they rock.
Music
Electronics
&
By Grant Buell
Photo by: Alicia Greene
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