Strange Maps

February 22, 2008

247 - All the World In A Song

Filed under: Uncategorized — strangemaps @

world-beat-music6.jpeg

As most news bulletins prove, the world is not, alas, an harmonious place. The same point is proved, if inadvertently and on a more symbolical level, by this stunning musical map of the world.

This is a pretty clever translation of the shape of the world’s continents into the dots, ties and bars of traditional musical notation, but ironically, its main claim to harmony is visual, not aural.

For even though the legend over the top left hand corner of this World Beat Map reads harmonious world beat, I suspect the result of this piece being played would be anything but harmonious to the ears.

I don’t read sheet music (I prefer to listen to the stuff), but the outline of the continents, though perfectly familiar and expected as such on a normal map, seems just too jagged and capricious when translated into notes – not to mention temporally chopped up by the bars travelling from left to right and top to bottom.

Of course, I could be wrong. Anyone more familiar with music in its written form, and how to squeeze it out of an instrument, is cordially invited to comment on this song’s playability, enjoyability and harmoniousness.

This map is published by Wild About Music, Inc. and is for sale at this page of their website.

UPDATE: On April 19, 2008, Krissy Clark of Weekend America interviewed James Plakovic about his harmonious world beat map. Listen to the interview - and the map - here.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

55 Comments »

  1. You can listen to this at http://plakovic.com/originals/WBM.shtml

    Comment by Namreg — February 22, 2008 @

  2. Thanks!

    It does sound a bit chaotic indeed, but not half as bad as I thought it would!

    Comment by strangemaps — February 22, 2008 @

  3. That is not the song the notes would make, as far as I can tell. It looks like they just picked a ‘world music’ song that had a lot of notes and played it.

    Comment by Eric — February 22, 2008 @

  4. I agree, that music can’t be it.

    Some interesting things to note, in my opinion: US/Canada, China, Kazakhstan are the only countries that have been dignified in this map by a musical representation of their land borders.

    As well-done many details are, especially when seen from a medium-large distance, the South-East of Europe is really disappointing.

    I also don’t like the Americo-centricity of this map and the cut through the Asian continent; not really “harmonious” to me.

    Finally, what do you think about the notes South of the Cape of Good Hope? To me, they sound like winds, blowing strongly where the oceans meet.

    Comment by davide — February 22, 2008 @

  5. [...] StrangeMaps blog) As most news bulletins prove, the world is not, alas, an harmonious place. The same point is [...]

    Pingback by Kelso’s Corner » Blog Archive » All the World In A Song (Sheet) — February 22, 2008 @

  6. [...] Vía Strange Maps [...]

    Pingback by El mapa del mundo como partitura « Pasa la vida — February 22, 2008 @

  7. [...] am Strange Maps has a map of the world with the borders of countries and landforms arranged as musical notes.  In the comments there’s a link to someone who’s played [...]

    Pingback by Visualizing Music: From Maps To Stars « Chris Navin — February 22, 2008 @

  8. [...] but still cute.  For piano players who are either bored or lost (Karl H., do you have a GPS?), this map is for [...]

    Pingback by But can you dance to it? « Thoughts En Route — February 22, 2008 @

  9. Freaking beautiful. I would love to hear what that actually sounds like (since rumour seems to have it that the above link isn’t all that true). This is just so incredibly interesting to look at!

    Comment by Suzie — February 22, 2008 @

  10. [...] All Of The World In A Song Published February 23, 2008 asides , education Tags: map, music, notes, strangemaps, wordpress, world The world in notes at strangemaps. [...]

    Pingback by All Of The World In A Song « memoirs on a rainy day — February 22, 2008 @

  11. Mr. Plakovic does appear to have harmonized the various voices. The resulting music if played appropriately by an orchestra would no doubt be busy, but it’s unfair to suggest that it is not properly harmonic. (It opens on a strong C major chord, an F maj7 appears in the middle of Russia and China, repeated around the Great Lakes, etc.) The vertical bars, aside from roughly representing meridians, are essential in written music, and thus are quite appropriate visually and musically. Cheers to Mr. Plakovic for the extra effort that makes this something quite clever rather than a mere novelty.

    Comment by Andres — February 22, 2008 @

  12. A) linked audio file has nothing to do with this notation;

    B) it’s reasonable to assume this is all easily playable given the tempo indication (instrument names aren’t specified, and there’s no effort to map it directly onto traditional orchestral forces — no viola clefs for example — but ranges are very conservative so probably playable by any inst that uses that clef);

    C) imagining an instrument distribution roughly similar to a standard orch, though, this would not sound all that dense, and it’s all diatonic (no accidentals) so the impression would be “meandering but logical”;

    D) at the given tempo, this would last 40 seconds;

    E) great post.

    Comment by Kay — February 22, 2008 @

  13. (btw, for people who are interested in this kind of thing, an excellent book to check out is Notations, edited by John Cage. It’s a collection of a huge range of experimental scores by various composers. Some of them are like this one — meant to visually represent objects — and some are experimental in other ways.)

    Comment by Kay — February 22, 2008 @

  14. Is there anyone who knows what the instruments are in this score? I have a music program that could probably play it, but I really don’t want a piece with 30+ pianos, just because I don’t know what the actual instruments are supposed to be.

    Comment by Zyzzyva — February 22, 2008 @

  15. I have a program that would make a music file, it would probably take me about an hour or so of work, but unfortunately, I’ve been extremely busy of late, and wouldn’t have the time until this post has been all but forgotten.
    I mainly use the program for creating music files for rare national anthems for my site on national anthems (linked to my name), I do make the time for those. So if, say, a newly declared nation made it their anthem (Kosovo, I’m looking your way!) I’d be forced to make a music file of it. ;)

    I find the most interesting part of the map/score is how there’s musical notes at the far right edge of the map/score in order to give the effect of the edge of the paper slightly curled in.

    Comment by David — February 23, 2008 @

  16. This really doesn’t appear to be intended for realization as music (by humans or via midi).

    Anybody who really wanted to take the time to make a version in notation software (to generate midi playback) could assign instruments any way they liked, because he didn’t specify insts… because this is not intended to be realized as music. :)

    It’s visual art. The artist writes that he is “not very knowledgeable about music theory.” The audio files on his site are not in any way realizations of the notation they’re sitting next to.

    Comment by Kay — February 23, 2008 @

  17. it is, at minimum, new fodder for the imagination, and that is so welcome in this day and age. thanks for spreading the good word.

    Comment by naxal — February 23, 2008 @

  18. I could probably make it using Sibelius. Does anybody say yes? :D

    Comment by Clorox — February 23, 2008 @

  19. Go for it, Clorox :)

    Comment by Eric — February 23, 2008 @

  20. That’s a clever way to portray a world map.

    :-)

    Comment by Ilya Sitnikov — February 23, 2008 @

  21. I think that John Cage did something similar at one point or another.

    Comment by Ilya Sitnikov — February 23, 2008 @

  22. John Cage has nothing on the abysmally sublime John Stump, composer of Faeries Aire and Death Waltz, Music for Strings in A Minor (Motoring Accident), and Prelude and the Last Hope in C and C# Minor!

    Comment by Ash — February 23, 2008 @

  23. Interesting… But I agree that it is only a visual project.

    Comment by Katalog Stron — February 23, 2008 @

  24. Hey, great blog :)

    Comment by Dan/TbC — February 23, 2008 @

  25. @davide: I agree: the Americo-centrist map does leave Asia rather cut, but on the other hand: the world is round, so the music after this map could be made into an infinite loop to emphasize the perpetual harmony ;-)

    Comment by simber — February 23, 2008 @

  26. [...] map of the world composed of musical notes. (Don’t let my entry title confuse you; I’m sure it [...]

    Pingback by Grapefeed » Earth Song — February 23, 2008 @

  27. Nice! Only too bad it’s Mercator…

    Comment by Jørgen — February 23, 2008 @

  28. Nice blog and great map!
    I was curious how it would sound, so I made an mp3 of it.
    You can listen to it here:
    http://www.esnips.com/doc/3d1b6e90-ce39-4d82-b8ae-bbf988b3188f/Worldbeat-music

    It looks better than it sounds, but it doesn’t sound as bad as I expected…

    Comment by Joke — February 23, 2008 @

  29. [...] «w00t» Tags: No Tags [...]

    Pingback by Ochblog » Blog Archive » 6527 — February 24, 2008 @

  30. [...] (from Strange Maps. [...]

    Pingback by Music map &#8212 Matt’s Waste of Your Time — February 24, 2008 @

  31. [...] Doug Wilson wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptI don’t read sheet music (I prefer to listen to the stuff), but the outline of the continents, though perfectly familiar and expected as such on a normal map, seems just too jagged and capricious when translated into notes – not to … [...]

    Pingback by 247 - All the World In A Song-Music Lyrics Download — February 24, 2008 @

  32. Thank you for making that into a file!

    Comment by Eric — February 25, 2008 @

  33. [...] Via | StrangeMaps [...]

    Pingback by Mapa del mundo musical · Dandel — February 26, 2008 @

  34. nice one, buddy.

    Comment by vmhusten — February 26, 2008 @

  35. and so are some of the comments.

    Comment by vmhusten — February 26, 2008 @

  36. [...] of course, the excellent World Beat Music map of the world over at Strange [...]

    Pingback by Map Songs: Longitude and Latitude Song « Making Maps: DIY Cartography — February 27, 2008 @

  37. Is it just me, or is that esnips mp3 file/page broken? Surely there’s got to be another site you can put it on…

    Comment by Dr. Virgil Disgr4ce — February 28, 2008 @

  38. The MP3 isn’t working for me, either.

    Comment by Michael — February 28, 2008 @

  39. [...] the world in a song From the excellent Strange Maps blog today: a musical score representing a map of the world. Explore posts in the same categories: [...]

    Pingback by All the world in a song « FARG Blog — February 28, 2008 @

  40. [...] Enlace: Strange Maps [...]

    Pingback by despuesdegoogle » » World Beat Map, el mundo es una partitura — February 28, 2008 @

  41. Here’s a second, working, link to Joke’s MP3 for those having trouble with esnips:

    http://limulus.net/files/misc/world.mp3

    Comment by Limulus — February 29, 2008 @

  42. [...] Ο χάρτης του κόσμου με νότες. [...]

    Pingback by Arsebanging Friday #κατσαριδάκι-αγάπη-μου « παρα εξι — February 29, 2008 @

  43. [...] estudiada por sabios de la talla de Kepler. Como una idea lleva a otra, caí en la cuenta de que recientemente me había cruzado con un mapa especial –harmonious world beat1,–, toda una rareza que pretende alcanzar algo así [...]

    Pingback by Tecnología Obsoleta » Blog Archive » Momentos musicales — February 29, 2008 @

  44. Love the mp3 by Limulus. I think it will work great if you loop it as was suggested by simber. Pretty neat.

    Comment by Mary — March 3, 2008 @

  45. Thanks for providing a better link, Limulus. I never had any problems with esnips before.

    Comment by Joke — March 4, 2008 @

  46. Hey, if arranged correctly it could become a very good piano piece. At least I think so.

    Comment by Tempest — March 13, 2008 @

  47. [...] 247 - All the World In A Song « Strange Maps [...]

    Pingback by Directorio Geobloog » Blog Archive » Wordpress Music — March 14, 2008 @

  48. Oh my god, I KNOW Jim Plakovic, knew him before he started making his amazing maps! So glad to see him appreciated here.

    Comment by Maggie Jochild — March 19, 2008 @

  49. [...] ocuparían en el pastel los países según su tamaño; el segundo, el mundo en una partitura musical, ¿ejecutable? Si alguien le sabe a eso de las notas, anímese y nos [...]

    Pingback by Mapas extraños — March 23, 2008 @

  50. [...] Den Klang der Welt gibt es auch als Partitur. [...]

    Pingback by Wie klingt die Welt? « Leicesterschwester — April 3, 2008 @

  51. [...] mapas de todo, desde un lago sin nombre en la luna Titán, hasta otro que es un mapa del mundo hecho con una partitura … y mi favorito, uno de la isla de “Perdidos” [...]

    Pingback by CyberHades » Blog Archive » La Web de los mapas extraños … — April 3, 2008 @

  52. Though the looping would be cool, where would you loop it? India shows up twice and it’s not the same.

    Comment by MusicMan — April 12, 2008 @

  53. My name is James Plakovic and I am the artist who created the “World Beat Music” piece. Thank you for all of your comments. This piece caught the attention of a reporter with National Public Radio’s “Weekend America”. The interview aired on Saturday, April 19, 2008. Also, I have updated the music transcription of “World Beat Music”. Please visit http://www.plakovic.com to hear the complete orchestral score of the print.

    Here is the link to the interview:
    http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/04/17/sound_earth/

    Comment by James Plakovic — April 20, 2008 @

  54. [...] Musica?? Couldn’t resist posting this….! Too big to attach, so here’s the link: 247 - All the World In A Song Strange Maps Click on the map to enlarge [...]

    Pingback by Mappa Musica?? - Science Fiction Fantasy Chronicles: forums — May 6, 2008 @

  55. The most prominent audio link on that page is to the entire 53-minute show. The relevant segment is 36:20-41:25.

    Along the left side, there are links to just the music, and to 3 excerpts, but … I’m not sure the excerpts were in the “whole song”, so I might be missing something. I did like the music, though.

    Comment by JimJJewett — May 9, 2008 @

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