aster.cloud aster.cloud
  • /
  • Platforms
    • Public Cloud
    • On-Premise
    • Hybrid Cloud
    • Data
  • Architecture
    • Design
    • Solutions
    • Enterprise
  • Engineering
    • Automation
    • Software Engineering
    • Project Management
    • DevOps
  • Programming
    • Learning
  • Tools
  • About
  • /
  • Platforms
    • Public Cloud
    • On-Premise
    • Hybrid Cloud
    • Data
  • Architecture
    • Design
    • Solutions
    • Enterprise
  • Engineering
    • Automation
    • Software Engineering
    • Project Management
    • DevOps
  • Programming
    • Learning
  • Tools
  • About
aster.cloud aster.cloud
  • /
  • Platforms
    • Public Cloud
    • On-Premise
    • Hybrid Cloud
    • Data
  • Architecture
    • Design
    • Solutions
    • Enterprise
  • Engineering
    • Automation
    • Software Engineering
    • Project Management
    • DevOps
  • Programming
    • Learning
  • Tools
  • About
  • Engineering
  • People

Gregorian Pi – Singing Of A Constant

  • aster.cloud
  • December 19, 2022
  • 2 minute read
Earlier this year, Emma Haruka Iwao calculated π (pi) to 100 trillion digits, up from her previous record of 3.14 trillion in 2019. With the calculation complete, the Pi API has been updated so you can fetch the digits starting from anywhere in the sequence. This API, and the digits themselves, have been used to create many visual and audio experiments, all listed on pi.delivery.But then, we saw this comment on an article from the media coverage: 

By law when reciting Pi to one hundred trillion places, it must be done in the style of a Gregorian chant.

Tweet this quote
We can do that. We have an ML model we trained earlier.

Introducing our singers: the Blob Opera

In 2020, David Li, Artist in Residence at Google Arts & Culture launched “Blob Opera“, a machine learning model trained on opera singers, where you can interactively create songs and have the blobs harmonize to your input. You get the option of four ‘singers’, each with a 10-note scale, and five ‘vowels’.


Partner with aster.cloud
for your next big idea.
Let us know here.



From our partners:

CITI.IO :: Business. Institutions. Society. Global Political Economy.
CYBERPOGO.COM :: For the Arts, Sciences, and Technology.
DADAHACKS.COM :: Parenting For The Rest Of Us.
ZEDISTA.COM :: Entertainment. Sports. Culture. Escape.
TAKUMAKU.COM :: For The Hearth And Home.
ASTER.CLOUD :: From The Cloud And Beyond.
LIWAIWAI.COM :: Intelligence, Inside and Outside.
GLOBALCLOUDPLATFORMS.COM :: For The World's Computing Needs.
FIREGULAMAN.COM :: For The Fire In The Belly Of The Coder.
ASTERCASTER.COM :: Supra Astra. Beyond The Stars.
BARTDAY.COM :: Prosperity For Everyone.

You can programmatically create compositions using python-blobopera, a community-written unofficial toolkit to convert MusicXML files into Blob Opera scores. This toolkit also accepts lyric input and guesses phonetic approximations to make use of the available vowels…

… which means we can, and have, programmed an operatic arrangement of a Gregorian chant of the digits of pi.

 

Gregorian Pi – the singing of a constant

Sing a song of tetrachord

Originating in the 9th century through the Roman Catholic Church, Gregorian chants are monophonic (single melody) unaccompanied sacred songs in Latin.

Read More  Pro Tools For Pros: Industry Leading Observability Capabilities For Dataflow

With this format as a guide, we can use the input of the digits of pi, mapped to a simple musical scale (ignoring for the purposes of simplicity the difference between Gregorian and modern musical notation), using the syllables from the latin translation of each digit (readily available via Google Translate).

From there, it’s a process of writing a Python script to fetch the digits of pi from the pi.delivery API, then build a score using the Python library music21. After building a stream of notes and mapping each digit to the note and Latin lyrics, we can start developing our score. We can export using music21 to MIDI, meaning we can play in the command-line using pygame to check how our orchestration sounds as we go.

By exporting to MusicXML directly from music21, we can also confirm our output in MuseScore, a free music notation software tool.

 

Gregorian Pi

Following that, it’s just a case of getting python-blobopera to take the MusicXML file, process it using its own formatting and phonetic rules, then upload it to Blob Opera.The result is a mathematical melodic masterpiece. Or masterπece, if you will.And for bonus points, instead of keeping to more modern notation, we can score our composition in GABC notation to produce actual neume plainchant, which we can then visualize in Illuminare Score Editor: 

Gregorian Pi, Plainchant

Learn more about the technologies used in this post:

  • pi.delivery
  • Google Translate Python quickstart
  • music21
  • pygame
  • python-blobopera

 

By: Katie McLaughlin (Senior Developer Relations Engineer) and Sara Ford (Senior Developer Relations Engineer)
Source: Google Cloud Blog


For enquiries, product placements, sponsorships, and collaborations, connect with us at [email protected]. We'd love to hear from you!

Our humans need coffee too! Your support is highly appreciated, thank you!

aster.cloud

Related Topics
  • Google Cloud
  • Music
  • Pi
  • Singing
  • π
You May Also Like
View Post
  • Engineering
  • Technology

Apple supercharges its tools and technologies for developers to foster creativity, innovation, and design

  • June 9, 2025
View Post
  • Engineering

Just make it scale: An Aurora DSQL story

  • May 29, 2025
View Post
  • Featured
  • People

Conclave: How A New Pope Is Chosen

  • April 25, 2025
View Post
  • People
  • Technology

AI is automating our jobs – but values need to change if we are to be liberated by it

  • April 17, 2025
View Post
  • Engineering
  • Technology

Guide: Our top four AI Hypercomputer use cases, reference architectures and tutorials

  • March 9, 2025
View Post
  • Computing
  • Engineering

Why a decades old architecture decision is impeding the power of AI computing

  • February 19, 2025
View Post
  • Engineering
  • Software Engineering

This Month in Julia World

  • January 17, 2025
View Post
  • Engineering
  • Software Engineering

Google Summer of Code 2025 is here!

  • January 17, 2025

Stay Connected!
LATEST
  • 1
    Pure Accelerate 2025: All the news and updates live from Las Vegas
    • June 18, 2025
  • 2
    ‘This was a very purposeful strategy’: Pure Storage unveils Enterprise Data Cloud in bid to unify data storage, management
    • June 18, 2025
  • What is cloud bursting?
    • June 18, 2025
  • 4
    There’s a ‘cloud reset’ underway, and VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 is a chance for Broadcom to pounce on it
    • June 17, 2025
  • What is confidential computing?
    • June 17, 2025
  • Oracle adds xAI Grok models to OCI
    • June 17, 2025
  • Fine-tune your storage-as-a-service approach
    • June 16, 2025
  • 8
    Advanced audio dialog and generation with Gemini 2.5
    • June 15, 2025
  • 9
    A Father’s Day Gift for Every Pop and Papa
    • June 13, 2025
  • 10
    Global cloud spending might be booming, but AWS is trailing Microsoft and Google
    • June 13, 2025
about
Hello World!

We are aster.cloud. We’re created by programmers for programmers.

Our site aims to provide guides, programming tips, reviews, and interesting materials for tech people and those who want to learn in general.

We would like to hear from you.

If you have any feedback, enquiries, or sponsorship request, kindly reach out to us at:

[email protected]
Most Popular
  • Google Cloud, Cloudflare struck by widespread outages
    • June 12, 2025
  • What is PC as a service (PCaaS)?
    • June 12, 2025
  • 3
    Crayon targets mid-market gains with expanded Google Cloud partnership
    • June 10, 2025
  • By the numbers: Use AI to fill the IT skills gap
    • June 11, 2025
  • 5
    Apple services deliver powerful features and intelligent updates to users this autumn
    • June 11, 2025
  • /
  • Technology
  • Tools
  • About
  • Contact Us

Input your search keywords and press Enter.