On Method #
Every city on Earth reports live weather to
[Open-Meteo](https://open-meteo.com).
This instrument translates real-time conditions through the lens of each location's cultural and geographic musical heritage.
- Tradition
- governs modal scales, voicings, bell timbres, and percussion
- Temperature
- selects root key, harmonic brightness, and base tempo
- Cloud cover
- selects major/bright or minor/modal emotional states
- Wind
- governs hi-hat density, swing, and rhythmic syncopation
- Humidity
- adds harmonic overtone density and melodic bell triggers
- Pressure
- sets the sub-bass weight and low-end resonance
- Precipitation
- increases snare, bell, and texture activity
No audio files or recordings are downloaded. Every sound is synthesized live in your browser using the Web Audio API with zero CPU dropouts.
On traditions. Each city's profile draws on specific musical traditions — Rebetiko and
Aegean modal practice (Greece, Cyprus), Maqam Hijaz and Nihavend (Cairo,
Istanbul), Fado minor (Lisbon), Gamelan slendro (Singapore), In and
Akebono scales (Kyoto, Tokyo), Gnawa trance (Marrakesh), and Andean
cumbia (Bogotá). These are interpretations, not authoritative
representations, and are offered with respect for the living traditions
they reference.
On prior art. The translation of weather into sound has a long lineage — from Brian Eno's generative systems to academic sonification work and independent projects like Weather Machine and Weather Score. This project is an independent interpretation, not affiliated with any of them.
Imagery: Esri World Imagery · OpenFreeMap 3D · OpenStreetMap contributors
Data: Open-Meteo · Geocoding: Nominatim
MIT License
source & further reading
nowherern.vercel.app — original article