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Music of Timetables - for Stations on the Yamanote Line

by HAGIHARA Yoshiaki

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about

Train timetables were converted into music. This CD contains music of great variety; electronica, dance, contemporary classical music, experimental metal, chiptune, and even animal screams.

One day, I noticed that it should be interesting if railroad timetables were converted into music. Therefore, I made a sample by way of experiment. I used the timetable of JR Shinjuku Station because it has 14 tracks and handles about 1.5 million passengers a day. I found it had musical developments. For example, when the music met rush hours, music got aggressive too. So I decided to make music of all 29 stations on the Yamanote Line.

I converted timetables into music as follows. I treated one minute of a timetable as a sixteenth note, and notes were played at departures of trains.

The pitch of the notes were calculated based on the following expression.

("line ID" × "hour" + "minute") mod "number of tones"

The "line ID" in this expression means which line I used. For example, the line ID of Saikyo Line at Shinjuku Station bound for Omiya is 1. I used timetables on the web site of East Japan Railway Company as of March 23, 2008.

Although some music are dedicated to specific musicians, do not take them seriously, just take them as respects. And most of them (except Ueno Station etc) do not relate to the places of the stations, too. I added intros or outros to some music for musical sake, but I changed neither those pitch nor those timing. They are combined with timetables.

credits

released October 3, 2008

Music by HAGIHARA Yoshiaki with Perl scripts.
Sleeve design and artwork by AKIYAMA Mimico.

license

all rights reserved

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about

HAGIHARA Yoshiaki Tokyo, Japan

From Tokyo, Japan.
Converting various things into music.

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