Ebb and flood: a modular bio-modeling of the tide

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"Tides and music have a lot in common. Hydrographers decompose tides into their “harmonic” constituents and investigate how ocean basins 'resonate' with certain oscillations, while anthropologists and historians explore how tides have shaped the “rhythms” of social existence (Ancient Hawaiians, for instance, synchronized their daily lives to the tides by singing chants to the moon).

In this video, I recreate some of the complex forces behind the tides, by using precisely-calibrated oscillators, adders, and other modules. I then use this 'bio-model' to drive two musical patches – the first in VCV Rack, the second in Eurorack.

0:00 Patch 1: Harmony of the Tides (VCV Rack)
4:10 Patch 2: Lunisolar voices (VCV Rack + Eurorack)

A few books were useful (and inspiring) for this project:
Jonathan White, Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean (2017); Rachel Carson’s classics, The Sea Around Us (1951) and The Edge of the Sea (1955); and Paul Schureman, Manual of Harmonic Analysis and Prediction of Tides (1958)

Credits for photos of Bosham at low tide: Alan Markham amnd "diamond geezer" on Flickr."