BIT ONE: WHAT WOULD MUSIC SOUND LIKE ON MARS?
Scott Beibin defies easy categorization. He is an inventor, artist, musician, and self-taught engineer who has presented his work at Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford. He is passionate about the intersection of science and art, and attributes his accomplishments to “focus, open mindedness, and making it a point to stay humble and seek out really good teachers.”
That combination of DIY tenacity and rigorous intellectual curiosity has taken Beibin from running Bloodlink Records, an influential underground record label, to 3-D scanning the surfaces of ancient Egyptian monuments with LiDAR, and now to building an audio filter that simulates what music would sound like on Mars.
Early Film Experiments
He co-founded the Lost Film Fest in 1999—a touring video/storytelling show that predated YouTube by years and helped break what would become known as viral video. He toured the globe projecting clips like Heavy Metal Parking Lot and early Yes Men footage, to Sundance, then South by Southwest, long before any of it had a name. It was through the Lost Film Fest that he and Elizabeth Jane Cole began managing the Yes Men, the political pranksters known for corporate impersonations that made global headlines. Their company Evil Twin Bookingstill manages them today.
Listening to the Ancients
In recent years, Beibin has turned his attention to a field called archaeoacoustics—the study of spaces created in antiquity for the deliberate propagation of sound.
“Things that fall under archaeoacoustics would be the study of how sound propagates in ancient, constructed spaces,” he explains, “ceremonial spaces like churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples of all sorts, anywhere you see architecture designed to accentuate resonant properties—like at Chichen Itza—where you realize the acoustics were likely deliberately engineered.”
His method combines precision LiDAR surface scanning and photogrammetry with impulse response audio recording. LiDAR works by firing a laser across a surface and using multi-camera triangulation to construct an extraordinarily detailed 3D map—a digital fingerprint of every cut, scrape, and tool mark on a stone. “With a LiDAR scanner you can measure volume and see tool marks not visible to the naked eye—where faint cut and scrape marks on pieces of hard granite become plain as day,” he explains. His hope is that the engineering feats of the past are made clearer with 3D scanning and believes the process will become more common because modern iPhones come with built in advanced LiDAR capabilities. So far, he has done preliminary scans in Egypt for a larger research project at sites like the Great Pyramid of Giza, The Osirion at Abydos, Saqqara, Abu Ghorab, Elephantine Island, Dendera, and more.
His impulse response recordings capture the acoustic signature of a space, which he then convolves into reverb filters and visualizes inside 3D environments reconstructed from the LiDAR data by his AncientScan and Archaeoacoustic Artifacts team. (This is the same process used to create virtual guitar cabinets and reverb units.) He is currently working to secure formal permission from Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities to conduct the first true acoustic survey of the Great Pyramid and the Saqqara complex, which will be backed by multiple academic institutions. “I’m looking forward to returning to Egypt in the future with a professional team,” he says.
Music on Mars?
If archaeoacoustics asks what ancient spaces sounded like, Beibin’s most recent project asks something stranger: what would music sound like on Mars?
The answer begins with data from the Mars Perseverance rover’s SuperCam team, which carried two small microphones—one ranging from 20Hz to 20kHz, another reaching 50kHz—and used them to measure the Martian speed of sound. By recording lasers zapping rocks at known distances, and tracking the acoustic signature of the Ingenuity helicopter, the team analyzed sound propagation. Their published findings revealed that Mars has two speeds of sound: below 240Hz, sound travels at 240 meters per second; above 240Hz, it increases to 250 m/s. For comparison, Earth’s speed of sound at sea level is 343 m/s. And because Mars’s atmosphere is 170 times less dense than Earth’s and composed of 97 percent carbon dioxide, sound above roughly 5kHz becomes inaudible entirely.
Beibin obtained the raw data through connections at JPL—friends Krys Blackwood and John Carr, who introduced him to SuperCam team member Baptiste Chide—and set to work building a filter that would simulate these conditions. An album is planned for 2027 and will include the original dry field recording, two versions of the filter applied to it, and a booklet explaining the methodology.
Scott wishes to acknowledge the following collaborators: Julius Dobos, Michael Flood, Yul Jorgensen, Felipe Cuenca Galán, John Knott, Caz Coronel, Sherif Errefae, Savej, Chris “Alaska” Rose, Carl Golembeski, and Omar Auf. Inspiration from Carl Hayden Smith and Donnie Savej.
Scott Beibin’s work can be found at scottbeibinstudios.com.
BIT TWO: VINYL, BUT HOW?
The resurgence of vinyl records has engendered a lot of wild talk but pressing vinyl records is surprisingly complicated. Like the saying goes: “Don’t try this at home, kids.” Yes, you can Google pressing plants by price, looking for a deal, and then attempt to work with their sales team but honestly, it’s not as easy as it looks. For one thing, the listed prices are deceptive, with many hidden costs and upsells. It can be cheaper in the long run to work with a specialist who will give you an honest, all-in price.
The Ghost In The Machine
I’ve been handling vinyl production for my clients for five years now and have learned that whatever can go wrong will go wrong. In my experience, nearly each vinyl project runs into some difficulty along the way, starting with the actual music files and artwork submitted by the artist. Everything must conform to the pressing plant’s specifications, and those vary greatly from plant to plant. It’s an obstacle course, even to an expert. In future episodes, I will be teaching you exactly how to navigate this complicated process step-by-step.
Geza X has legendary status as an independent producer and proponent of the DIY recording scene. He can be reached at gezaxrecords.com
