A few years ago I had an idea to create ambient music from classic literature. The concept was simple: choose a piece of writing, remove every bit of punctuation, number, and letter other than A, B, C, D, E, F, and G, then play it. And that’s exactly what this is. I took a Loomings, the first chapter from Moby Dick, and played only those letters as notes, in real time, with no meter/note length. I didn’t know what it would sound like (although it is technically in the key of C major or A minor, take your pick). And I thought about using the unplayable letters (everything except the first seven letters of the alphabet) as rests, or using punctuation as sharps or flats. But I scrapped all of that more complicated, heady stuff for the simple translation, which is what you hear below: