Cellular automata ringtones

Math genius Stephen Wolfram has a site called WolframTones that generates music from one dimensional cellular automaton patterns. You can generate music from a variety of genres, but I think "ambient" sounds best.

How does one take a pattern generated by a cellular automaton, and render it as music? The key idea of WolframTones is to take a swath through the pattern:


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and tip it on its side, and treat it as a musical score:


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Once the cellular automaton pattern has been "tipped on its side" so that time runs across the page, the height of each black square is related to the pitch of a corresponding note. The specific mapping from height to pitch is determined by the musical scale that is used. Each scale picks out certain of the 12 standard tones in an octave.

Link (thanks, Chris!)

Reader comment: Eric says: "I like the concept that Stephen uses, but I am even more intrigued by Tim Omernick's (one of the Delicious Monster guys) 'Sound of an Image' application. It gets its tones from a photo…pretty nice and fun to play with. (For OS X)
Link