JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
If you are stuck in traffic - and maybe you are right now - you probably wouldn't describe it as a musical experience. But you are probably not seeing it the way that Jay Judah did.
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JAY JUDAH: I loved the idea that this thing that everyone in Los Angeles just hates, this universally reviled thing of traffic, to me, from up there, just looked like a river. Like a screensaver, honestly.
SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
About a decade ago, Judah took a job on the 10th floor of a building overlooking Interstate 405 in Los Angeles. And he realized that the way the cars and trucks and motorcycles came down the freeway in their distinct lanes kind of looked like a video game, like Guitar Hero or Rock Band.
JUDAH: And I started to visualize the 405 on that stretch as a Guitar Hero, like, stem. And then I wondered - if you could draw a line, just like Guitar Hero's, like, play bar line, what would it sound like?
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SUMMERS: Ten years later, Jay Judah has unveiled The 101 Plays Itself. It takes live traffic cameras of U.S. 101, five lanes wide, and translates it to something resembling music.
PFEIFFER: A computer program recognizes each vehicle and turns it into a note. The lane it's in sets the pitch. How fast it's going sets how long the note rings. And the type of vehicle sets the octave. It's free online. You can even customize which instruments are played.
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PFEIFFER: Judah's favorite combination pairs a theremin, a harp, a sub bass frequency and a handpan steel drum. He also has a favorite time of day.
JUDAH: Just past rush hour when there's still a lot of people on the road, but it's not so tightly compact. When it's tightly, tightly compact, it's like (imitating musical notes).
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SUMMERS: Jay Judah says he doesn't know what's next for his project. He's just pleased that, due to pattern recognition, humans can find art in almost anything, including traffic.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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