Dubai: A gentle tap on the throttle and the engine of an Italian sportscar lets out sounds – part guttural, part screech – that can inspire awe and mesmerize in equal measure. But the decibel hardly equates to a symphony.
Just don’t say that to Howie B, music producer to the likes of U2 and Bjork. He has collaborated with the high-end British audio equipment maker Bowers & Wilkins to extract musical notes – seven in all - from a Maserati Quattroporte engine.
The "Seven Notes" will now release commercially and even get to have a global eight-city jig, including in Dubai on April 24.
“Yes, I thought it was a crazy idea when I was first approached by Bowers & Wilkins - but they told me they’d heard Maserati engineers talking about the melody and beauty of the engine and really wanted it to give it a go,” said Howie B. “So I hired in an engineer with some experience of this sort of thing (it’s actually Russell Edwards, the sound engineer from Top Gear) and we did a test recording at a facility in the UK."
“As soon as I started hearing how the engine sounded from the point of view of a microphone, I got hooked. The way the engine is recorded is quite different from what you would hear standing next to the car as we effectively mic’d it like a musical instrument, using microphones at various places to create a balance of sound."
“We experimented with different RPMs and found seven notes which effectively created a unique Maserati scale. What you hear in the recording is the organic sound of the engine itself: I did no manipulation to the pitch or sound of it, it’s pure and as the microphones heard it.”
The eventual results include the "Symphony in 7", which is an hour long piece. The tracks are available for download from the sevennotes.com microsite (free of charge) in multiple audio formats which will work with iTunes and iPhone, or the actual studio quality files for those with appropriate audio set-ups.
For Bowers & Wilkins, this is the first time it has created a co-branded series with a carmaker. “What we did was take the colours, leathers and woods which are used in Maserati’s interiors and applied them to do existing Bowers & Wilkins products - the P5 headphone and the 805 Diamond loudspeaker,” said Danny Haikin, brand director at the audio equipment company.
“We’ve then used the hallmark Maserati Trident to striking effect, particularly on the headphone. These products will be ready to be revealed in early May and will be on sale in the Fall.”
