The Engine Songs: when the cylinders become music

Three playlists for Spotify “tuned” with the engine’s hertz. Created by the Lamborghini sound engineers together with music producer Alex Trecarichi

Which song would the 12 cylinders of the Aventador LP 780-4 Ultimae become if they could be turned into music? And which note does the Huracán Tecnica play when it unleashes its 8000 rpm of power? And which percussion instrument would the low and hammering speeds of Urus Performante sound like?

Lamborghini is celebrating the unique song of its V8, V10 and V12 naturally aspirated engines with the launch of The Engine Songs, a set of three playlists available on Spotify (embellished by the covers created by graphic designer Vasjen Katro) and conceived by associating the sound of the engine - free to raise all of its expressiveness - with the music flowing from the vibrations. Twenty-four tracks for each compilation. Tuned with the rumble according to science and taste. For an experiment lying somewhere between emotion and sound engineering, psychoacoustics and immersion of the senses in the most all-absorbing driving experience.

It is a unique journey that gets under way with the artistic transposition of the V12 of the Aventador LP 780-4 Ultimae, the latest descendent of the 12-cylinder sports tradition that has equipped the most iconic models of the House of the Raging Bull for almost 60 years. The engine at low speeds - as science has established - sings in F SHARP (92.50 hertz), the same tonality as the track Canone infinito by Lorenzo Senni. At 4000 rpm, the pistons tune up in G (98 hertz), the cruising speed to experience with Run Away by Ben Böhmer in the background. At the very high peak of 8000 rpm, the G SHARP (103.83 hertz) of Sam Collins and his We Can All Dance instead rises up.

To single out the tracks of The Engine Songs , music producer Alex Trecarichi, in collaboration with the Lamborghini sound engineers, applied the formulas of Fourier Transform to the music of the engine. This is a mathematical transform that the brain instinctively triggers off to break a sound down into its infinite sub-components. Trecarichi reproduced this natural quality in the studio using artificial intelligence. “It is a process that allowed us to find the fundamental frequencies of the engine coinciding with the three phases of its expression: idling, the cruising speed at 4000 rpm and its maximum power.

Assisting Trecarichi in the adventure was aerospace engineer and sound engineer Mario Mautone, Lamborghini NVH wholevehicle coordinator and key figure together with the music producer of the series of video interviews The Engine Songs: Let’s talk V8, V10, V12. “One of the many things I work on is the harshness, that is to say getting the sound roughness that sets us apart,” Mautone explained. “It is that harsh and metallic echo that then is embodied in the psychoacoustic experience, the chemical and emotional response to the sound wave that our brain transforms into positive emotions and memories.”

This relationship between the 12-cylinder engine and music has existed since the dawn of the Lamborghini adventure. The first, the 350 GT, was delivered in 1964 to Giampiero Giusti, one of the most famous jazz drummers of the 1960s. A later version, a red 400 GT, belonged to Beatles bass guitar player and vocalist Paul McCartney and appeared in many documentaries on the Beatles and in the video clip of their last concert, on the roof of their headquarters at number 3 Savile Row in London.

Now this relationship can be relived today thanks to The Engine Songs, updated and in the hi-tech version. So, all that is left to do is to turn on the engine, raise the pitch and connect to Spotify to become the orchestra conductor of your Lamborghini. “The sound of a violin: that’s the instrument that the V12 of the Aventador LP 780-4 Ultimae can be compared to,” said Mautone. “The crescendo that the engine is able to develop, from the lowest to the highest, is exactly the same.”