CINCINNATI — The Roebling Suspension Bridge, affectionately known as “The Singing Bridge,” is living up to its name like never before.
"We've always called it the Singing Bridge, but then we also started paying really close attention to the sounds that were coming from the bridge,” said Steve McGowan of Brave Berlin, one of the creators of BLINK.
That observation led to one of the coolest displays at this year's BLINK festival.
While the Roebling is all lit up this weekend, it is also choreographed to its own original soundtrack.
RELATED: Everything you need to know about BLINK.
The iconic bridge between Cincinnati and Covington has been singing over the Ohio River since 1866. It just took 150+ years for someone to pay attention to each note.
“There's where ‘Rumble’ was born as a concept,” McGowan said.
Enter Masary Studios out of Boston.
“So they came in town and they played the bridge, literally,” McGowan said. “They took audio samples and they're mad geniuses when it comes to music, so they are creating an original musical score as if you would score a movie. But they are also treating the bridge as if it were an instrument.”
There are more than 900 lights on the Roebling right now - each assigned a note of music.
Installing it all took crews to new heights on the bridge and over each nook and cranny.
It looks like fun, but this is an art and a science. They also had to take on the legal hurdles involved.
“It's everything from maritime law to make sure we're not messing with the lights that the boats are using for navigations,” said McGowan.
"Two different states and they have different ways of thinking how the bridge should be treated,” said his Brave Berlin partner, Dan Reynolds.
“And then there's this great group that sort of governs the sanctity of the bridge, the architectural purity of the bridge,” McGowan said. “And those were the people that we were the most afraid to meet because we thought that they would say no, you know. But they said a resounding yes.”
So get ready for “Rumblin on the Roebling” this weekend.
Walk the bridge if you can, but you can hear it from off the bridge, too, which is nice if you want to take all of it in.
“This will be a moment,” McGowan said.
