A method for composing a musical is carried out by identifying spectral data characterizing a selected chemical composition, said spectral data representing a plurality of transmittance peaks for the selected chemical composition in a spectral range (e.g., a wave number range), including identifying the spectral range and transmittance values and positions of a sequence of transmittance peaks within the spectral range; assigning a melody duration to the identified spectral range; generating a sequence of musical tones by assigning the identified transmittance values to musical tones to the sequence of transmittance peaks; and assigning a duration to each musical tone. A computer-readable medium includes code for carrying out the method on a general-purpose computer.