Silly Question

Does anyone have any evidence or even speculation as to whether birdsong is
tonal?

Keenan P.

I think I just found my answer. Listen to "Hermit Thrush" slowed down here:
http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~tony/birds/slo-mo.html and tell me interval
between the first two notes isn't a perfect fourth. The rest of it seems
tonal, too! If anyone writes a song using this, they're blatantly stealing
my idea.

Keenan P.

Hey Keenan...

Not too silly a question, but worth at least a bit of investigation.

> Listen to "Hermit Thrush" slowed down here:
> http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~tony/birds/slo-mo.html and tell me interval
> between the first two notes isn't a perfect fourth.

Try looking at it in CoolEdit & using the frequency analysis tool...

There's a really cool book published by Houghton-Mifflin "Common Birds and Their Songs" by Lang Elliott & Marie Read. Comes with a 65 minute CD with samples of 50 common bird songs.

At one time, Hartz Mountain sold (or gave away) a 45 rpm recording that I remember as a kid, that had canaries singing along with music... my canary would jump right into the fray every time he heard that record...

There's a good term paper in this question, I'm sure of it... ;-)

Rick

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Keenan Pepper" <mtpepper@p...> wrote:
> http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/13805
>
> Does anyone have any evidence or even speculation as to
> whether birdsong is tonal?

and

> http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/13806
>
> I think I just found my answer. Listen to "Hermit Thrush"
> slowed down here:
> http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~tony/birds/slo-mo.html
> and tell me interval between the first two notes isn't a perfect
> fourth. The rest of it seems tonal, too!

Fascinating, Keenan! My ears detect parts of these birdsongs
as sounding distinctly like segments from the harmonic series!
So, if that means 'tonal' (caveat: it may not!), then yes.

My warning there is simply to point out that 'tonal' doesn't
necessarily mean 'from the harmonic series'. There are lots
and lots of subjective considerations wrapped up in what makes
a piece of music 'tonal'. It depends a lot on cultural and
chronological context.

> If anyone writes a song using this, they're blatantly stealing
> my idea.

Hmmm... does the name Olivier Messiaen mean anything to you?
He did a lot of research on birdsong, and incorporated melodic
and rhythmic aspects it into his compositions.

-monz
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html

Monz wrote,

>Fascinating, Keenan! My ears detect parts of these birdsongs
>as sounding distinctly like segments from the harmonic series!
>So, if that means 'tonal' (caveat: it may not!), then yes.

I wonder if Hermit Thrushes use any kind of physiological analogue to
overtone singing . . . or if this is just a coincidence.

I wrote,

>I wonder if Hermit Thrushes use any kind of physiological analogue to
>overtone singing . . .

Go down further on the page
http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~tony/birds/slo-mo.html to the Veery -- clearly
it is doing the bird version of overtone singing.

On Fri, 29 Sep 2000, Keenan Pepper wrote:

> Does anyone have any evidence or even speculation as to whether birdsong is
> tonal?

I've got a set piece on this subject that is undoubtedly findable in teh
archives someplace.

short version:
I own a book by F. Schuyler Matthews published in 1910 called 'A Field
Book of Wild Birds and their Music'. it has staff notation, and all the
birds he listened to seem to sing in tonal keys one can put a name to. But
somewhere arougn the year he published his book, an odd thing happened:
Stravinsky wrote the Rite of Spring, people discovered atonality in a big
way, and apparently so did the birds! because subsequent books, such as
the Catalogue Des Oiseaux of Olivier Messiaen and a couple of Scientific
American articles I remember reading, seem to find the birds singing
atonally too.

it reminds me much of the sex lives of monkeys: when 19th century
ethologists went out to study them, they kept finding them living in happy
little family groups with monogamous parents and mothers who stayed home
and cared for the kids. Then somehow, in the 20th century people AND
monkeys had some kind of a sexual revolution, where they indulged in group
sex and lived in communes. Just amazing.

Anthropomorphism is universal. People tend to find animals doing just what
they want to find them doing.

Judy

"Try looking at it in CoolEdit & using the frequency analysis tool..."

This "CoolEdit" of which you speak... Where can I obtain a copy? My program
"WaveS" has a frequency spectrum analyzer but its tuning resolution is 6
hertz, or 40 cents in a middle register, which is totally unacceptable. How
good is CoolEdit?

"There are lots
and lots of subjective considerations wrapped up in what makes
a piece of music 'tonal'. It depends a lot on cultural and
chronological context."

I know that, who do you think I am, a 13-year-old? :) What I meant was, "Do
they actually care what pitches they sing or are they just making noise?". I
see know that it's most definately the latter.

Keenan P.

Monz wrote:
> > If anyone writes a song using this, they're blatantly stealing
> > my idea.
>
> Hmmm... does the name Olivier Messiaen mean anything to you?
> He did a lot of research on birdsong, and incorporated melodic
> and rhythmic aspects it into his compositions.

And Jon Catlers Birdhouse. On their Birdhouse CD
they have a song called Wood Thrush.

Nothing wrong with using bird song as inspiration,
but the idea isn't exactly new.

db

--
* D a v i d B e a r d s l e y
* 49/32 R a d i o "all microtonal, all the time"
* http://www.virtulink.com/immp/lookhere.htm

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Paul H. Erlich" <PERLICH@A...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/13810

> I wrote,
>
> >I wonder if Hermit Thrushes use any kind of physiological analogue
to
> >overtone singing . . .
>
> Go down further on the page
> http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~tony/birds/slo-mo.html to the Veery --
clearly
> it is doing the bird version of overtone singing.

Hmmm. This is true. They sound like very small Tuvans...
____________ ___ __ _
Joseph Pehrson

On Fri, 29 Sep 2000 17:00:33 -0400, "Keenan Pepper" <mtpepper@prodigy.net>
wrote:

>Does anyone have any evidence or even speculation as to whether birdsong is
>tonal?

Depends on the bird. The appropriately named Musician Wren (Cyphorhinus
arada) sounds especially tonal to me. Slow down the songs of some thrushes
and you end up with some intricate and musical phrases. (Some, such as the
Veery, even sing two notes at once!) But other birds don't seem especially
tonal, and some sound like they're selecting pitches almost at random.
Quite a few birds sing tones that change rapidly in pitch over a fairly
wide range. It's probably not too surprising that a few out of the
thousands of species of birds seem to have tonal-sounding songs.

It would be interesting to sample the notes of a Southern Nightingale-Wren
(which essentially sings a descending scale, with longer and longer pauses
between each note) and see if it has any useful musical attributes.....

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Keenan Pepper" <mtpepper@p...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/13819

> "Try looking at it in Cool Edit & using the frequency analysis
tool..."
>
> This "Cool Edit" of which you speak... Where can I obtain a copy?

Cool Edit may be found at:

http://www.syntrillium.com/

_________ ___ __ __
Joseph Pehrson

--- In tuning@egroups.com, " Monz" <MONZ@J...> wrote:
> http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/13808
>
>
> --- In tuning@egroups.com, "Keenan Pepper" <mtpepper@p...> wrote:
> > http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/13806
> >
> > If anyone writes a song using this [i.e., incorporating
> > birdsong], they're blatantly stealing my idea.
>
> Hmmm... does the name Olivier Messiaen mean anything to you?
> He did a lot of research on birdsong, and incorporated melodic
> and rhythmic aspects it into his compositions.

Messiaen was active mainly from the 1940s-1970s.

But I forgot to mention...

There's also the famous section near the end of
'Scene by the Brook' (the 2nd movement) of Beethoven's
'Pastoral Symphony' (No. 6), where the nightingale,
quail, and cuckoo are represented by the flute,
oboe, and clarinet respectively.

And this was back around 1807.

-monz
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html

At 03:51 AM 9/30/00 -0000, you wrote:
>---
>But I forgot to mention...
>
>There's also the famous section near the end of
>'Scene by the Brook' (the 2nd movement) of Beethoven's
>'Pastoral Symphony' (No. 6), where the nightingale,
>quail, and cuckoo are represented by the flute,
>oboe, and clarinet respectively.
>
>And this was back around 1807.
>
>
>
>-monz
>Jay here,
And there's "Oiseaux Vrai" by Pierre Henri, a piece of musique concrete from
about 1952. Nothing but tape-modified birdsongs.

[Monz:]
>>But I forgot to mention...
>>
>>There's also the famous section near the end of
>>'Scene by the Brook' (the 2nd movement) of Beethoven's
>>'Pastoral Symphony' (No. 6), where the nightingale,
>>quail, and cuckoo are represented by the flute,
>>oboe, and clarinet respectively.
>>
>>And this was back around 1807.

[Jay Williams:]
>And there's "Oiseaux Vrai" by Pierre Henri, a piece of musique concrete
>from about 1952. Nothing but tape-modified birdsongs.

And, just to split the difference, there's Ravel's "Oiseaux tristes"
(literally, "sad birds") from Miroirs (1905). According to Jean-Yves
Thibaudet, who plays this and other Ravel piano works wonderfully, Ravel
described the piece as follows: "Here I evoke birds lost in the torpor
of a dark forest in the hottest hours of the day." Great stuff! Very
Ravel in character, if that makes sense.

JdL

And, let's not forget Respighi's "Gli Uccelli" (The Birds), 1927, a
five-movement work for orchestra, including movements for doves, hens,
nightingales, and cuckoos.

JdL

Jay Williams wrote:

> At 03:51 AM 9/30/00 -0000, you wrote:
> ---
> But I forgot to mention...
>
> There's also the famous section near the end of
> 'Scene by the Brook' (the 2nd movement) of Beethoven's
> 'Pastoral Symphony' (No. 6), where the nightingale,
> quail, and cuckoo are represented by the flute,
> oboe, and clarinet respectively.
>
> And this was back around 1807.
>
>
> -monz
> Jay here,
> And there's "Oiseaux Vrai" by Pierre Henri, a piece of musique concrete from
> about 1952. Nothing but tape-modified birdsongs.
>
> William Byrd, anyone?

--- In tuning@egroups.com, David Beardsley <xouoxno@v...> wrote:
>
> And Jon Catlers Birdhouse. On their Birdhouse CD
> they have a song called Wood Thrush.

Birdhouse!, of course! Sheesh, how could I forget?
Hmmm... guess I really need to buy their CD...
Really good stuff, too.

> Nothing wrong with using bird song as inspiration,
> but the idea isn't exactly new.

Right, Dave... this was exactly my point to Keenan.

-monz
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html

I did some searching of the libraries for bird song transcriptions for
Fractal Tune Smithy.

Found lots of transcriptions in nineteenth and early twentieth century with
key signatures. Some even had little lyrics like Tra La La, and the
nineteenth century ones were really charming!

The earliest one I came across was a re-print of a plate from 1650, with
Nightingale, Cuckoo, Quail etc. I found it re-printed in "The Musical
Microcosm of the Hermit Thrush", P Szoke, W.W.W.H. Gunn, M. Filip, Studia
Musicologica Academiae Scientarum Hungaricae 11 1969

It was reprinted from 2 vol work "Musurgia unversalis sive are magna consoni
et dissoni" (Rome, 1650) by Athanasius Kircher.

The Hermit Thrush paper also has transcriptions of several Hermit Thrush
songs, with many fast grace notes, from slowed down recordings, but still in
12t! I can't believe that all the thrushes the author heard conveniently
sang in 12t to make the transcription easier!

Later in C20, I found many sonograms and some other types of graphs. Also
more transcriptions in 12 tone notation with accidentals.

However what I wanted was to find transcriptions in exact intervals, in say
cents, or herz notation. Didn't find anything at all. Maybe I was looking in
the wrong place however.

The sonograms were completely useless for this. For one thing, the vertical
scale was so compact, that one would be lucky to measure it to the nearest
12 t note even. But also, for some reason, the lines are really thick and
kind of fuzzy, and one can't get a clear pitch from them to measure.

I haven't really followed up frequency analysis much, but after listening to
some bird song, felt that though there was a really clear percieved pitch
for each note, so much else was going on that it mightn't be that noticeable
in a frequency analysis.

So I tried doing a transcription myself of a phrase from a Robin's song, and
used it as the example in FTS.

Here it is as a MIDI file:

http://www.robertwalker.f9.co.uk/robin_phrase.mid

- just to give idea of what I'm looking for.

It's the first phrase from the robin's song from this site:

http://www-stat.wharton.upenn.edu/~siler/masi/eurosongs3.html
Look under Robin - Erithacus rubecula.

Has anyone come across any transcriptions of bird song in some accurate
pitch notation such as cents or herz. And have they been used in music at
all? I know that Messiaen used birdsong transcriptions but in 12 tet, which
seems rather bizarre to me!

I used the robin song as a basis for a music fractal for demonstration of
the idea of using birdsong in FTS:
http://www.robertwalker.f9.co.uk/bird_calls_with_Afro_Carribean_percussion.m
id

Robert

http://www.robertwalker.f9.co.uk/fts_beta/fts_beta_download.htm

Jay Williams wrote,

> And there's "Oiseaux Vrai" by Pierre Henri,

On an almost related note... I use the sounds of birds and bugs as a
sort of symbolic "gateway motif" quite a bit. The end section of "Day
Walks In" is a reworking of William Schuman's "Orpheus With His Lute",
and here birds and bugs are sonic messengers of Nature its raw,
elemental, poetic and imaginative sense. Conversely, I use loud human
voice motifs (drill sergeants and troops in training here) as the
omnipresent anthropomorphic "loudmouth". <'messengers of
convention'...>

<http://stations.mp3s.com/stations/55/117_west_great_western.html>

I used the sound of a single bee and a live spring reverb tank
feedback "entity" on the piece "In the Shade of a Birch" (this is not
up at mp3.com, but it will be on the CD if it ever comes out), and
it's very difficult to tell which is which and who's who; the organic
and the electronic really do blend and blur sometimes.

--Dan Stearns