Microtonal parrots

Here's an odd one for you.......

My grandmother used to have a really cheeky, but highly vocal and
intelligent budgie
(a native Austrailian miniture parrot, or "paratoid lifeform", :o) ), which
used to whistle the old nursery tune:
"Half a pound of tuppeny rice, half a pound of treacle, theats the way the
money goes........
EHR, GRR, SCREETHC, SCREECH", when it couldn't remember the rest of the
words to the song-it would throw a tantrum.

OK, this old but very famous song is obviously composed in 12ET, and was
probably inherently easy for a young bird to remember, but weather or not it
was because of the special mathematical relationships in the note sequence,
or just a randomly remembered phrase, I really don't know....

I know you can buy these "teach you pet cockatoo to recite Shakspear type
tapes", for insanely bored caged birds, but I woundered, would a bird- a
speaking bird of sorts, have the inate ability to remember 12ET or, say, 7
limit JI easier than 19ET, quarter notes, or 31ET?

Mother won't let me keep a bird in the house, so I guess I'll never really
be able to perform experiments.

Has any one had any experience in bird-psychology-and-alternative-tunings
and realted feilds of study?

Sarn.

Sarn Richard Ursell wrote:

[fabulous tale about possibly microtonal budgie bird excised]

> Has any one had any experience in bird-psychology-and-alternative-tunings
> and realted feilds of study?

Yes. When I told Diana Deutsch that there was nothing special
or natural about octaves and that her so-called octave effect
experiments were guity of overgeneralizing, as Pierce's experiment
proved, she said:

"You microtonalists really are odd birds."

- Jeff

> From: Sarn Richard Ursell <thcdelta@pop.ihug.co.nz>

> intelligent budgie

> used to whistle the old nursery tune:
> "Half a pound of tuppeny rice, half a pound of treacle, theats the way the
> money goes........

> OK, this old but very famous song is obviously composed in 12ET, and was

not obvious at all. Nursery rhymes as sung by kids have ups and downs but
not necessarily tonal centers, and equal temperament is a fairly
recent intellectual construct. But people trained in twelve-note scales
hear them as approximations thereto.

> probably inherently easy for a young bird to remember, but weather or not it
> was because of the special mathematical relationships in the note sequence,
> or just a randomly remembered phrase, I really don't know....

Theres a book called 'The Bird Fancier's Delight', written in the 18th
century, of tunes you can play on your flageolet to teach your caged birds
to sing; they all sound like Handel and Haydn (Haydn brought some kind of
bird with him on his long visits to England -- and he had taught that
bird to sing 'Gott Erhalte Franz der Kaiser' to him, to stave off
homesickness). Then, there's a book by F. Schuyler Matthews, written in
the 19th century, with notated bird songs of American birds. All those
birds seemed to be singing pretty much in the style of Brahms, or Steven
Foster. Then there is French 20th century composer Olivier Messaien, who
wrote a 'Catalogue d'oiseaux' for piano solo, with bird songs of many
European birds -- composers had by then discovered atonal music, and
darned if the birds hadn't discovered it also!

It reminds me of the story the ethologists tell -- in the early twentieth
century they would go off to study the behaviour of apes, and find that
they lived in monogamous family groups. Then in the 60's human societies
experienced a sexual revolution, and amazingly enough, the apes apparently
did too, because all of a sudden they were seeing group sex and open
marriages among the apes!

> Mother won't let me keep a bird in the house, so I guess I'll never really
> be able to perform experiments.

Obvious solution to this -- field work!

Judy