Marko Tkach's Ornithology
Can bird sounds really be captured on a sheet of paper?
When I try to describe a bird’s song to somebody else, I usually describe it phonetically. Sometimes, of course, this is easier than other times: for example, while a chickadee’s song can easily be characterized as “fee-bee”, the house wren’s long, rolling whistle lacks a written equivalent. However, our alphabet has only 26 letters, while every one of the estimated 10,000 living species of birds has a unique and inimitable song. To make matters worse for us, some birds are capable of singing two notes at once thanks to their specialized vocal structure, called a syrinx (as opposed to our larynx). Even if two people try to sing these songs in harmony, how can we possibly imitate the effect of two sounds from one stream of air emanating from less than an inch apart?
We can try to use conventional musical notation and dynamics to capture a bird’s songs, especially ones that sound “melodic” to us. Here are some examples (from npr.org). First, look at the written transcriptions. Try to sing or play them on an instrument of your choice. What do they tell you, and what do they leave you to guess? Now, listen to the recordings (links below).
Black-Capped Chickadee
Listen: http://www.npr.org/templates/gallery/index.php?gallery=5261830&slide=9
Song Sparrow
Listen: http://www.npr.org/templates/gallery/index.php?gallery=5261830&slide=2
Compare the recordings to the written transcriptions. How accurate do the transcriptions seem? What information is conveyed, and what is “missing”?
About the sounds of nature, especially birds, the influential jazz saxophonist and flautist Eric Dolphy once said,
“It somehow comes in as part of the development of what I’m doing. Sometimes I can’t do it. At home (in California), I used to play, and the birds always used to whistle with me. I would stop what I was working on and play with the birds... Birds have notes in between our notes - you try to imitate something they do and, like, maybe it's between F and F#, and you'll have to go up or come down on the pitch...Indian music has something of the same quality - different scales and quarter tones.”
Although Dolphy found birds’ songs a unique inspiration for his music and strived to emulate their character, he admitted that their complexity went beyond what we would normally consider “music”. This adds another layer of challenge to transcribing bird songs. We can approximate where a bird’s song might fit on Western scales, but certain noises cannot quite find a “home” on a Western staff. For example, the house wren’s chattering glissando (listen at http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/framlst/i7210id.html) is not only difficult to write out because of the rhythm’s subtleties, but also because the tones themselves have no equivalent in any Western scale. The song also varies every time (unlike, say, a chickadee’s “fee-bee!”), so a very accurate transcription of a given phrase may actually be confusing to some. In response to the many bird songs that cannot be transcribed onto a conventional staff, some alternative notations have been developed. These notations were designed with the infinite tones of bird songs, not the twelve notes of Western music, in mind. The first example below utilizes lines along with accent marks over letters, while the second example’s lines portray the pitch change and length of each note.
Alternate methods of notation for transcribing bird songs:
A Guide to Bird Songs. Aretas A. Saunders: Doubleday and Company, Inc, 1951
“Sonogram” method - A Guide to Field Identification of Birds of North America: Robbins, Bruun, Zim, and Singer, 1966
It might sound complicated, but it’s not all that much different…
Musicians and birds do share a love (or perhaps a need) for improvisation, however. Just like us, birds convey messages and thoughts through music. The speed of a chickadee’s warning call - a buzzy “chick-a-dee-dee...” (not to be confused with its song, “fee-bee!”) - and the number of “dees” relay the perceived threat level of a predator. (You can listen to it here: http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/framlst/i7350id.html) Small, swift hawks and owls receive the greatest number of “dees” in response, according to this website. Chickadees, of course, do not have much time to think when a predator is looming, so they cannot hesitate to belt out an urgent warning call; they need to be skilled “improvisers”.
What can we learn from the humble chickadee’s warning calls? When we improvise, we need to respond to cues in our environment: (quick) observation is the first stage of this process. For example, when we solo in an ensemble, we need to pay attention to the chord changes and the rhythm. What is the character of the song, and what emotions am I feeling? Likewise, a chickadee sings or calls in response to what it sees in its surroundings. Should a chickadee sing to attract a mate, or should it warn other chickadees about a possible predator? Birds and humans both need to “improvise” through quick decisions. Expressing these decisions is the final stage of this larger process.
When I try to describe a bird’s song to somebody else, I usually describe it phonetically. Sometimes, of course, this is easier than other times: for example, while a chickadee’s song can easily be characterized as “fee-bee”, the house wren’s long, rolling whistle lacks a written equivalent. However, our alphabet has only 26 letters, while every one of the estimated 10,000 living species of birds has a unique and inimitable song. To make matters worse for us, some birds are capable of singing two notes at once thanks to their specialized vocal structure, called a syrinx (as opposed to our larynx). Even if two people try to sing these songs in harmony, how can we possibly imitate the effect of two sounds from one stream of air emanating from less than an inch apart?
We can try to use conventional musical notation and dynamics to capture a bird’s songs, especially ones that sound “melodic” to us. Here are some examples (from npr.org). First, look at the written transcriptions. Try to sing or play them on an instrument of your choice. What do they tell you, and what do they leave you to guess? Now, listen to the recordings (links below).
Black-Capped Chickadee
Listen: http://www.npr.org/templates/gallery/index.php?gallery=5261830&slide=9
Song Sparrow
Listen: http://www.npr.org/templates/gallery/index.php?gallery=5261830&slide=2
Compare the recordings to the written transcriptions. How accurate do the transcriptions seem? What information is conveyed, and what is “missing”?
About the sounds of nature, especially birds, the influential jazz saxophonist and flautist Eric Dolphy once said,
“It somehow comes in as part of the development of what I’m doing. Sometimes I can’t do it. At home (in California), I used to play, and the birds always used to whistle with me. I would stop what I was working on and play with the birds... Birds have notes in between our notes - you try to imitate something they do and, like, maybe it's between F and F#, and you'll have to go up or come down on the pitch...Indian music has something of the same quality - different scales and quarter tones.”
Although Dolphy found birds’ songs a unique inspiration for his music and strived to emulate their character, he admitted that their complexity went beyond what we would normally consider “music”. This adds another layer of challenge to transcribing bird songs. We can approximate where a bird’s song might fit on Western scales, but certain noises cannot quite find a “home” on a Western staff. For example, the house wren’s chattering glissando (listen at http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/framlst/i7210id.html) is not only difficult to write out because of the rhythm’s subtleties, but also because the tones themselves have no equivalent in any Western scale. The song also varies every time (unlike, say, a chickadee’s “fee-bee!”), so a very accurate transcription of a given phrase may actually be confusing to some. In response to the many bird songs that cannot be transcribed onto a conventional staff, some alternative notations have been developed. These notations were designed with the infinite tones of bird songs, not the twelve notes of Western music, in mind. The first example below utilizes lines along with accent marks over letters, while the second example’s lines portray the pitch change and length of each note.
Alternate methods of notation for transcribing bird songs:
A Guide to Bird Songs. Aretas A. Saunders: Doubleday and Company, Inc, 1951
“Sonogram” method - A Guide to Field Identification of Birds of North America: Robbins, Bruun, Zim, and Singer, 1966
It might sound complicated, but it’s not all that much different…
Musicians and birds do share a love (or perhaps a need) for improvisation, however. Just like us, birds convey messages and thoughts through music. The speed of a chickadee’s warning call - a buzzy “chick-a-dee-dee...” (not to be confused with its song, “fee-bee!”) - and the number of “dees” relay the perceived threat level of a predator. (You can listen to it here: http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/framlst/i7350id.html) Small, swift hawks and owls receive the greatest number of “dees” in response, according to this website. Chickadees, of course, do not have much time to think when a predator is looming, so they cannot hesitate to belt out an urgent warning call; they need to be skilled “improvisers”.
What can we learn from the humble chickadee’s warning calls? When we improvise, we need to respond to cues in our environment: (quick) observation is the first stage of this process. For example, when we solo in an ensemble, we need to pay attention to the chord changes and the rhythm. What is the character of the song, and what emotions am I feeling? Likewise, a chickadee sings or calls in response to what it sees in its surroundings. Should a chickadee sing to attract a mate, or should it warn other chickadees about a possible predator? Birds and humans both need to “improvise” through quick decisions. Expressing these decisions is the final stage of this larger process.
posted by Francisco Pais at
1:11 PM
4 Comments:
I play jazz in one of Francisco Pais’s ensemble classes. I find Marco’s post very interesting because often times I try to vocalize bird sounds. I think that too often we hear bird chimes as an unnecessary annoyance, and many of us never really stop to think about how different birds sound. Even the people who enjoy listening to bird chimes often don’t hear the subtle differences in the birds tone. When we do hear these differences in tone, we can’t match the bird to the specific tone. I think that it is truly amazing that Marco is able to see these subtleties and match them to specific bird’s. I think that each and every person needs to go out in nature and even if they are not like Marco just listen to the bird sounds. These are the ways that the birds speak to each other and these are their voices. We should listen to their songs just like we listen to our own because they will give us new appreciation for nature and for our own music. Nature is truly an amazing thing and birds are able to make music that humans will never be able to make. If musicians listen to these sounds along with jazz and other forms of music that they enjoy it will give each and every one of them a unique and beautiful voice on their own instruments.
I really liked Marko‚s piece on the Bird Songs, I myself like to open the window while doing homework and listen to them in the trees. Birds are so complex and have incredible vocals that are a joy to listen to. I also liked when Marko talks about how a precise bird‚s songs are, and how we cannot truly imitate them with our own knowledge of music. He says „some birds are capable of singing two notes at once thanks to their specialized vocal structure, called a syrinx.‰ This is just one example, he goes on to quote Eric Dolphy when he talks of some of the notes that birds sing., „like, maybe it's between F and F#, and you'll have to go up or come down on the pitch.‰ The sure precision of some of these songs is incredible, I image an instrument that is able to play all the bird notes and just as fast. I always see it as a 10 string guitar with a 6 foot neck.
I think this also gets at a large theme of the complexity of nature, and how if we were to try to play music with birds that, instead of using the guitar I described above, we should just use what we have and accept that as our own music. I say, let the birds have their sound, and us ours. Whatever feels at home in the hands of a musician is the best representation of our own sound.
Birds are master musicians; clarity and intonation are their best assets. What really is incredible to me is that there are so many different types, and that they are spread so far and wide that each has developed its own language. From the talking parrots, to the Australian Cuckooshrikes. Not only all this but the flight of birds inspires awe as well, and is a symbol of power throughout the world.
Great work, Marko! This is a really inspiring, creative study that you have done.
I really enjoyed that you not only gave some really interesting examples of how bird songs fit (or don't fit) into the conventions of Western Music, but you also provided the reader with your really unique personal interpretation of how bird songs relate to improvisation and jazz. You capture the responsive nature of jazz improvisation beautifully by showing us how birds use their song to communicate. You remind us that in jazz, we, like birds, need to learn how to communicate and interact with our song. While for us in class it may not be a life or death situation, you point out that for birds, the ability to interpret and improvise song is essential to survival.
I also really enjoyed that you found a quote from a very well known and well respected jazz musician in Eric Dolphy to support your own thoughts. The quotation proves how relevant your work on bird songs is to actual jazz improvisation and jazz musicians.
Gals
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