Carolina Wren Symphony Further Work

Draft Five (Click to play) of Carolina Wren has been more challenging than I expected. First of all, the Copland work, Fanfare, my model, is more simple than it sounds and on top of that the Carolina Wren song is quite simple--it's only three or four notes!  I'm hoping if I compare all my recordings I might find that there are many different sets of these notes. My worst case is that all of the Carolina Wrens sing the same three notes (exactly the same).  But if you think about it, that's kind of cool, too.  Except musically it's a disaster because it means that I have to betray the bird and do something human to make music of it.

I'm just not happy with Draft Five, even though I think it's the right approach (given my earlier drafts). What to do?

So, in pursuit of further and better Carolina Wren recordings I went out to Pinkney Island with my friend Beverly Gaddy, photographer, at daybreak Friday January 27th.  Unbeknownst to me I was bit by a horsefly or deerfly (don't know) and within two hours it swelled up like I was hit in the eye!  After seeing the doctor and getting steroids, the swelling started to come down...took three days to get back to normal!  Beverly actually took a picture of me while the darn thing was doing its dirty work!

Can you see a little black bug over my eyebrow?
(Beverly Gaddy)

OK so that was my adventure for the month.  AND I have bragging rights.  Hey--did you notice Im using the new bowl and PVC hook up my wonderful husband made me!?  It works great!

Back to work! So now I'm dreaming of how to embellish the birdsong without changing it so much that it's  unnatural. How authentic do I want to be and yet have this work be likable as music?


I'm thinking about how hard it is to tell which notes he sings. Maybe that's where nature gives me my license to create!  They're fast, they're much higher than singing range and they're noisy.  I think I'll use the frequency analysis within Audacity (the software I use for sound editing) to help me determine what notes are present in the timbre and then create an orchestral version of the birdsong.  I believe this will follow the model set by computer music pioneer (now symphony writer!) Paul Lansky, who once told me that in "Guys Harp" his musical construct was to design "a harmonica playing through a giant harmonica."  I never fully understood the profound merit of this until I arrived at the question I face now: how can I make the Carolina Wren sound more like itself?  Computer Music talk: basically, by identifying the frequencies present in the original sound, one can set up an equalizer that causes those specific frequencies to resonate stronger, and eliminate secondary frequencies that make the sound more complex.  Layman's Terms: giving a clearer, sweeter, more brilliant character to the original sound.

Carolina Wren in HHI ORA
(Beverly Gaddy)

OK back to work!  While my friend Beverly continued to capture a better photo of the Carolina Wren, I spent an entire day (now two) listening to all my field recordings taken here on Hilton Head Island and organized them into four different bird calls:

A- The Official Cornell University birdsong for Carolina Wren.
      I have many of these in my collection. My recorded birds sing slower but the same (exact) pitches. This one is January 26th at 6:55AM (daybreak) here on HHI ORA with foggy conditions, 61F. I did not see the bird this day, nor any other day when I took recordings of this song.

B -This recording was made mid afternoon at Providence Presbyterian here on the island while walking to my car.  There were two of them about 100 feet apart calling to each other most likely to try to get the other one to move further away. The pattern is different. The pitches are different.  The speed matches A.  I have several others just like this in my collection including one where I did see the bird.

C - Here the pattern is different again.  I have several of these recordings but never sighted the bird while taking any of them.  Other birds sighted in area: Cardinal, Mockingbird.  I don't believe it's either because Cardinal doesn't have three notes to rub together and Mockingbird would have changed its tune during my sitting.  I'll keep gathering data until one day I'll spot the bird behind this variation! Meanwhile I'm going to treat it as usable musical material.

D - This is the most unique Carolina Wren song I've recorded.  If I hadn't been within 10 feet of the bird while I held the recorder out, I would think I had made a mistake.  I only have this one.   I accept it as a gift from nature on the new year. It was taken at Providence Presbyterian at 8AM Jan 1st 2012, sunny day, ~55F.

And that's what I have to work with!  Phew!  I'm exhausted after doing all this cataloging!  I wanted to make sure I knew what I was working with so that's why I invested so much time on this analysis.  Maybe one day a biologist will be interested and can help me.  We'll get there. Together.

Now it's time to write more music!

Carolina Wren Symphony Movement

Hey, this is a place where I share my thoughts on the musical craft of the Carolina Wren, as heard here on Hilton Head Island.  At the end I share my first set of drafts for the first movement of my new symphony, using this song as the central melodic & harmonic material.  Tell me what you think! 
(Even if you're not a musician!)
My objective is to honor the bird by using its actual melodies and rhythms as recorded here in the Lowcounry, while adding the harmonies and textures that are pleasing to modern listeners; OK classical music listeners.  Other artists have succesfully placed birdsong recordings on top of classical music.  It's a nice idea but I want to take it a step further and use the actual musical material of the bird in the music.  So this is an adventure for me and I hope for you, too!

Carolina Wren
(photo by Beverly Gaddy)

I chose Carolina Wren to start because #1 it's loud and well represented here, #2 it has a virtuoso song that's clearly recognizable and #3 it's the state bird for South Carolina. This is my second symphony. The first one was built around the birdsong of a Nightingale, which most of us here in N. America have never heard in person. That's what made me want to do another project with N. American birds. I'd like you to come away singing the birdsongs and therefore that much prepared to hear them. (I promise you'll hear this bird 10x more than you'll ever see it!)   If you want to hear a brief recording I took of the Carolina Wren: Click Here to play recording.

Here's a picture of the Carolina Wren, thanks to my official photographer, Beverly Gaddy.  It loves the bushes near my bedroom window. It's a very small bird for such a large sound!  Sometimes it flies into the house and gets me in a panic!

I've been out in the field quite a bit to get recordings of the Carolina Wren, usually with Beverly. Thanks to funding from the Coastal Community Foundation,  I've been able to update my recording equipment so I can get pretty good recordings of the bird. I've made my own parabolic micophone bowl, using an external microphone with an Olympus digital voice recorder (DVR). Most of my recordings have been captured right in my backyard, here at Outdoor Resorts in Hilton Head, SC.
 (GPS Location:    lat. 32.159320       long -80.761222)

Here's a picture Beverly took one cold January at daybreak, and at the Seapines Nature Preserve.

Recording birdsong with parabolic mic connected to my DVR.
(photo by Beverly Gaddy)

Location of my recording--poor conditions this photo.
(photo by Beverly Gaddy)

 The Cornell website has this recording for  OFFICIAL CAROLINA WREN.   This is the same recording used in the Audobon stuffed-animal. 

My Carolina Wren toy.
(Audobon Society)

My toy bird travels around the country with the Ferriera clan.
Do you know where they are in this picture?
(Photo by Irene Ferriera)

ABOUT MY SECOND SYMPHONY -- "Symphony of the Lowcountry"
This movement is the first in a suite of movements featuring musical attributes of indiginous creatures such as cardinal, alligator, shore birds, frogs and owl.  As you know, I start with the Carolina Wren.

One of the defining features of the Carolina Wren is that it is very loud, so I start with brass and timpani.  My first draft uses a simple harmony in the strings to give atmosphere. PLAY THE FIRST DRAFT.   I started this in Minnesota while attending the American Composer Forum's Composer Institute.  Because I didn't have my field recordings, I used the recording from Audobon.  Here's my music notation for the official recording. Click here to see what the official birdsong looks like when it's written as music. Strangely, this song didn't match any of my own experience.   My recording of the carolina wren birdsong has a couple extra notes! Click here to see what my recording looks like.    So, out of respect to nature and science, I ditched this draft and began using my own birdcall recordings.  After all, I was 10 feet from the actual bird when it made this birdsong right here in the Lowcountry. I need to send my field experience to Cornell...they have a method for including citizen scientists!   I have many questions: is mine just a "regional accent?," or is my bird another species of Carolina Wren?, or (sadly) has my bird learned the wrong song? (and is doomed to a life without a mate.)

Back to work!  At first I was thinking Vivaldi's Violin Concerto-Spring for this movement. (Hey did you know there's a FREE download of this?!) When I interpreted the birdsong this way, here's how it sounded: PLAY THE SECOND DRAFT.

Then I thought, no, this birdsong is in a minor modality and I want it to make a more mature statement, like Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. PLAY THIRD DRAFT. I had to mess with this one a lot!  I like this next one but it still doesn't capture the spirit of the bird. PLAY FOURTH DRAFT.

Well, finally I've decided that because it's so loud in the morning, I'm thinking of Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man as the model for this work. I'm WORKING ON FIFTH DRAFT right now...