Daybreak rolls forward fast! Drafts 13 and 14



Sunrise on Pinkney Island (Beverly Gaddy)

Chickadee - 4 note song (Beverly Gaddy)

Crows make a cooing sound when sitting together (Beverly Gaddy)

Recording Frog Sunset Serenade at Providence Presbyterian (Beverly Gaddy)

Now that I got the harmony straightened out, I'm moving forward with the brass and winds!  This is the fun part!  CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO DRAFT 13.  I've filled in up to minute two, with the strings (and harmony) fleshed out through to the frogs.  I don't especially like the harmony I laid down here for the frogs so I'll be working that part out when I get to it! I hope this music opens your ears to the birdsongs near you! Thanks for listening!

MOVING RIGHT ON TO DRAFT 14.  Here I manoeuvre the winds and brass echos a little more playfully with the many carolina wren songs.  I'm trying something new for the frogs...still need something different here.  I don't want the frogs to be dark. I want them to be playful, light.  I'll keep working.  I like the middle section leading up to the frogs -- it gets so delicate. 

I hope this inspires you to follow your dream.  What I mean is don't just dream your dream--LIVE YOUR DREAM!

Darkest before the Dawn! Draft 12

My keyboard at home. (D. Ondishko)

I had to take things apart to put them back together. There's nothing like scissors bust things apart so they can become fluid.  Everything can be broken down into smaller, movable parts! (The smaller things get as they break down, the more fluid they are, and the closer we get to God.)

Finally, I'm pleased!  Here it is!  CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO Draft 12 with harmony that makes sense and is designed around the birdsong, with string movement that is designed using the birdsong for "restlessness." I'm getting very close to the texture I want for the strings!  I'm excited because now I have hope that one day I will write strings so they resemble the wind rustling the leaves in the trees.  A gentle wind, a slow wind, or a forceful wind.  Next!

GETTING TO THIS BRIGHT PLACE WAS LONELY WORK
I had to go through a dark phase of hopelessness, working through draft 10 and 11, tossing them both out, along with Drafts 9A and 9B.  I don't know what kept me going...maybe just knowing what an investment I've made already.  Maybe just because I'm here and it's what I do.

My first harmony, Drafts up to 9A was based on the notes implied in each sampled recording, using Audacity's Plot Spectrum.  I put the songs with their chords into an order that made sense, had some drama. It was too dissonant.  As I started developing the strings, I couldn't keep the texture aligned and relating to the birdsong.  It was too unrelated.

Draft 9B was based on a wholetone scale, which I derived from taking all the notes from all the songs and putting them into a scale. (Well, two of the songs were eliminated.)  I stacked perfect fifths starting on Eb and stepped down the wholetone scale.  Most of my friends liked this.  It's calming.  But I felt like it lacked any drama, like a still forest with no wind; it just isn't as interesting as a live forest with wind.  I liked the stacked fifths and the implied dorian scale it reveals in the birdsong, instead of wholetone.  Wholetone scale to me is like the color white.  Is it really a color?

CLICK Here for Draft 10 that I tossed. I was trying to use my favorite chord sequence from Barber's Adagio for Strings (bvii7 - I) and I arranged the seven different carolina wren birdsongs into a cycle of fifths. I actually had to write out each birdcall and determine the chord for each. (I used stacked fifths as a way to assemble a scale; if the birdsong fit the scale, I used the root of the scale to assign a chord.)  It worked out well except for Song B, which I had to transpose down a step. (The birdsong pitches are so unclear, it blends OK.) 

I tossed it because my ear gets tired of this after the third sequence.  What I'm thankful for in this draft is that I worked hard to notate the birdsongs so they play very closely to the recorded birds.  Bird E still eludes me...I think he changes his metric accents every time.  I checked my pitch and rhythm notation for each birdsong. The pitches in the birdsong are so elusive, I figure I can put them with just about any harmony.  The harmony is just the trees in the forest, the bird flies through it.   I picture myself as a bird, flying through the notes like branches of trees; agile.  Anything goes--as long as it keeps moving forward.

 CLICK HERE for Draft 11 that I tossed.  I spent an afternoon with Barber's Adagio, analysing the melodic and harmonic movement.  So in this draft I took the first two sequences and put them into the mode of the Carolina Wren (see below).  After all the analysis on the birdsongs, I thought I'd test my theory that the birdsongs can go with just bout anything.  So here they are against a re-application of Barber's harmonies.  It's lovely but it sounds constrained, forced. From this I'm thankful for knowing that the bird melody is entirely in Eb mode, based mostly on the overtone series. (The overtone series is a good starting place because the bird whistles slide around consistently, as if they are locked in on some root note...I've been amazed at the birds outside my window as I write...they immitate the recorded calls exactly---several of them are stars of my show. :-) 

So here's the mode for ALL the birdsong recordings for Carolina Wren:
Eb - F - G - (Ab) - A - Bb - B/Cb - Db - (D) - Eb.
1      2    3    (4)     4     5      6           7       (7)     8

All the songs fit into these notes, (or transposed a step above).  So the chord structures and moving parts in the strings have only to stay within this mode and it will sound consistent.  Now at last I have something to work with!  Happy but tired after three days of hard work taking things apart.

How Does the Baby Carolina Wren Learn its Song? (Draft 9 Gets a Workout!)

Baby Carolina Wrens - Beaufort (Lisa Clancy)

Father Carolina Wren Sings when Mother Feeds
(Lisa Clancy)

"The pleasure we feel listening to birds makes me wonder if the right kind of analysis would show that birdsongs share underlying principles of tonality and organization with music."

-Peter Marler, UC Davis.

 

 

 

Are we musical because of our exposure to birdsong, or do we appreciate birdsong because we are musical?  I once saw a History Channel series on India that claimed that one of the oldest sacred languages in India resembles bird song more than any form of human speech.  This raises a whole lot of questions!

This week was very auspicious because my colleague, Lisa Clancy, discovered a Carolina Wren nest by the side of her door!  We believe they hatched on about March 26. She was kind enough to record them several times until they dissappeared after about 10 days--"flew the coup!"  CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE BABY BIRDS WHILE MOTHER FEEDS. (Yes that's a TV in the background.)  This recording was made on day 6 (April 1st).  I went back for a better recording a few days later and heard they had already improved to two notes (maybe 3).  CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE DAY 9 RECORDING.

Which one do you like more: 9A? or 9B? 
This is a pivotal decision...Tell me now!
CLICK HERE TO PLAY DRAFT 9B. (Just the birdsong recording with its harmony and the trumpet interpretation for the first 3 minutes.)  This is my favorite. I think.

•  Click here to see the notation for Orchestra.
•  Click here to see the mixdown in Audacity.

I chose new harmony here after writing the strings out into moving lines (see 9A). While writing, I realized the harmonic movement had very little to do with the birdsong.  It was factual, as interpreted by audacity spectrum analysis but it's not factual in terms of the pitches in the birdsong.  Or I should say, the pitches I selected in the birdsong.  Analysis shows that there were many more notes in the birdsong than my ear is accepting!  So there's fact and there's interpretation.  See analysis below.

CLICK HERE TO PLAY DRAFT 9A WHICH I SET ASIDE. (Working Title: "Daybreak" or Just the first 3 minutes). I had to set this aside because overall, the harmony is too dark, too unrelated to the birdsong.  However, there is something hauntingly beautiful that happens at minute 2:00.  I don't want to lose this!  Also, I worked hard on the string writing and I like the way they move in immitation of the birdsong. I can repeat all this work with my new harmonic structure; give me another day's work.

Let me know which one you like.  I need to sleep on it....


I Think My Head Exploded During this Draft...
Everything seems to be unraveling, just when I thought I had it spinning forward!  The harmony wasn't quite right, so I opened it up into stacked fifths instead of 7th and 9th chords.  Then after looking over the simple notes in the birdsong, I extracted each note from all my songs and determined, just as Messiaen did before me, that there is a consistent whole tone scale in all the notes, except song  C.  Well  it's OK if I omit these two songs (like the female bird): I have more variation than I need plus they don't fit; besides, what if those birdsongs weren't sighted!  (Am I really sure I SAW the bird singing each song?)  I went through and double checked. I search my files to see if every song (A-E) was sighted. Only A and C were never sighted, or I can't verify from my notes.  Too much self doubt!  How much work I make for myself trying to be true to this birdsong.

Also, the musical imitations don't always match the birdsong when I put them in close juxtaposition. My previous analysis is not accurate.  How did this happen?  Misusing an analysis tool?  A better analysis is to use my ear. The tools in Audacity allow me to slow down the birdsong to reveal many more notes than I hear when the bird sings at normal speed. With audacity, I can either slow down the timing (without changing pitch) and then if necessary take the pitch down an octave.  Or I can simply slow the whole thing down -50% (changing pitch 1 octave, AND the speed 2x slow).  The second method sounds more true to the original. 

• CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO BIRDSONG B' SLOWED DOWN
• CLICK HERE TO READ THE MUSIC NOTATIONS I EXPERIMENTED WITH
• CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE MUSIC NOTATIONS I EXPERIMENTED WITH

Tedious work, but now I think I finally got some of the birdcalls notated correctly.  I had to forgive many of the notes. I like some of the textures I got with two instruments.  I'll be playing with that in the full orchestra.  It's as if the birdsong includes its own counterpoint! (You know birds have two vocal cords?  I haven't found two notes sounding at the same time in the Carolina Wren, but it's been proven in other birdsongs.)

Well, one thing I feel good about is the harmony.  Or at least, I think I can sleep on it.  If you clicked on Draft 9A to read the notation for this mixdown, you'll see my markings for "Ebstack" etc, which mean that I stack perfect fifths up from the bass note Eb. Then I take this chord and progress stepwise, down a whole tone scale. I like it. The birdsongs move upwards against this bassline.  I had to rearrange the order of the birdsongs to fit them in in a pleasing way. (I printed this question to myself at the top of the sheet...I think I made about 30 revisions to this file!) 

Unfortunately, I feel an affinity with the draft I set aside.  It uses more traditional Western Harmonic progression.  So I have to ask myself, "What if the more western harmony progression is better?" Afterall, I never fell in love with Messiaen's whole-tone harmonies. Debussy, yes.    So what is it about Debussy?  What is it about Schoenberg (tonal writing)? And why don't I like Messiaen?

I just picked up a book by Levitin "This is Your Brain on Music." Maybe I'll learn some answers from his research.

There's always more to learn!  I hope you are learning and growing and challenging your work to live up to your ideals.  Thanks for reading.

I am because We are - African Proverb

Went to yoga at jivayoga this morning (4/2), took a new class with my nephew's wife and in the end as we were floating out of Savasana, the leader inspires us by the quote, "I am because we are."  This reminded me of the wisdom I hear from the birds.  It's their message to me.  I looked up this quote and found the movie (by Madonna) and a definition in wikipedia:  "Ubuntu is an idea present in African spirituality that says "I am because we are", or we are all connected, we cannot be ourselves without community, health and faith are always lived out among others, an individual's well being is caught up in the well being of others."

So this is why I am writing to you, my friends known and yet unknown: so that you also can live your passion.  By connecting with me in this lonely process, perhaps you can connect to yourself and your art.  Just try it--even if you risk not having it be the perfect form that you've heard others achieve.  Creating art is about "personal best."

Art makes us more alive.  We make it ourselves to make ourselves more alive.  We appreciate the art of others so that we are inspired to make our own art better.  All the rest of criticism is a pointless distraction;  it only keeps one from taking on the difficult task of one's own art.  Just do it!  Join me!

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO TODAY'S DRAFT 9. Today's draft is an overview of the entire eight minute work.  It includes the symphony writing for only up to the 3rd minute, which is where I left off in draft 8.  Basically, we start at dawn with the cardinal who wakes me up just BEFORE daybreak. (Basically, if I haven't gotten my gear out by the time he sings this call, I'm about to miss the tapestry of songs!  He's my "get ready here we come" alarm.) PS - there is about 15-20 seconds of silence in this mix to allow the symphony room to wind down from the birdsongs....I'll most likely put the frogs into a second playback file to give them more latitude during live performance.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE AUDIO MIX.  This will show you what my screen looks like for the entire mix.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO ONE I THREW AWAY.  I thought it would be dramatic to open with this fabulous cardinal who started singing for me on Pinkney Island at daybreak last January. I chose a more haunting, and more frequently heard cardinal daybreak song to give you the real experience of my day. Also, this one has shore birds and water recorded at the shore of Port Royal Sandy Beach. The shore birds sound so much like the baby carolina wrens, I decided to remove these sounds in favor of giving the orchestra some leeway.

WORKING NOTES FOR THIS DRAFT
After all my questions about details in the strings I thought I better step back and take "a birds eye view" of the whole piece.  What I'm doing here is to show the entire work using the best selections of recordings.  One of my readers asked me why I didn't just get the recordings I want off the internet.  I'm sure that would be a lot easier!  I have two main reasons for not going this route: 1-Unfortunately, even though people publish/share their work freely online, they might not be willing to allow me perpetual usage rights for this project.  I don't want to get entangled in legalities when it comes to the finished product.  2-I want to respect and honor the actual region I live in.  I don't want to use just any Carolina Wren.  I want to use the ones that actually live here in the lowcountry.

So for these reasons,  I've spent about four months traveling around the lowcountry to record birds, insects and shore sounds. The equipment for this part of the project was very generously paid for by the Coastal Community Foundation. Now that I'm selecting and embedding samples into the symphony, I've been disappointed in some of the sound recordings.  Some of my favorites that I planned to use are not usable -ugh! - mostly because of my own noise while recording, or other unwanted, background noise ruins the effect.  In general, the signal to noise ratio hasn't been great.  So I spent an entire day cleaning up the noise in the tracks (audacity has a really good noise reduction tool, plus the bass reduction removes most of the wind and motor sounds).  The tracks in this Draft 9 have all been processed this way.  I made only minimal changes to the actual tracks, keeping the bird's timing in the song.

Daybreak on Pinkney Island, SC (Beverly Gaddy)

The beautiful five-star recordings from my collection are used in this order: (click each one to play.)

1. Cardinal Daybreak: Basically, if I haven't gotten my gear out by the time he sings this call, I'm about to miss the tapestry of songs! He's my "get ready here we come" alarm.
2. Carolina Wren: Song A  This is the first song I identified for the bird. I have identified five different songs, maybe more.
3. Carolina Wren Song B
4. Carolina Wren Song E (yes this song is out of alphabetical order; I want it here because of the implied harmony.) 
5. Carolina Wren Song C
6. Carolina Wren Song D
7. Woodpecker
8. Cardinal Daybreak (explosive)
9. Crow This strange sound is unusual for the crows.  They have such a wide variety of calls.  They aren't songbirds, but this sound is so gentle...then they switch to their usual calls & fly away.
10. Mockingbird:Here, he sings only one note. I actually sighted him singing this at Pinkney Island. Another day, this bird deserves his own symphony!  Normally, he's very annoying, singing many songs one after the other, endlessly, for HOURS!  It gets on my nerves! 
11. Chickadee : this whispy four-note song is so sweet!  It took me a long time to figure out which bird this was! It's such a tiny bird and it's the first one to show up on your bird feeder, according to my animal-wise friend, Holly Cope.
12. Baby Carolina Wrens: three in a nest at my colleague's home in Beaufort. One day I said to my friend, "If only I could record a baby carolina wren learning its song." and she said, why there's a nest in the flower box right next to my front door!  This week Beverly and I will go out for more photographs and recordings.  The father bird is singing nearby every time the mother bird swoops in to feed them. You can hear her hit the flower box! 
13. Frogs at Sunset: I have always adored frog serenades.  This recording sounds exactly like I pictured the book Marsh Music by Berkes. I wsh I could use this whole recording but I cut it down into only 4 minutes.
14. Ocean: I need to replace this recording with a better one.  I'm just getting the feel for screening out the wind with umbrella and correct placement of the bowls. This recording was made early morning at Folly Beach.  What I need to do is go out at night time when no people or animals (shorebirds).

Next Steps:
I'll get to work on writing for the instruments! I have a list of string textures to explore. Thanks to my readers for some suggestions.

I visited with a Brass Quintet with members from the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra and got feedback that my trumpet writing is "too risky." So I'll need to rewrite those parts without such wide leaps.

Also, I'd like to give this score and my first symphony to the new conductor of the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra, John Morris Russell .  I'm trying to get an appointment to give them in person.

I priced out the binding and booklet making at Staples. It's going to cost about $11.00 to print the whole score when I'm done. (I'll email them a PDF file with directions.)  This is such a nice departure from the days when I did my books by hand at the copy machine at Eastman! SIGH.