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.