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.

Draft 8: DO A LOT OF WORK

Most of my friends are like me, putting off a worthwhile project because we just can't find time for it. It's tough being an artist and teacher and performing musician.  Just recently, with effort, I've found a way to get a little bit of work in each day.  It takes some new habit-building but even on a busy day I can usually clear some time and head space to work.  The usual problem isn't finding time, it's finding a clear state of mind.  And I have to give myself permission to work small.  It's like eating frequent snacks instead of a meal.  It's a different approach to a big project.  "Swiss Cheese" approach: drill lots of small holes and eventually the whole block of cheese will be gone.

Here is my work for the past week...
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO DRAFT 8

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE MUSIC FOR DRAFT 8

There is this gap between whan I envisioned and what this draft sounds like. It gives me no rest! It needs so much work!

A Bird in the Bush!  (Beverly Gaddy)

 So we must do a lot of work!  The only way out is THROUGH.

Carolina Wren (Beverly Gaddy)

Music Thoughts for the Work: 
I already have a harmonic sequence (shown in previous work).  It's starting to work.  Here I wanted to hear the whole harmonic sequence through.   Each Carolina Wren song I recorded (5 variations) has its own implied harmony. I like hearing the changes, but my ear tires of the strings.  I need to work on their texture next.  (Maybe I'll try to give a sample of texture changes as a sketch.)

I like the female bird chirps, entering after the first minute.  I picked a few choice notes from Stravinsky's "Le Rossignol" as my model.

Questions I ask myself:
What if in addition to this sequence, there's a transposition sequence that matches the three-note song? Can I do it here? Maybe in my next draft, DRAFT 9.  Do I need more harmonic interest?

What if it needs more counterpoint?  Is the overall texture too simple? What if I include all the CW songs in counterpoint, adding them in after they are introduced?  Why not use artistic licence and invert and reverse the birdcalls?  If I do this, I have more material than I can handle! But this could be the best approach.  This is why so many people love Barber's "Adagio for Strings"--the harmony is born out of the counterpoint. I could do this.

What is the sound of air?  Of forest? of a large space?  a large space with lots of activity? When I listen to air outside, I can tell the size of the space I'm in by the ambient sound.  How do i recreate this? I think the strings have a good effect because of the chorusing (multiple iterations of the same note). I think the horns have a good effect because of hte open vowel tone. When I listen to air I hear hiss, sh sustained, long notes, Ahh, with color changes in the sound, only slight pitch changes (chorusing) but the vowels keep changing and this sometimes affects the pitch.  So what I really need to do is find a way to recolor the strings while they sustain the large space.  This is a worthy pursuit! This will be my focus in the next draft.

Also, by now I'm worried I'm going to eat through the chops of the horn and trumpet players if I give all the Carolina Wren melodies to the trumpets.  Am I holding the horns too long, too high?  I need to check with my trumpet-playing friend, Billy Howe, if I can get on his calendar next week.

I have so many questions about Carolina Wren (CW).

• What is each saying? "I am HERE"
• And if so, then spread about the area, they say to me, "We are all HERE" and
• Because they are all up and about, there must be enough good conditions for all of them and that means, ultimately, "It's gonna be ALRIGHT for all of us."

I think this is a pretty cool message. I hope this is the message of the music, too.
Do a lot of work, Dede!

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...