Final Mix of Symphony of the LowCountry

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE MUSIC

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE SCORE

Recording frog chorus at Providence Presbyterian March 2012
(This particular attempt was not used -- too early for frogs.)
(Photo by Beverly Gaddy)

This eight minute work depicts dawn to dusk in the quiet lowcountry region of South Carolina where I live. I traveled the region with my recording gear in search of song birds, frogs, and other critters that move or fly about. While I was recording the audio my colleague, Beverly Gaddy, took photos documenting the locations and conditions (and actual birds) where we recorded. The equipment for this project was funded through a grant from "The Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina." Five tape tracks must be played back (on cue from the conductor) to synchronize with the orchestra. The orchestra serves as a listener and translator of the tapestries of nature, sometimes taking the lead but like in a dance, sometimes following the beautiful performances of nature.

(The only future change I forsee is the addition of a barred owl at the end...it has eluded me! The ocean recording can be replaced with a better one once I obtain it.)

Hey, Thanks for listening and for sharing your thoughts on this work!  I hope it makes you more curious and aware of the musicianship of nature!

A Bird in the Hand is worth TWO in the Bush

There is a bird in that bush!

Recording lapping surf at Port Royal.

setting up the microphones for the frogs at sunset.

Pinkney Island
(Photos by Beverly Gaddy)

OK so I think I'm done, but I'm not satisfied....here's where it gets tricky...I'm so close to what I want, it's too easy to overwork it and start moving away from my target.  So do I stop now, not quite feeling good about it or do I continue? 

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO DRAFT 18.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE SCORE FOR DRAFT 18.

For me, I've got to keep working to make it better.  It's the frogs:  the rising pizzicato line is not thematically related to the frogs.  Frogs don't ascend a scale, even though all the notes in the scale come from their chorus.  None of the animal songs do this. Scales are a human construction.  So I've got to eliminate it.  I've got to do better.

Personal Best says to let go of the bird in the hand.  Artists don't settle.  I guess we'd rather starve!

The Camouflage of Birdsong: working toward Draft 17

Dazzlepatterning.  Tessellations.  Transformations and Tessellations.  Camouflage. Sparkling Water. Tapestry. Wallpaper. The staring out the window at the glide of power lines in the family stationwagon on a long summer trip. These are a few of my favorite things!  These are some of my favorite sounds and sites in nature.

Click Here to Listen to Draft 16.

My favorite parts to the symphony so far are where the patterns emerge and shift --

 first in birdsong (at minute 2:15) and then the frog chorus (at 6:20).  

Ace Basin, SC (Beverly Gaddy)

I wonder if this is why the shore birds prefer mixed flocks: their colors and shapes complement and make interlocking patterns, obscuring one another.  And now that I'm listening more to birdsong, the afternoon is full of momentary tessellations:  mixed birds with interlocking song.  So that's what I want to do more and better in Section B (minutes 2-4:30).  In this section I want the birdsong to win out over the echos and tapestry of the orchestra . I'll have to do some trimming. (And Ray, the Timpanist with the HHI orchestra says less timpani here!)  Also, I need the real birdsong to have the "last word" in the conversation.  (Musically speaking, I suppose this section is like a concerto for birdsong and orchestra!)

Let me describe the sections of the work for you. 
(--and for me!  It's hard leaving my work for a few days and returning to it.  If nothing else, this blog helps me to focus my thoughts and set my intentions. So I apologize again for all the detail.)

The work is descriptive of a (winter*) day in the LowCountry of South Carolina--Beaufort, Hilton Head, Charleston and even Savannah, Georgia. We start with the first daylight song: Cardinal. Then the Carolina Wren trumpets the morning and defines his territory.  In Section B, other Carolina Wren songs are shared and at mid-day (Section C) all the birdsongs that I collected are shared and woven into a busy tapestry (Section D)-Cardinal, Chickadee, Woodpecker, Crow, Mockingbird.  At sunset (Section E) the frogs emerge and close out the day.  The ocean takes us off into sleep. Click here to see a picture of the mixdown for Draft 16.


The A section (start to minute 1:30) is more like the competitive language of birdsong, especially at night or in the morning when each bird is laying out their territory.  The bird with less of a song (quieter, slower, less rigorous) must leave.   I didn't intend this, but in my symphony I let the orchestra win.  The trumpets take over and the natural bird stops.  So I'm thinking about whether to allow it or accept it.  The fact is, I'm not simply using nature's music, as other artists have done.  I'm trying to show nature in an artistic perspective: conform it to harmony and rhythms that humans can enjoy.  And so it's true: orchestra wins out the territory over the birdsong.  And I accept this.

How would it be if the birdsong had won? Other artists have simply added birdsong in with new age music. To me this is too non-committal.  It's more like "co-existance" than cooperation and acceptance, or understanding.  Or they have taken recordings of  nature and used them as the raw material for digital sound processing and mixing.  The listener is left to make artistic judgement about it; even so, it's still handled and manipulated by man.  Dr. Bernie Krause has just published a book on nature's tapestries: The Great Animal Orchestra. Very interesting! Other composers have notated birdsong into symphonic works before me--Messian being the most prominent, Stravinsky being preferred by me and Vivaldi being the best at tessellations in Seasons/Spring--he actually does a metric modulation without writing it in.  Phillip Glass I believe was fascinated with executing musical tessellations. At least, that's how I make my way through it.  Ultimately, I think these dazzling patterns are a form of mind-alteration, mesmerization and meditation--some might say analgesic.  When I meditate, I find the world slips into interlocking patterns. Activities and people in my life form a tide or current that moves and changes in "the cycle of existance."  So this fascinates me, inspires me as a moment of moving beauty and I wish to express it here.  So my work continues!

So I'm not alone in my musical or philosophic pursuit.   Although I feel like a pioneer, as I attempt to study the birdsong and the intention of the communication (the purpose of the birdsong) and to use my analysis in determining my work.  The birdsong and frog chorus are the key to the design of this symphony. I wish only to honor nature and understand and respect it.  It's the language the human race has not learned yet.

The frog chorus (entering at the Golden Mean--5 minutes out of the 8 total) is so beautiful in itself.  I include the unaltered chorus in its full expression:  swell and ebb (crescendo, diminuendo). The orchestra long-tones in winds and horns serve it on a platter.  The strings are adding lightness in their pizzicato. This needs more work:  the strings sound un-related to the frog chorus.  Unless I can build up to this pattern from the frog chorus pattern.  Then I have understood it and not simply copied it.  (I haven't copied it exactly, as I have done the birdsongs because it is so continuous.  It leaves no room for me, the orchestra.  Instead, my role is to listen along with my trained ears, and I hope I have trained the ears of my audience by this time in the work.)  So my intent here is to do with the strings what the frogs do: camouflage and confuse, create a dazzling pattern.

Another example of how the birdsong has determined the design is in my overarching musical harmony is the first Carolina Wren song we hear, using notes  Eb, F, G. These are the keys for the modes (mostly a wholetone variation) and chords. Sections A-D are in Eb, Section E (the frogs) is in F (should be minor but I don't want it to get too dark) and I end with the ocean in G major. 

The Golden Mean has been important to me as a composer ever since I started at The Walden School at age 14.  I mind it but I can't say I understand it or appreciate it.  The actual sound that is the most inspiring, or elevating during this work is the solo cello at 4:56, just before the frogs enter.  So it's just a tad early for an 8 minute work  (where the golden mean is at 5:00).  Well, with the work I'm about to do on extending the patterns of the mid-day, (3:45-4:00) and it may result in a few more seconds, pushing this moment into the 5th minute, and voila!  just right!

So I am almost done.  Now I want to make what I have done better by emphasizing the tessellations and patterns, build a tighter tapestry.   

"Adventure is worthwhile in itself." 

- Amelia Earhart

* Winter in South Carolina is very mild so the insects are absent.  I really want the work to end with an owl song, but despite several night outings, I have not captured any usable owl songs. (OK, I have two recordings but the owl is too far away and they sound noisy and unusable.) Beverly and I are not giving up yet! 

Sea Pines Nature Preserve Gate Locked us in! (Beverly Gaddy)

One night Beverly and I went out to find some owls in the nature preserve and got locked in. 
Yikes! Thanks to our friends we were able to contact the security office and find a second exit! We thought the owls would be more active in the full moon (super moon!) but the cloud cover kept them away while we were out.

Laughing Crowd of Frogs: Drafts 15 and into 16

Tree Frog Hiding (Beverly Gaddy)

 NOTES ON DRAFT 15 HERE:  ONLY THE FROGS! 
(minutes 5-8 only)

OK now for the frogs!  I love their polyrhythms (two or more overlapping rhythms) - the way one frog will start and the others join in but not at the same speed or meter (repeating length), so you get this kaleidoscopic pattern...just when you think it's the same, it shifts into something new.  The problem is getting the harmony to brighten the sounds and not make it dark or dreary.  I believe they do this to camoflague themselves so you can't locate any one individual frog.  Their songs overlap and combine to confuse the predator.  It's mesmerizing, like tessellations.


The actual chord is an F augmented chord, which I used in Drafts up to 13.  But it was too dark so I brightened it up with an alternating chord sequence. Here is DRAFT 15a.  I plan to move the harmony into the winds but first I have to get the harmony right before I spell it out for all the instruments. (and add lots of rhythm and percussion!)

Tree Frog on sidewalk HHI (Beverly Gaddy)

Since I want to include the F tonic (home) and the sharp-5 I choose a new alternating harmony that includes both (F major to A major and back).  I love to hear the frogs breathe!  Here is DRAFT 15b.  It breathes.

I like the b sequence so I lengthen it to fit under the frogs, changing it up by stepping downward by whole steps until I get back to F - A -F, and then leaping up by major thirds until it gets too high for the horns and I have to shift into the winds.  Here is DRAFT 15c. I like the changing harmony. I don't like returning to the F (tonic) in the middle...needs to keep searching... Now I need to go to the beginning of the sequence and shift the harmony from brass to winds to show the living breath of the frogs.

Now Here's DRAFT 15d.  I had to switch things up a bit so it wouldn't get dreary. Got it to stick to the french horns for now, with the strings joining in at the end, making home, well "homier."

Tree Frog Wishing for Company (Beverly Gaddy)

I can't believe I wrote another DRAFT 15e. Finally I had the idea of adding in short notes--long notes are too dreary. Perk it up!

And another Draft 15f.  I was hoping this would be the last because it was "F" for frog, afterall! But the rhythm was off...so I made one little switcheroo with the rhythm:  Voila! Draft 15F version 2.

And happiness was starting to set in!  Here is Draft 15g .  I was just about laughing. Got it ready with Draft 16.  I've been so focused on listening I forgot to take notes for you.  Can you hear what I changed?

So I mixed it back in with the whole symphony and I named it DRAFT 16!  This is the draft I will take to show the symphony performers on Monday.  Here's a picture of the mixer window for Draft 16.

I hope it makes you smile!  Maybe it will help you feel more comfortable in a crowd!

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.