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Introduction
From Yeats's golden dove to the nightingale in Berkeley Square, human society has viewed birdsong as a symbol of beauty. But is that response conditioned by societal expectations, or does birdsong really adhere to musical rules? By recording and transcribing the note sequences of common birdsong, we will determine whether they adhere to the traditional euphonic progression of fourths, fifths and octaves found in most human music. After this is complete, we intend to play the melodies thus transcribed on common instruments to various listeners, in order to determine whether they respond as positively to the performed melodies as to the birdsong itself.
We predict that birdsong does adhere to the common "golden ratio" structure of human music, but that human response to it is sufficiently conditioned that listeners will respond more positively to the birdsong itself than to an identical melody being played on a human instrument. As many members of our group are musicians, we find the possibility that human musical norms can be found in nature extremely intriguing, and look forward to testing human response to musical problems.
We attempt identify the musical properties of birdsong which have enticed humans to mimic and compose their own melodies. We hope to classify birdsong historically in the large realm of human music by studying how they fit into the patterns of sounds we call music. In categorically transcribing birdsong we should be able to find parallels and common themes between the music of the natural world and the music that humans order on pages in notes and progressions.
Relevance/Background Information
Elliot, Lang Know Your Bird Sounds, Volume One Stackpole Books, 2004.
- This book not only describes bird songs of yard, garden and city birds, but it also has a CD accompaniment.
Elliot, Lang Know Your Bird Sounds, Volume Two Stackpole Books, 2004.
- This book also describes bird songs with a CD, but focuses on the songs of countryside birds.
Hartshorne, Charles. Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973.
- This work contains both a scholarly evaluation of the evolutionary reasons for birdsong and transcribed passages of birdsong in standard musical notation.
Jellis, Rosemary. Bird Sounds and Their Meaning. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977.
- This book effectively addresses birdsong as communication, and describes the manner in which bird sounds change to reflect meaning.
Kroodsma, Donald and Edward Miller, ed. Acoustic Communication in Birds. New York: Academic Press, 1982.
- Miller gives detailed instructions on recording and analyzing, addressing birds perceptions of and responses to the songs of other birds.
Marler, Peter and Philip Zeigler, ed. Behavioral Neurobiology of Birdsong. New York: The New York Academy of Sciences, 2004.
- Analyzing the biological functions within birds brains and the stimuli that influence birds learning patterns, the work was an involved scientific study of birds ability to sing. The study was much more analytical than our project necessitates, but useful to our purposes, it covers the function and variance of birdsong.
Milius, Susan. "Music Without Borders". http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20000415/bob11.asp. 2000.
- This site has an outline of Luis Baptista's work, his paralleling birdsong with musical scales and comparing certain birds songs to the sound of different culture music.
National Wildlife Federation. "Bird Audio Songs and Calls". http://www.enature.com/audio/audio_home.asp. 2004.
- A broad source of bird calls and song, which does not focus on birdsong, but provides these sources with the other bird species.
Pelican, Judy and Mathews, F. Schuyler. The Music of Wild Birds. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill 2004.
- This book provides short descriptions and transcriptions of the typical songs of several types of birds. The transcriptions are complete with time signatures, tempo, and key signatures. The descriptions are primarily based on the musical qualities of the song.
Phillips, Tony. "Bird Songs". http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~tony/birds/. 2003.
- This is another source for digital bird song recordings, this site was organized with illustrations of the birds as well as the song files.
Stokes, Donald W. A Guide to the Behavior of Common Birds Little, Brown and Company, 1979.
- This book lists auditory displays by birds and describes reasoning behind them. It also provides general information about bird behavior.
Thielcke, Gerhard A. Bird Sounds. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1976.
- This text deals with birdsong on an acoustic rather than musical level, and has a great deal of useful information on the aural nature of birdsong.
Thorpe, W.H. Bird-Song: The Biology of Vocal Communication and Expression in Birds. Cambridge: University Press, 1961.
- This text addresses birdsong on a more scientific level, particularly focusing on the manner in which it changes over the course of the year.
U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. "Migratory Bird Research". http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/songlist.html. 2004.
- This site focuses on the recording of songbirds and gives digital audio in an outlined list of songbirds.
Various Authors Animal Cognition in Nature Academic Press, 1998.
- This book contains several articles about birds, including one called "Songbird Song Repertories: An Ethological Approach to Studying Cognition
Von Gausig, Doug. "Bird Sounds Digitally Recorded". www.naturesounds.com/birds.html#turdi. 1997-2004.
- This is a catalogue of bird sounds, organized by order and very complete.
We hope to unite our more musically based experimental paradigm with the wealth of studies addressing birdsong on a scientific level in order to create a comprehensive theory about the biological and musicological nature of birdsong. By transcribing and analyzing birdsong musically, we hope to evaluate any possible connection to human musical norms as well as to avian evolutionary pressures.
Materials:
In order to discover the connection between birdsong and popular music, we will need materials related to sound recording and music transposition. Many of the recordings of birdsong that we will be using will come from outside resources, such as web sites or recordings from the library. However, we also intend to record the songs of some local birds. In order to achieve this, we will need to acquire a sound recording device. A small condenser m, microphone will work best for this kind of recording, as it will disregard much of the outside noise, and focus on the bird it is directed towards. Once we have obtained the birdsongs, we will need materials to transpose the song to sheet music, and later to an audio file of an instrument playing the notes of the song.
The program we will use to transpose the bird recordings into actual song format is called "Melody Assistant." This program allows us to create sheet music of birdsongs, either by ear or by reproducing transcribed birdsongs, Once we have created sheet music of the song, "Melody Assistant" allows us to actually hear the song we have written, played by the instrument of our choice. This function will be helpful in comparing our birdsongs to popular recorded music.
The list of materials needed for our project is relatively short. It consists of:
A Specific Research Design
Our study centers on the musical analysis of birdsongs in comparison to human patterns in music. Using recordings of bird from Internet and library sources, we will transcribe the songs into written music, by means of a piano and a guitar. Next, we will analyze the musical components of each transcribed song for melody, harmony, rhythm, pitch, duration, and timbre. We will compare the bird songs with the melodic structures most euphonic to the human ear, for example, the "golden ratio" and musical harmonies composed in thirds, fourths, and fifths.
To address the appeal of birdsong on humans, we will make a collection of songs that have similar patterns to certain recorded birdsongs from our findings. We will collect these pieces of music from various genres so that we can evaluate a broad, international recognition and appreciation for birdsong, whether consciously or not, we will show patterns found between the music of humans and birds. We will include these pieces in a survey as well as our transcribed birdsongs and the original recordings to test human reaction. Including control pieces that do not follow the patterns or composition of birdsong, we will compare the reactions to the transcribed birdsong with the reactions to the controls. Our hypothesis is that the majority of respondents will find bird songs moderately to highly appealing and the controls less appealing on a scale from one to five:
1: Highly unappealing
2: Moderately unappealing
3: Neutral
4: Moderately appealing
5: Highly appealing
In order to decrease bias in our study, our survey will be composed of a random sample of an equal number of individuals from both genders. We will also sample from the entire campus, rather than exclusively study Western. We plan to play the same songs for each individual in the exact same order. Afterwards, we will statistically analyze our data in order to determine the actual appeal of bird songs to the human ear.
Beethovens Fifth compared to the call of a wood wren. Judge for yourself.
Beethoven: