Cool web site, Rick. But, regarding the subject of birdsong, you
might want to check out Bernie Krause's new book, "Wild Soundscapes:
Discovering the Voice of the Natural World." In it, he gets well
beyond the older models of deconstruction and abstraction of the
single-bird idea the Cornell folks have been touting since the late
19th C and begins to explore how, through the effect of the entire
biophony of a habitat, birds learn their songs and calls as an
integral component of a cohesive and discriminating soundscape as
much as any factor. This niche idea posits that if the voice doesn't
with the rest of the critter orchestra (my term), the bird (or other
vocal creatures) won't survive too well in a given biome. It was a
concept that the late, great Dr. Luis Baptista was looking into at
the time of his death and found most intriguing as it addressed many
of the puzzles he was still investigating. Others are now writing
doctoral theses on the subject.
He's out at the moment, but I also believe he's giving a two-day
workshop in the Sierras as part of the Yosemite Association program
this June in Tuolumne Meadows although I don't have the exact dates.
Check it out and thanks for the great work. I'll turn Dr. Krause onto
this when he returns to the lab tomorrow.
Katy Gygi
>About ten days ago there was a discussion on this list server
>about presenting bird songs on the web using HTML and mp3 files
>as compared to using Quicktime. I want to mention another
>option, using Flash. Before getting into that, let me start with
>an introduction, since this is my first posting.
>
>I am Rick Johnson of Inverness, California. I started recording
>by attending the Cornell Lab sound recording workshop in the
>Sierras in 2001. Thanks to Greg Budney, Randy Little, and David
>Herr for getting me started on what has turned out to be a
>fantastic journey. Once I started paying attention, I noticed so
>many more sounds, both pleasant natural sounds and irritating man
>made sounds. I also like to do video recording although in any
>given scene I usually concentrate on one or the other. I use a
>Sennheiser ME 67 mic and Marantz PMD222 recorder, and have been
>satisfied with the set up. Most of my work experience has been in
>product development for application software companies.
>
>Eighteen months ago I decided to build an on-line Introduction to
>Bird Songs. I considered using HTML and MP3, Quicktime, or Java.
>None of them really gave me what I wanted in terms of designing a
>responsive, graphical user experience. I decided to use
>Macromedia's Flash. Flash allows you to mix in images,
>animations, along with sounds. Flash does a great job at
>compression and at providing portability to most browsers and
>platforms (PC and MAC).
>
>You can check out the results at my web site, www.hearbirds.com.
>On the home page there is a simple example to play a Hermit
>Thrush song. In the lower right section of the home page there
>is a link to test your Flash version and that leads to a site
>where you can get the needed free plug-in, if necessary. There
>are more complex examples too.
>
>This next link goes to an article that talks about spectrograms
>and illustrates one for a Green-tailed Towhee recording:
>http://www.hearbirds.com/content/sono1.htm
>
>This next page has a demo of the types of recordings used in the
>course:
>http://www.hearbirds.com/content/dstart.asp
>
>HTML and MP3 seems to be the best way to build a catalog of
>sounds and to share them. But if you want to build something
>more graphical and mix in other media, Flash does a great job.
>
>Rick Johnson
>Osprey Ridge Studio
>P.O. Box 981
>Inverness, CA 94937
>Email:
>
>
>
>
>
>"Microphones are not ears,
>Loudspeakers are not birds,
>A listening room is not nature."
>Klas Strandberg
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
--
Wild Sanctuary, Inc.
P. O. Box 536
Glen Ellen, California 95442-0536
Tel: (707) 996-6677
Fax: (707) 996-0280
http://www.wildsanctuary.com
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