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Re: emulating birdsong with a synthesiser design program

Subject: Re: emulating birdsong with a synthesiser design program
From: Wild Sanctuary <>
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 09:03:54 -0700
Sounds like us nature recordists can soon retire, sit back and let
the tech world take over. Anyone want to buy a good set of field
recording equipment?

Bernie

>well in these days with such powerful computers, and the ability to design
>synths that will, I should be able to design a close analogy to the bird v=
oice
>box.
>
>I think anyone form of sound should be possible to synthesise, for example
>the cricket is an extremely complicated series of clicky
>rattles,with extremely
>complicated filtering.  I think any adept filtering should recreate someth=
ing
>that sounds as amazing has a cricket and fairly similar.
>
>European birdsong I hear around here seems fairly easy to recreate, for al=
l
>the smaller birds. only the birds that are larger than blackbirds such as
>pigeons have more complicated timbers to the voice resulting
>fromreverberations in
>the voice box  which are so fast that they seem to act like frequency
>modulation as well as vibrato, why do you think crow calls sounds
>like three detuned
>voices sounding at once?
>
>The soundscapes here sound fairly easy to emulate, I just want to make a
>parallel universe within my computer, and it may take years to
>sounds completely
>genuine, but essentially it comes to the same thing as reducing bird acous=
tics
>to the most representative equation that can describe the varieties of bir=
ds
>of various sizes, using the acoustic dimensions of amplitudes,
>timber, filters,
>spatialisation, and pitch.  I wouldn't dream of trying to use a normal
>synthesiser, but with today's computer-aided design, the aim is to design =
a
>dedicated professional level synthesiser.  I already stumbles upon
>some fractal like
>oscillators the other day, which sounds rather like crow voice.
>
>It is easy to make sounds that are indistinguishable from certain bird cal=
ls.
>  You'd be surprised how easy it would be to emulate a song thrush given a
>couple of years of hobby workwith today's tools
>
>
>>  Reminds me of a call I got from the Disney folks a couple of years
>>  ago after sending me on a trip to Costa Rica to record natural sounds
>>  for a project they were doing. The fellow who called (a friend and
>>  colleague who will remain nameless) was desperate. He had just
>>  received a memo from Disney corporate ordering him to empty out and
>>  destroy the contents the storage room where they had collected one of
>>  the most unbelievable archives of sound that began in 1938. Aside
>>  from efx, it included rare birds, natural soundscapes, mammals,
>>  insects, etc., etc. When he asked why, corporate apparently responded
>>  that any 8-year old with a Mac and midi synth could recreate the
>>  sound of a rainforest or a desert, that the room was needed for
>>  storage, and they therefore didn't need the collection any more. It
>>  was ordered destroyed. I was called in an attempt to rescue the
>>  collection, but I had no room where we live and breathe for more than
>>  what we have. As far as I know, it's gone now.
>>
>>  I began what there is of my career emulating natural sounds (hear our
>>  first Warner Brother's record, In A Wild Sanctuary, 1970, and which
>>  is still available) on synthesizer and quickly found that nothing can
>>  compare, aurally, creatively, aesthetically, texturally, to the
>>  melifluous and delicate fabric of what already exists within the fold
>>  of the natural world. Yeah. We're pretty good at getting close, but
>>  it still ain't a Cuban cigar, folks.
>>
>>  Bernie
>>
>
>
>
>[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
>
>"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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