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Re: emulating birdsong with a synthesiser design program

Subject: Re: emulating birdsong with a synthesiser design program
From:
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 21:43:31 EDT
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 vo=
ice
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 extre=
mely
complicated filtering.  I think any adept filtering should recreate somethi=
ng
that sounds as amazing has a cricket and fairly similar.

European birdsong I hear around here seems fairly easy to recreate, for all=

the smaller birds. only the birds that are larger than blackbirds such as
pigeons have more complicated timbers to the voice resulting fromreverberat=
ions 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 thre=
e 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 compl=
etely
genuine, but essentially it comes to the same thing as reducing bird acoust=
ics
to the most representative equation that can describe the varieties of bird=
s
of various sizes, using the acoustic dimensions of amplitudes, timber, filt=
ers,
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 fra=
ctal like
oscillators the other day, which sounds rather like crow voice.

It is easy to make sounds that are indistinguishable from certain bird call=
s.
 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
>



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