Hi James. That's the best I could do given John's description. I'm sure John
will think it sounds wrong too because the notes probably don't really sound
exactly like Bell Miner notes, and he probably only guessed the spacing and the
drop in frequency. The idea of the mockup was just to give people something
more concrete to remember in the future. Hopefully some people out there will
remember having heard it in the past!
I know birds vary their frequency - I've spent a lot of time looking at
spectrograms, and I've seen it.
I don't know if trying to force bird calls into music terminology is useful to
anyone who doesn't know music and have a good ear for it. I don't, and when I
hear a bird I can't translate frequencies into those letters you use. You're
probably at an advantage over the rest of use if you can. For me they're just
low, medium, high, descending, ascending, etc, and if I want to try to record a
call on paper then I sketch a spectrogram.
I've got no idea what width and thickness of notes means. Is that about length
and harmonics?
To me, "dropping half an octave" is actually a very precise description - it
means to multiply the frequency by 0.75. Your pitch changing experiments are
interesting, and it's reassuring that you've proven birds are very sensitive to
it. I'd be interested to hear more about that.
Peter Shute
> -----Original Message-----
> From: James Mustafa
> Sent: Monday, 2 March 2015 12:39 PM
> To: Peter Shute
> Cc:
> Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] John Young's Melbourne Night
> Parrot talk last night
>
> My only problem with this theory of dropping half an octave
> and ta-da you've got a night parrot is that Bell Miner's
> don't have an exact starting pitch to begin with. I've spent
> a lot of time transcribing bird song into standard notation
> and graphic music notation but the reality is, it pretty much
> can only be put into graphic notation due to the fact birds
> don't follow our western harmonic rules of equal temperament.
> A Bell Miner even more interestingly changes its pitch. A
> brief listen might present a Bell Miner as a constantly
> resounding F natural when in fact Bell Miner's sing every
> degree within a F such as obvious divisions of quarter notes
> but even to finer degrees than that. This is same reason that
> eastern harmony in particular Hindustani classical music can
> sound "out of tune" to our ears when in fact, those cultures
> just divide notes much finer than us lazy westerners.
>
> Bell Miner's are interesting. I think there pitch is slightly
> sharpened or flattered due to a whole bunch of reasons such
> as age, sex, season etc. But to western ears, it all sounds like "F".
>
> Birds don't follow equal temperate and will sing whatever
> they bloody want. So by dropping "half an octave" (one of the
> most general interval changing terms I've ever heard in my
> life) simply won't get you the pitch of a night parrot call
> let alone anything close to the exact.
>
> Last year I recorded a bunch of birds and then altered the
> pitch of call by 1/12th and 1/8th of a degree. The pitch was
> so finely changed, but the birds new about it. Birds such as
> eastern and crimson rosellas wouldn't want a bar of this
> minutely altered pitch. However other birds were unaffected.
>
> The only thing I actually think could be gotten out of bell
> miner comparison call is perhaps the thickness of a note, the
> very width of a sound. But that's all I really presume.
>
> All the best,
> James Mustafa
>
> 0400 951 517
> www.jamesmustafajazzorchestra.com
>
> > On 2 Mar 2015, at 12:09 pm, Peter Shute <> wrote:
> >
> > I've made a mockup of the call, if anyone's interested to
> listen to it:
> > https://soundcloud.com/petershute/synthesised-night-parrot-call
> >
> > John said they call very rarely, and might only call once,
> so you could listen all night and miss it because your foot
> crunched in the gravel at that moment.
> >
> > Before anyone complains that this could be abused, it's
> actually two Bell Miner notes. If people want to try to get a
> Night Parrot to respond to Bell Miner calls, I don't think
> they're going to have much luck.
> >
> > Peter Shute
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Birding-Aus
> >> On Behalf Of
> Peter Shute
> >> Sent: Monday, 2 March 2015 8:28 AM
> >> To:
> >> Subject: [Birding-Aus] John Young's Melbourne Night Parrot
> talk last
> >> night
> >>
> >> 1. John mentioned that the description of the call in P&K
> is spot on
> >> - "A far carrying two note whistle". I was under the
> impression that
> >> we'd been told that this description wasn't correct, but I
> could be
> >> wrong. John said that we should imagine the call as two Bell Miner
> >> notes, about half a second apart, with the second note
> half an octave
> >> lower. I think he said half an octave - can anyone confirm
> that? John
> >> said there's also a four note call, but didn't describe it.
> >
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