Slashdot Mirror
Birds Found Using Human Musical Scales For the First Time
sciencehabit writes The flutelike songs of the male hermit thrush are some of the most beautiful in the animal kingdom. Now, researchers have found that these melodies employ the same mathematical principles that underlie many Western and non-Western musical scales—the first time this has been seen in any animal outside humans. It's doubtful that the similarity is due to the physics of the birds' vocal tract, the team reports. Rather, it seems male hermit thrushes choose to sing notes from these harmonic series. It may be that such notes are easier for the males to remember, or provide a ready yardstick for their chief critics—female hermit thrushes. The study adds to other research indicating that human music is not solely governed by cultural practices, but is also at least partially determined by biology.
Turns out, it might have been a couple of bluejays getting horny!!!
The only thing missing was the sound of the thermin...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
or hip hop, I don't mind.
Well, yes, and my wife's parrot can accurately whistle the theme to Castle, but I don't think imitation counts. I think what the article is talking about is birds in the wild with no contact with humans, using the well-tempered scale.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Bird Reporter: This just in! Humans now claiming ownership of our musical scales.
The extent hearing is determined by physics is largely ignored. Musical theory is, in its most literal form, about matching waveforms. They harmonize because the waveforms are in harmony, literally. That such a physical point exists outside of human cognition allows it to be an emergent point for evolution, easier to learn how to detect through the white noise than patterns that fail to resonate coherently in the listener's environment.
Frankly, duh.
Every single thing we do is determined by biology, which is determined by chemistry, which is determined by physics... after that, turtles... or the Loch Ness Monster
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
> Can we be sure that the birds didn't learn the scale from hearing human music?
Dunno, the article doesn't mention whether the birds in question were observed near a human habitat.
I can see it going either way -- that birds have adopted the well tempered scale through virtue of listening to the scale used worldwide for 300 years, or that JS Bach either knowingly or unknowingly, copied nature when he popularized the scale in 1722.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
a bird singing some Messiaen the other day. The resemblance was uncanny.
Bird sounds from the lyre bird and more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gc4QTqslN4
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
While the world is surely made up of math and physics, we learn to observe, measure, and act based on our social interactions. If nobody bothered to teach you math, language, etc.. you would be no better than an animal (and most likely eaten by one).
Biology gives us basics, such as survival instincts. Interaction, observation, and accumulated knowledge give us Physics and Music. Young birds seem to learn learn to call just like we learn to yell if we need something, and they progress beyond that basic yell just like we do. Based on other birds (and other influences depending on the bird), they learn more complex songs.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
When we lived in urban Phoenix, I used to occasionally hear mockingbirds singing the Chinese default car alarm tones.
...that underlie many Western and non-Western musical scales...
So, in other words... that underlie all musical scales??
Harmony in music is based almost directly on the simplicity of the ratio of the frequencies of notes in a chord.
Octave = 1/2
Fifth = 2/3
Fourth = 3/4
Major Third = 4/5
Minor Third = 5/6
and so on.
Their are certain cultural anomalies; For example our our preference for three notes in a simple chord (first, third and fifth) means that fourths are generally considered slightly more disharmonious that thirds, due to their relationship to the third and the fifth.
Also the intervals in most instruments are fudged slightly to make the work in any key. This practice started with Bach I believe.
The point, of course, is that it is not that surprising that harmony is more universal that human culture. The mathematics that underlies harmony is more universal than human culture.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
The twelve tone scale in humans corresponds to the resonant frequencies of our vertebrae. I've always wondered if different species have their own spine-songs, so to speak. As a fun side-note, humans automatically speak in a major or minor key depending on whether their message is positive or negativr.
Have gnu, will travel.
I can see it going either way -- that birds have adopted the well tempered scale through virtue of listening to the scale used worldwide for 300 years, or that JS Bach either knowingly or unknowingly, copied nature when he popularized the scale in 1722.
I'd say neither.
First of all, TFA says that the birds' note-frequencies follow a harmonic structure. Well-tempered (or more correctly, equal-tempered) scales follow a logarithmic structure.
Secondly, development of equal-tempered scales pre-dates Bach by a century and a half, and arguably even much earlier. To be sure, Bach played a crucial role in popularizing equal temperament, but he wasn't copying nature when he wrote Das Wholtemperierte Klavier (book 1 in 1722 and book 2 in 1742.)
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Surprised nobody has linked to this YouTube video of the thrush in the paper: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... Doesn't sound that much different from a lot of other birds that use similar intervals. e.g. Red winged blackbird and chickadee.
While the world is surely made up of math and physics
IAAMandP, and I'll be the first to tell you tell you humbly that I have no idea what the world is "surely" made up of. What I am sure of is that MandP (and by extension, science) is the best way for humans to construct an understanding of what the world is made up of.
Interaction, observation, and accumulated knowledge give us Physics and Music.
I'm with you there. And aren't we blessed to receive both.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Used to hear birds in london that could do the Nokia ringtone...
Humans discover they really have been copying the birds all along.
foo
From Scottsdale, they still do.
Not sure whether that's free as in freedom or free as in lunch.
and my wife's parrot can accurately whistle the theme to Castle
Please, post this to Youtube...or Snappamatic.
The bird of paradise comes pretty close.
Hmmm, almost
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I would guess these birds would use Pythagorean or Just Intonation, not a well temperament. Even meantone is significantly bent from the natural harmonic series in order to close up the thirds in the keys close to C, and well temperaments come even later and are much closer to equal temperament than is meantone.
Birds probably don't worry about modulation on a twelve-note keyboard. There's no reason they need to be consistent even if they do transpose. A doesn't always have to be 440.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Bach was promoting well temperament, NOT equal temperament. Well temperament was much closer to equal than the meantone that preceded it, closing up the wolf interval Eb to G# and making all keys playable. It did not make them all equal. Keys far distant from C were still more discordant than F-C-G-D.
It's also true that while it's possible to formulate an equal temperament in terms of beats per second between fifths, this depends on having a uniform starting pitch (like our modern A=440), which ALSO did not exist in those days. "A" could be anywhere from 390 to 460+, depending on which town you went to. (Anywhere from a whole tone flat to a semitone sharp.) A tuning regime using beats cannot survive such variances.
Equal temperament didn't become prominent until late in the 19th century. Well temperaments for keyboards were still the standard, and instruments not limited to fixed pitches (including voices) still have a tendency to drift toward 5-limit Just Intonation, even when playing with equal-tempered accompaniment. Barbershop quartets even use 7-limit JI. Solo lines and melodies not doubled by fixed-pitch instruments tend toward Pythagorean (which is really 3-limit JI) -- which I suspect is also what the birds are doing.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Thanks very much for that. Obviously I was confusing the two.
After reading your post, I vaguely recall hearing long ago that there was a difference between well-temperament and equal-temperament. But that's no excuse for my confusion now.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.