John Carlos Baez on Nostr: My friends are learning about my current obsession with tuning systems, and starting ...
My friends are learning about my current obsession with tuning systems, and starting to ask questions I don't know the answers to.
Last night Michael Fourman asked: if harmonies coming from simple fractions are so natural, do any bird or whale songs feature such harmonies?
So I looked around. It turns out an Australian bird called the pied butcherbird has long been a favorite of many composers! Jean-Michel Maujean figured out the frequency ratios that appear in the songs of this bird. He found the 4 most common ratios are close to
0.607, 0.745, 0.815, and 1.34
He notes that
0.607 is close to going down a major sixth (3/5),
0.745 is close to going down a major third (3/4),
1.34 is close to going up a perfect fourth (4/3),
0.815 is kinda close to going down a major third (4/5).
His work looks good - but he shouldn't have bothered comparing the ratios to 12-tone or 18-tone equal temperament. Equal temperament is a system developed for keyboard instruments in the late 1700s. It would be amazing if the birds used this!
Maujean also has a nice review of the literature on harmonies in bird songs, so I should dig into it:
• Jean-Michel Maujean, Analysing Intonation of the Pied Butcherbird,
https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses_hons/1526/But I get the feeling that *most* birds don't sing with frequency ratios that are simple fractions. What's up with these birds?
Published at
2023-12-30 12:07:36Event JSON
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