Biomusic is a form of experimental music which deals with sounds created or performed by non-humans. The definition is also sometimes extended to include sounds made by humans in a directly biological way. For instance, music that is created by the brain waves of the composer can also be called biomusic as can music created by the human body without the use of tools or instruments that are not part of the body (singing or vocalizing is usually excluded from this definition).
Biomusic can be divided into two basic categories: music that is created solely by the animal (or in some cases plant), and music which is based upon animal noises but which is arranged by a human composer. Some forms of music use recorded sounds of nature as part of the music, for example new-age music uses the nature sounds as backgrounds for various musical soundscapes, and ambient music sometimes uses nature sounds modified with reverbs and delay units to make spacey versions of the nature sounds as part of the ambience.
Biophony
At the 2014 Cheltenham Music Festival (UK), "The Great Animal Orchestra Symphony for Orchestra and Wild Soundscapes," composed by Bernie Krause and Oxford (Balliol College) former composer-in-residence, Richard Blackford, premiered, and was performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. This composition is the first symphony based on ecological themes and the first to perform, live, with whole natural soundscapes informing the orchestral form and themes, just as biophonies and geophonies inspired music (rhythm, melody, organization of sound, timbre, and dynamic) at the dawn of cultural time. Commissioned by the Alonzo King LINES Ballet, an international corps based in San Francisco, the score for Biophony, composed by Bernie Krause and Richard Blackford, consists almost entirely of biophonies and geophonies and premiered in 2015. It has since been performed worldwide.
Bird song
The incorporation of bird song in music is one of the most widely studied forms of biomusic. Notable in this regard is the French composer Olivier Messiaen who began incorporating accurately transcribed bird songs into his music in 1952. One obstacle facing the use of bird songs in music is their complexity and usually very high register. Nevertheless, Messiaen included a variety of bird songs in many of his mature works including his Catalogue d'oiseaux ("Birds catalogue"), piano (1956–58) which incorporated songs from thirteen different birds. Also, he incorporated the themes of many birds in his orchestral piece, "Chronochromie".
In Western art music, recordings of bird songs have been used in numerous works. One of the first is Pines of Rome (1924) by Ottorino Respighi – the third movement includes the sound of a nightingale recorded onto a phonograph, played in the concert hall during the movement's ending. This use of recording technology was something that had never been done before, and it quickly generated discussion.[citation needed] A famous example of this technique can be found in Cantus Arcticus (1972) by the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara: subtitled Concerto for Birds and Orchestra this piece incorporates tape recordings of birdsong recorded near the Arctic Circle and on the bogs of Liminka in northern Finland.[citation needed]
The entire biophony of a soundscape can be heard on the Beaver & Krause 1968 Warner Brothers album (released in 1970), "In a Wild Sanctuary", one of the first notable ecology-themed popular albums and the first album to incorporate entire natural soundscapes as components of the orchestration.
It is important to note that of the more than 13,100 bird species, less than 100 have been accepted into Western classical or other music genres (or 0.007%). With the exception of entire biophonies, the abstract and deconstructed selection of particular birds (and the voices of a few other non-human animals such as certain cetaceans or canids) in these genres have been largely predicated on the convenient ways in which they happen to fit the models consistent with the then-current paradigms – those considered to be "musical" at any given time.[2]
Whale song in music
Recorded whale song also frequently inspired 20th century experimental music. One example is in George Crumb'sVox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale), a composition for electric flute, electric cello, and amplified piano.[3] However, as Vox Balaenae does not include actual recorded whale songs, it is not a pure biomusic composition. Another similar piece that could be considered true biomusic is And God Created Great Whales, a piece written in 1970 by American composer Alan Hovhaness. This work for orchestra and whale songs brings the recorded sounds of humpback, bowhead, and killerwhales directly into the concert hall.[4] The song "Il n'y a plus rien", from French singer-songwriter Léo Ferré's eponymous album (1973), begins and ends with recorded whale songs mixed with a symphonic orchestra. Another piece utilizing recorded whale song is the Earth Mass (Missa Gaia) by Paul Winter (1982) which is performed at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Divine each year to celebrate the Feast of St. Francis. One of the movements uses a four note motive derived from a recorded humpback whale song that opens and closes that segment of the work.
Neurofeedback
Music created by neurofeedback relies on the brainwaves of a human subject to create music. An Electroencephalophone (a musical instrument that converts brain waves to sound) was first designed by Erkki Kurenniemi in the 1960s. American composer David Rosenboom further pioneered work with neurofeedback music as has BraziliancomposerEduardo Reck Miranda. Neurofeedback composition is still in development, and though it is widely experimented with, it is still very uncommon to see it performed.
Cybernetic biomusic
In 1975, Grateful Dead associate Ned Lagin released an album of experimental space music entitled Seastones on Round Records; he described the recording as "cybernetic biomusic", emphasizing the use of computers and synthesizers to create organic-impressionistic sounds and meditative feelings. The album was one of the first commercially released recordings to feature digital computers and the Buchla digital-polyphonic synthesizer.[5]
From 2004 to 2007, Pete Townshend collaborated with composer Lawrence Ball and programmer Dave Snowdon to set up a project called The Lifehouse Method, an Internet site where applicants could "sit" for an electronic musical portrait made up from data they entered into the website.[6] On 23 April 2007, Ball released a double album on iTunes called Method Music - Imaginary Sitters, Imaginary Galaxies which is part of Pete Townshend's Lifehouse Method music project.
Other examples
Biomusic can take many other forms. These can include the simple amplification of animal sounds, or the creation of music through the fluctuation of electric current in plants. More unusual still is the use of animal notation: music scores created by animals, often in the form of paw prints. Biomusic can also take the form of animals trained to perform specific behaviors as part of a musical performance (birds trained to sing for instance).
Music from The Body is the biomusic soundtrack album to Roy Battersby's 1970 documentary film The Body, about human biology, narrated by Vanessa Redgrave and Frank Finlay. The music was composed and performed in collaboration between Pink Floyd member Roger Waters and Ron Geesin, and uses sounds made by the human body (slaps, breathing, laughing, whispering, farts, etc.) in addition to more traditional guitar, piano and stringed instruments.
The experimental ambient/noise group Tribes of Neurot released an album titled Adaptation and Survival: The Insect Project in 2002; a multidirectional sound experiment in which all sounds were originally produced by insects and then manipulated and synthesized.
A collaboration album between Breakcore artists Venetian Snares and Hecate entitled Nymphomatriarch was composed entirely from sounds of the two performing various sexual activities together, which were distorted and time-stretched to resemble typical Breakcore samples.
The Lake, by artist Julie Freeman tracked natural biological motion via electronic tagging systems, and transformed the data collected into musical composition and animation.
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect of all human societies, a cultural universal. While scholars agree that music is defined by a few specific elements, there is no consensus on their precise definitions. The creation of music is commonly divided into musical composition, musical improvisation, and musical performance, though the topic itself extends into academic disciplines, criticism, philosophy, and psychology. Music may be performed or improvised using a vast range of instruments, including the human voice.
Musical composition can refer to an original piece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new piece of music. People who create new compositions are called composers. Composers of primarily songs are usually called songwriters; with songs, the person who writes lyrics for a song is the lyricist. In many cultures, including Western classical music, the act of composing typically includes the creation of music notation, such as a sheet music "score," which is then performed by the composer or by other musicians. In popular music and traditional music, songwriting may involve the creation of a basic outline of the song, called the lead sheet, which sets out the melody, lyrics and chord progression. In classical music, orchestration is typically done by the composer, but in musical theatre and in pop music, songwriters may hire an arranger to do the orchestration. In some cases, a pop or traditional songwriter may not use written notation at all and instead compose the song in their mind and then play, sing or record it from memory. In jazz and popular music, notable sound recordings by influential performers are given the weight that written or printed scores play in classical music.
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to enhance the dramatic narrative and the emotional impact of the scene in question. Scores are written by one or more composers under the guidance of or in collaboration with the film's director or producer and are then most often performed by an ensemble of musicians – usually including an orchestra or band, instrumental soloists, and choir or vocalists – known as playback singers – and recorded by a sound engineer. The term is less frequently applied to music written for other media such as live theatre, television and radio programs, and video game, and said music is typically referred to as either the soundtrack or incidental music.
A soundscape is the acoustic environment as perceived by humans, in context. The term was originally coined by Michael Southworth, and popularised by R. Murray Schafer. There is a varied history of the use of soundscape depending on discipline, ranging from urban design to wildlife ecology to computer science. An important distinction is to separate soundscape from the broader acoustic environment. The acoustic environment is the combination of all the acoustic resources, natural and artificial, within a given area as modified by the environment. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standardized these definitions in 2014.
Zoomusicology is the study of the musical aspects of sound and communication as produced and perceived by animals. It is a field of musicology and zoology, and is a type of zoosemiotics. Zoomusicology as a field dates to François-Bernard Mâche's 1983 book Music, Myth, and Nature, or the Dolphins of Arion, and has been developed more recently by scholars such as Dario Martinelli, David Rothenberg, Hollis Taylor, David Teie, and Emily Doolittle.
Natural sounds are any sounds produced by non-human organisms as well as those generated by natural, non-biological sources within their normal soundscapes. It is a category whose definition is open for discussion. Natural sounds create an acoustic space.
Beaver & Krause were an American musical duo comprising Paul Beaver and Bernie Krause. Their 1967 album The Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music was a pioneering work in the electronic music genre. The pair were Robert Moog's sales representatives on the U.S. West Coast and were instrumental in popularizing the Moog synthesizer during the late 1960s. As recording artists for Warner Bros. Records in the early 1970s, they released the critically admired albums In a Wild Sanctuary and Gandharva.
In music, transcription is the practice of notating a piece or a sound which was previously unnotated and/or unpopular as a written music, for example, a jazz improvisation or a video game soundtrack. When a musician is tasked with creating sheet music from a recording and they write down the notes that make up the piece in music notation, it is said that they created a musical transcription of that recording. Transcription may also mean rewriting a piece of music, either solo or ensemble, for another instrument or other instruments than which it was originally intended. The Beethoven Symphonies transcribed for solo piano by Franz Liszt are an example. Transcription in this sense is sometimes called arrangement, although strictly speaking transcriptions are faithful adaptations, whereas arrangements change significant aspects of the original piece.
Field recording is the term used for an audio recording produced outside a recording studio, and the term applies to recordings of both natural and human-produced sounds. It also applies to sound recordings like electromagnetic fields or vibrations using different microphones like a passive magnetic antenna for electromagnetic recordings or contact microphones. For underwater field recordings, a field recordist uses hydrophones to capture the sounds and/or movements of whales, or other aquatic organisms. These recordings are very useful for sound designers.
Acoustic ecology, sometimes called ecoacoustics or soundscape studies, is a discipline studying the relationship, mediated through sound, between human beings and their environment. Acoustic ecology studies started in the late 1960s with R. Murray Schafer a musician, composer and former professor of communication studies at Simon Fraser University and had the help of his team at Simon Fraser University as part of the World Soundscape Project. The original WSP team included Barry Truax and Hildegard Westerkamp, Bruce Davies and Peter Huse, among others. The first study produced by the WSP was titled The Vancouver Soundscape. The interest in this area grew enormously after this pioneer and innovative study and the area of acoustic ecology raised the interest of researchers and artists all over the world. In 1993, the members of the by now large and active international acoustic ecology community formed the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology.
Bernard L. Krause is an American musician and soundscape ecologist. In 1968, he founded Wild Sanctuary, an organization dedicated to the recording and archiving of natural soundscapes. Krause is an author, a bio-acoustician, a speaker, and natural sound artist who coined the terms geophony, biophony, and anthropophony.
Richard Blackford is an English composer.
Night music is a musical style of the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók which he used mostly in slow movements of multi-movement ensemble or orchestra compositions in his mature period. It is characterized by "eerie dissonances providing a backdrop to sounds of nature and lonely melodies."
Soundscape ecology is the study of the acoustic relationships between living organisms, human and other, and their environment, whether the organisms are marine or terrestrial. First appearing in the Handbook for Acoustic Ecology edited by Barry Truax, in 1978, the term has occasionally been used, sometimes interchangeably, with the term acoustic ecology. Soundscape ecologists also study the relationships between the three basic sources of sound that comprise the soundscape: those generated by organisms are referred to as the biophony; those from non-biological natural categories are classified as the geophony, and those produced by humans, the anthropophony.
Taonga pūoro are the traditional musical instruments of the Māori people of New Zealand.
Iamus is the first studio album composed using Iamus, a computer cluster designed by the University of Malaga which creates contemporary classical music. The pieces are composed using melomics computational system, and are entirely computer generated, with no human input.
Ecomusicology is an area of study that explores the relationships between music or sound, and the natural environment. It is a study which encompasses a variety of academic disciplines including Musicology, Biology, Ecology and Anthropology. Ecomusicology combines these disciplines to explore how sound is produced by natural environments and, more broadly how cultural values and concerns about nature are expressed through sonic mediums. Ecomusicology explores the ways that music is composed to replicate natural imagery, as well as how sounds produced within the natural environment are used within musical composition. Ecological studies of sounds produced by animals within their habitat are also considered to be part of the field of Ecomusicology. In the 21st century, studies within the field the Ecomusicology have also become increasingly interested in the sustainability of music production and performance.
Vox Balaenae, is a work for electric flute, electric cello and amplified piano by the American avant-garde composer George Crumb. It was composed for performance by the New York Camerata in 1971.
And God Created Great Whales, Op. 229, No. 1, is a symphonic poem for orchestra and recorded whale sounds by the American composer Alan Hovhaness. The work was commissioned by Andre Kostelanetz and the New York Philharmonic, who premiered the piece on June 11, 1970, in New York City. The piece has been recorded numerous times and remains one of Hovhaness's most popular compositions. It has also been credited as an early work in the movement to save whales from extinction, alongside John Tavener's 1966 cantata The Whale. The title of the work comes from Genesis 1:21 in the King James Version of the Bible.
Birdsong has played a role in Western classical music since at least the 14th century, when composers such as Jean Vaillant quoted birdsong in some of their compositions. Among the birds whose song is most often used in music are the nightingale and the cuckoo.
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