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
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or with ...
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
soundscape
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, ...
s, 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
Bernard L. Krause (born December 8, 1938) 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-acoustici ...
and Oxford (Balliol College) former composer-in-residence,
Richard Blackford
Richard Blackford (born 13 January 1954 in London, England) is an English composer.
Biography
Richard Blackford PhD studied composition with John Lambert at the Royal College of Music and conducting with Norman Del Mar. He was awarded the Men ...
, 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
The Alonzo King LINES Ballet (AKLB) is an American contemporary ballet company based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The ballet company, founded by choreographer Alonzo King, premiered at San Francisco State University's McKenna Theatre in 1982.
...
, 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
''Pines of Rome'' ( it, Pini di Roma, link=no), P 141, is a tone poem in four movements for orchestra completed in 1924 by the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi. It is the second of his three tone poems about Rome, following ''Fontane di Roma'' ...
'' (1924) by
Ottorino Respighi – the third movement includes the sound of a
nightingale
The common nightingale, rufous nightingale or simply nightingale (''Luscinia megarhynchos''), is a small passerine bird best known for its powerful and beautiful song. It was formerly classed as a member of the thrush family Turdidae, but is no ...
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. A famous example of this technique can be found in ''
Cantus Arcticus'' (1972) by the Finnish composer
Einojuhani Rautavaara
Einojuhani Rautavaara (; 9 October 1928 – 27 July 2016) was a Finnish composer of classical music. Among the most notable Finnish composers since Jean Sibelius (1865–1957), Rautavaara wrote a great number of works spanning various styles. ...
: 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.
Birdsong also frequently features in popular music. Early examples include
schlager singer
Ulla Billquist’s ''
När Svalorna Komma Och Bygga Sitt Bo'' (1932) and ''Tobourlika'' by
rebetiko
Rebetiko ( el, ρεμπέτικο, ), plural rebetika ( ), occasionally transliterated as rembetiko or rebetico, is a term used today to designate originally disparate kinds of urban Greek music which have come to be grouped together since the s ...
artists
Stratos Pagioumtzis and
Ioanna Georgakopoulou
Joanna is a feminine given name deriving from from he, יוֹחָנָה, translit=Yôḥānāh, lit=God is gracious. Variants in English include Joan, Joann, Joanne, and Johanna. Other forms of the name in English are Jan, Jane, Janet, Janice, ...
(1940). A nightingale can be heard on
Pink Floyd's "
Cirrus Minor" (''
More
More or Mores may refer to:
Computing
* MORE (application), outline software for Mac OS
* more (command), a shell command
* MORE protocol, a routing protocol
* Missouri Research and Education Network
Music Albums
* ''More!'' (album), by Booka S ...
'', 1969) or "
Grantchester Meadows" (''
Ummagumma
''Ummagumma'' is the fourth album by English rock band Pink Floyd. It is a double album and it was released on 7 November 1969 by Harvest Records. The first disc consists of live recordings from concerts at Mothers Club in Birmingham and the Co ...
'', 1969), tweeting birds on
Laurie Anderson
Laurel Philips Anderson (born June 5, 1947), known as Laurie Anderson, is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician, and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and ...
's "
O Superman
"O Superman", also known as "O Superman (For Massenet)", is a 1981 song by performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson. The song became a surprise hit in the United Kingdom after it was championed by DJ John Peel, rising to #2 on the UK Single ...
" (1981),
seagulls in
Léo Ferré‘s ''
L'Opéra du pauvre'' (1983). Thanks to its inclusion as a preset in the
E-mu Emulator II, a specific sample of a
loon, notably heard in ''
Sueño Latino Sueño Latino is an Italo house band from Italy: Andrea Gemolotto, Claudio Collino, Davide Rizzatti, Riccardo Persi.
In 1989, the group released the ambient house classic "Sueño Latino." The track is based on Manuel Göttsching's album-length ''E2 ...
'' (1989) and in
808 State’s ''
Pacific State'' (1989), has become a recurring motif in electronic-based popular music.
The entire
biophony of a
soundscape
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, ...
can be heard on the
Beaver & Krause 1968 Warner Brothers album (released in 1970), "''In a Wild Sanctuary''", one of the first notable
ecology
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overl ...
-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.
Whale song in music
Recorded
whale song
Whales use a variety of sounds for communication and sensation. The mechanisms used to produce sound vary from one family of cetaceans to another. Marine mammals, including whales, dolphins, and porpoises, are much more dependent on sound than ...
also frequently inspired 20th century experimental music. One example is in
George Crumb's ''
Vox Balaenae
''Vox Balaenae'' (''Voice of the Whale''), 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.
Background
As the nam ...
'' (Voice of the Whale), a composition for electric flute, electric cello, and amplified piano. 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
Alan Hovhaness (; March 8, 1911 – June 21, 2000) was an American- Armenian composer. He was one of the most prolific 20th-century composers, with his official catalog comprising 67 numbered symphonies (surviving manuscripts indicate over 70) a ...
. This work for orchestra and whale songs brings the recorded sounds of
humpback,
bowhead, and
killer
A killer is someone or something that kills, such as a murderer or a serial killer.
Killer may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional characters
* Killer (''Home and Away''), a character from ''Home and Away''
* Killer Kane, ...
whales
Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and ...
directly into the concert hall. The song "
Il n'y a plus rien
''Il n'y a plus rien'' (English: There Is No More) is an album by Léo Ferré, released in 1973 by Barclay Records. The general mood here is dark, both exasperated and desperate.
History
After having inserted two symphonic songs ("Ton style", "T ...
", 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
in the 1960s. American composer
David Rosenboom
David Rosenboom (born 1947 in Fairfield, Iowa) is a composer-performer, interdisciplinary artist, author, and educator known for his work in American experimental music.
Rosenboom has explored various forms of music, languages for improvisation, ...
further pioneered work with
neurofeedback music as has
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
ian
composer Eduardo Reck Miranda
Eduardo Reck Miranda (born 1963) is a Brazilian composer of chamber and electroacoustic pieces but is most notable in the United Kingdom for his scientific research into computer music, particularly in the field of human-machine interfaces wh ...
. 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.
From 2004 to 2007,
Pete Townshend
Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend (; born 19 May 1945) is an English musician. He is co-founder, leader, guitarist, second lead vocalist and principal songwriter of the Who, one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s.
Townsh ...
collaborated with composer
Lawrence Ball
Lawrence Ball (born 17 September 1951) is an English musician and composer who lives in North London. He produces multi-media compositions, performs in concert, and also works as a private tutor in mathematics, music theory and physics.
Musica ...
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. 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
''Music from The Body'' is the soundtrack album to Roy Battersby's 1970 documentary film '' The Body'', about human biology, narrated by Vanessa Redgrave and Frank Finlay.
History
The music was composed in collaboration between Pink Floyd memb ...
'' is the biomusic
soundtrack album to Roy Battersby's 1970 documentary film ''The Body'', about
human biology
Human biology is an interdisciplinary area of academic study that examines humans through the influences and interplay of many diverse fields such as genetics, evolution, physiology, anatomy, epidemiology, anthropology, ecology, nutrition, populat ...
, narrated by
Vanessa Redgrave
Dame Vanessa Redgrave (born 30 January 1937) is an English actress and activist. Throughout her career spanning over seven decades, Redgrave has garnered numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Television Award, tw ...
and
Frank Finlay
Francis Finlay, (6 August 1926 – 30 January 2016) was an English stage, film and television actor, Oscar-nominated for a supporting role as Iago in Laurence Olivier's 1965 film adaptation of ''Othello''.
In 1983, Finlay was directed by Ital ...
. The music was composed and performed in collaboration between
Pink Floyd member
Roger Waters and
Ron Geesin
Ronald Frederick Geesin (born 17 December 1943) is a Scottish musician, composer and writer known for his unusual creations and novel applications of sound, as well as for his collaborations with Pink Floyd and Roger Waters.
Career
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
Breakcore is a style and microgenre of electronic dance music that emerged from jungle, hardcore, and drum and bass in the mid-to-late 1990s. It is characterized by very complex and intricate breakbeats and a wide palette of sampling sou ...
artists
Venetian Snares
Aaron Funk (born January 11, 1975), known as Venetian Snares, is a Canadian electronic musician based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is widely known for innovating and popularising the breakcore genre, and is one of the most recognisable artists to b ...
and
Hecate
Hecate or Hekate, , ; grc-dor, Ἑκάτᾱ, Hekátā, ; la, Hecatē or . is a goddess in ancient Greek religion and mythology, most often shown holding a pair of torches, a key, snakes, or accompanied by dogs, and in later periods depict ...
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
Breakcore is a style and microgenre of electronic dance music that emerged from jungle, hardcore, and drum and bass in the mid-to-late 1990s. It is characterized by very complex and intricate breakbeats and a wide palette of sampling sou ...
samples.
The Lake by artist
Julie Freeman
Julie Freeman (born 1972 in Halton, UK) is an artist whose work spans visual, audio and digital art forms and explores the relationship between science, nature and how humans interact with it.
Biography
Freeman's work has focused on using elec ...
tracked natural biological motion via electronic tagging systems, and transformed the data collected into musical composition and animation.
Musicians
Caninus,
Hatebeak and
Lil B
Brandon Christopher McCartney (born August 17, 1989), professionally known as Lil B and as his alter ego The BasedGod, is an American rapper. Lil B has recorded both solo and with Bay Area group The Pack. His solo work spans several genres, i ...
have used animals as
lead
Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cu ...
or
backing vocalist
A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are us ...
s.
"Field recorder"
Stuart Hyatt has used sounds created by
bats
Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera.''cheir'', "hand" and πτερόν''pteron'', "wing". With their forelimbs adapted as wings, they are the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight. Bats are more agile in flight than most bir ...
which were then combined with music.
See also
*
20th-century classical music
*
Aleatoricism
Aleatoricism or aleatorism, the noun associated with the adjectival aleatory and aleatoric, is a term popularised by the musical composer Pierre Boulez, but also Witold Lutosławski and Franco Evangelisti, for compositions resulting from "action ...
*
Avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
*
Biomusicology
*
Contemporary music
*
Music and sleep
*
New-age music
*
Sound map
*
Zoomusicology
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 Mâ ...
Notes
Bibliography
*Baptista, L. Gray, P. M. Krause, B. et al. The Music of Nature and the Nature of Music. ''
Science:'' January 5, 2001.
*Cope, David ''Techniques of the Contemporary Composer'' ()
*Krause, Bernie. The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places. (Little Brown, March, 1012)
{{Ambient music
20th-century music genres
21st-century music genres
Contemporary classical music
Musical terminology
Zoomusicology