i.e. examples of electronic and concrète music which looked directly to the animal world for inspiration. although there's a difference between concrète music, which directly utilized & transformed actual field recordings of animals, & electronic music which emulated natural & animal sounds using oscillators & synthesizers, some of these pieces are hybrids
pop songs using bird & insect sounds count too though the idea is to mention things that are really transforming or juxtaposing the original sounds, i.e. no Paul Winter
birdy and insect concrète
Jim Fassett - Symphony of the Birds Luc Ferrari - Presque Rien No. 1 / No. 2 Oskar Sala - Sound Effects from 'The Birds' Stockhausen - "Marsh Ducks Quack the Marseillaise" from Hymnen Péter Eötvös - "Tücsökzeme (Cricket Music)" Annea Lockwood - World Rhythms Trevor Wishart - Red Bird Wendy Carlos - "Spring" / "Summer" (from Sonic Seasonings) Christina Kubisch - Night Flights Jean-Claude Risset - Sud Hildegard Westerkamp - "Cordillera / Zone Of Silence Story", "Harbour Symphony" Bernard Fort - Compositions Ornithologiques David Dunn - Angels & Insects Francisco Lopez - "Addy En El Pais De Las Frutas Y Los Chunches" Tod Dockstader / David Lee Myers - Pond Blevin Blectum - "David & Justine, 47th & San Leandro" Brokenhearted Dragonflies: Insect Electronica from Southeast Asia (though who knows what this really is)
bonus joke: Graeme Revell - The Insect Musicians (ha ha)
bird & insect electronic mimicry:
Louis & Bebe Barron - "A Shangri-La In The Desert, Garden With Cuddly Tiger" Pierre Henry - Le Voyage (various sections esp. "Divinités Irritées"), "Spirale" Delia Derbyshire - "Birdsong" Eliane Radigue - Σ = a = b = a + b Leo Kupper - "Automatismes Sonores (conclusion)" Bernard Parmegiani - "Capture éphémère" / Creation Du Monde David Tudor - Rainforest IV / Neural Synthesis Kraftwerk - "Mitternacht" Cluster - "Rote Riki", "Dem Wanderer" Conrad Schnitzler - "Electric Garden" Morton Subotnick - Until Spring Q.R. Ghazala - Threnody to the New Victims of Hiroshima
― Milton Parker, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 00:48 (seventeen years ago)
I thought this was going to be about http://image.listen.com/img/170x170/0/1/1/5/495110_170x170.jpg but I'm happy to learn from Milton about this stuff.
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 00:54 (seventeen years ago)
not electronic, but Messiaen used transcribed birdsong a lot in his compositions.
― zappi, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 00:54 (seventeen years ago)
the birdsong made it into a few of his Ondes Martinot parts but I'm not pro enough to be able to pick them out
― Milton Parker, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 01:02 (seventeen years ago)
Not about http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Studio/2179/p020.jpg either.
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 01:45 (seventeen years ago)
His (Messiaen's) Catalogue d'oiseaux for piano is just that - a catalog of bird songs. xp
― sparkletuna, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 01:47 (seventeen years ago)
Keith Fullerton Whitman's Birdsightings is pretty firmly in this camp.
― s. morris, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 21:43 (seventeen years ago)
Mira Calix - Nunu
― Noodle Vague, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 21:45 (seventeen years ago)
“Destruction of the Flies” from Desmond Leslie's Music of the Future has some pretty convincing fly sounds.
― s. morris, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 21:47 (seventeen years ago)
"grass" by XTC has some nice insect/bird loops "psychic nature of being" by lichens - loops his own whistled birdcalls and then eventually starts playing guitar over it
― 6335, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 23:20 (seventeen years ago)
plz elaborate!
See also: Francisco Lopez - La Selva (awesome)
― sleeve, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 23:26 (seventeen years ago)
Beyond Until Spring, Morton Subotnick has a whole series of "butterfly" pieces, including A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur and Four Butterflies.
(Of course it's not exactly the sound of these creatures that he's mimicking.
― Paul in Santa Cruz, Thursday, 24 April 2008 00:35 (seventeen years ago)
most tracks start off with some interesting textures & patterns made from clicks and chirps, but inevitably he'll start in noodling in pentatonic scales over everything using some very silly synth-sounding leads. maybe those are made just by trimming the sample down to a millisecond or so and therefore still conceptually legit but incongruous to the point of comedy. still a bizarre record and worth hearing, especially if you can handle those early to mid 80's Residents records
xp yeah the Butterfly pieces are more impressionistic launches on flight patterns / life cycles, while Sidewinder & Until Spring are more actually modelled on natural sounds.
Eurythmics - "English Summer" François Bayle - "Trois rêves d’oiseau"
http://phonoarchive.org/grove/Entries/S03123.htm -- some comments on electroacoustic music towards the bottom
― Milton Parker, Thursday, 24 April 2008 00:47 (seventeen years ago)
on the concrète tip, how about:
Douglas Quin's "Oropendola" John Cage's "Bird Cage"
― Stormy Davis, Thursday, 24 April 2008 00:56 (seventeen years ago)
two of my cat's faves
I remember thinking "Bird Cage" was all right but selling it back anyway, had totally forgotten it until now, will have to buy that again. we might have to do another trade, I've been looking for "Oropendola" forever
― Milton Parker, Thursday, 24 April 2008 01:04 (seventeen years ago)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mmjs_jwn_4
― no lime tangier, Saturday, 7 January 2017 23:59 (eight years ago)
Great thread. Francisco Lopez belongs here somewhere. Can't point to any specifics but I have tapes of his of bugs for sure. Also that Brokenhearted Dragonflies record on Sublime Frequencies.
― Yelploaf, Sunday, 8 January 2017 00:06 (eight years ago)
that is really great. <3 all that prospective 21e siècle stuff. wish they'd reissue it.
― the late great, Sunday, 8 January 2017 00:09 (eight years ago)
on a sort of similar note, has anyone heard this?
http://emrecords.ocnk.net/product/129
How on earth is Ann McMillan's Gateway Summer Sound not mentioned on this thread? Some of my favorite musique concrète ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_0PMw5lx8c&list=PL34e8be3xxzSE9aHURVMXoOTrCEiXRFDc
― _Rudipherous_, Sunday, 8 January 2017 00:38 (eight years ago)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_0PMw5lx8c
― _Rudipherous_, Sunday, 8 January 2017 00:40 (eight years ago)
(Not exclusively bird and insect, but heavy on them.)
― _Rudipherous_, Sunday, 8 January 2017 00:42 (eight years ago)
Wow, that Ann McMillan is fantastic.
Alvin Lucier's "Bird and Person Dyning" totally belongs here too.
― J. Sam, Sunday, 8 January 2017 01:08 (eight years ago)
a veritable plethora of bird (& occasional insect) sounds in the electronic output of douglas lilburn
― no lime tangier, Tuesday, 31 October 2023 07:10 (two years ago)
Cricket concrète - Robbie Robertson "Twisted Hair" spoken word over slowed down insect chorus
Cricket electronique- David Bowie "African Night Flight" with Eno contributing 'cricket menace'
― Hideous Lump, Tuesday, 31 October 2023 12:58 (two years ago)