Biomusic is a form of
experimental music
Experimental music is a general label for any music or music genre that pushes existing boundaries and genre definitions. Experimental compositional practice is defined broadly by exploratory sensibilities radically opposed to, and questioning of, ...
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 art of creating music with the voice. It is the oldest form of musical expression, and the human voice can be considered the first musical instrument. The definition of singing varies across sources. Some sources define singi ...
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
Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes Musical tone, tone and atmosphere over traditional Musical form, musical structure or rhythm. Often "peaceful" sounding and lacking Musical composition, composition, beat, and/or structured melod ...
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. 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.
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 artists
Stratos Pagioumtzis and
Ioanna Georgakopoulou (1940). A nightingale can be heard on
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd are an English Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1965. Gaining an early following as one of the first British psychedelic music, psychedelic groups, they were distinguished by their extended compositions, sonic experiments ...
's "
Cirrus Minor" (''
More'', 1969) or "
Grantchester Meadows" (''
Ummagumma'', 1969), tweeting birds on
Laurie Anderson
Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson (born June 5, 1947) is an American avant-garde artist, musician and filmmaker whose work encompasses performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and sculpting,Amirkhanian, Cha ...
's "
O Superman" (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
Loons (North American English) or divers (British English, British / Irish English) are a group of aquatic birds found in much of North America and northern Eurasia. All living species of loons are members of the genus ''Gavia'', family (biolog ...
, notably heard in ''
Sueño Latino'' (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 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 natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their Natural environment, environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community (ecology), community, ecosystem, and biosphere lev ...
-themed popular albums and the first album to incorporate entire natural soundscapes as components of the orchestration.
Of the more than 13,100 bird species, fewer 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 also frequently inspired 20th century experimental music. One example is in
George Crumb's ''
Vox Balaenae'' (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. This work for orchestra and whale songs brings the recorded sounds of
humpback,
bowhead, and
killer whales directly into the concert hall. 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
Brazil
Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
ian
composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.
Etymology and def ...
Eduardo 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
The Grateful Dead was an American rock music, rock band formed in Palo Alto, California, in 1965. Known for their eclectic style that fused elements of rock, blues, jazz, Folk music, folk, country music, country, bluegrass music, bluegrass, roc ...
associate
Ned Lagin
Ned Lagin (born March 17, 1948) is an American artist, photographer, scientist, composer, and keyboardist.Ned Lagin interview with David Gans, August 2001 in: Gans, David. Conversations with the Dead, The Grateful Dead Interview Book, Da Capo Pre ...
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 the co-founder, guitarist, keyboardist, second lead vocalist, principal songwriter and leader of the Who, one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s an ...
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. On 23 April 2007, Ball released a double album on
iTunes
iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...
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
Pink Floyd are an English Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1965. Gaining an early following as one of the first British psychedelic music, psychedelic groups, they were distinguished by their extended compositions, sonic experiments ...
member
Roger Waters
George Roger Waters (born 6 September 1943) is an English musician and singer-songwriter. In 1965, he co-founded the rock band Pink Floyd as the bassist. Following the departure of the group's main songwriter Syd Barrett in 1968, Waters became ...
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.
Musicians
Caninus,
Hatebeak and
Lil B have used animals as
lead
Lead () is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Pb (from Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a Heavy metal (elements), heavy metal that is density, denser than most common materials. Lead is Mohs scale, soft and Ductility, malleabl ...
or
backing vocalists.
"Field recorder"
Stuart Hyatt has used sounds created by
bats
Bats are flying mammals of the order Chiroptera (). 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 birds, flying with their very long spread-out ...
which were then combined with music.
See also
*
20th-century classical music
*
Aleatoricism
*
Avant-garde
In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...
*
Biomusicology
*
Contemporary music Contemporary music is whatever music is produced at the current time. Specifically, it could refer to:
Genres or audiences
* Adult contemporary music
* British contemporary R&B
* Christian adult contemporary
* Christian contemporary hit radio
* Con ...
*
Music and sleep
*
New-age music
*
Sound map
*
Zoomusicology
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