RE: animal intentions and random 'looping' in nature

[Ryan <Rynolee@mindspring.com>]

About other animals making music...

Pink Floyd made this song on their Double Album entitled Ummagumma
 (check the spelling on that) and Roger Waters put this song together 
called Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave 
And Grooving With A Pict

give it a listen and that will answer any question

ryan


-----Original Message-----
From:   Rick Walker (Loop.pooL) [SMTP:GLOBAL@cruzio.com]
Sent:   Saturday, January 27, 2001 5:07 PM
To:     Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
Subject:        animal intentions and random 'looping' in nature

Matthias wrote:
Do animals have intentions? I think so. But I would not consider
their noises music, would you? Or is it that just some species have
the ability?

Rick Walker replies:
    Interestingly enough, I have just read an article in the science 
section
of the San Jose Mercury (which is actually a pretty informative lay science
resource) where some modern biologists and zooologists (jeez:  are there
three  'o's in zoologist?) are beginning to think that there are actually
several species of animals who they think are actually making 'music' as
opposed to direct communication.   I threw the article out but they
mentioned whales and dolphins and some species of birds.

and to bring back to topic (looping that is),
    Several years ago during the summer cricket season I was on my porch
late at night, just thinking, and listening to the 'song' of the crickets.
I love when random events sometimes sound like funky syncopated patterns
(like listening to a sample and hold function on an analogue synthesizer,
something I used to do to get inspiration for  funk patterns).    Anyway,
the crickets were really going at it and in a seemingly random way.    All
of a sudden they coalesced into this really funky sequence which then fell
apart after about five seconds or so.   It caught my attention because I 
had
not really been listening to it.   Anyway, I went back to musing again and 
a
couple of minutes later I heard the same damn syncopate sequence, 'note' 
for
'note'.   At this point I started listening intently and sure enough, the
same sequence occurred a couple of minutes later.   At this point I started
listening for other rhythmic sequences and began to notice them.    Sure
enough I started hearing an emerging pattern that was repeating perfectly
every 2 minutes or so.   At this point using the random '16th notes' of the
first pattern I tried to see if I could figure out the periodicity of the
pattern.   It took me about half an hour but I finally figured out that the
crickets were in a perfectly predictable and very, very slow 19/4 time
signature.  I was so  blown away by this randomness that I sat out there 
for
two more hours until I had completely memorized the sequence of perfectly
repeating multiple cricket clicks.    I was astonished and I have never
incountered anything similar in the ensuing years.

      The only other experience that I have had is that (and this repeats
every summer at about the same time) there is a large and long shrub tree 
in
the front of my brothers' home.
Every summer two sets of crickets live on different sides of the shrub
(which is about 15 feet long)  Each group
chirps in unison but the speed of the chirp is just slightly off.   What
happens is that when you stand in the
very middle of the shrub, you hear the two repeating chirp patterns cycle
away from each other and cycle back
(as in two loops with slightly random speeds) the amazing thing is that 
when
the two patterns overlap, psycho acoustically it sounds like the crickets
are right in front of your face in dry 'mono'.   As they start to go out of
phase, it suddenly sounds like a beautiful ambient reverb has been applied
to the chirping until finally you start to hear the two sides as separate
chirps.  Then you can hear then pass the equidistant point (perfect 8ths
notes for 5 or 6 repitions and then move to the percieved 'shuffled' beat 
at
67%, then the last 16th note at 75% and finally into flamming and then 
tight
flamming before they sync up again.   It is a beautiful and peaceful
phenomenon that I look forward to every year.    Loops out of sync.

     I dont' have an ounce of anthropomorphism in me (it having been beaten
out of me by my skeptical, cartesian logic medical doctor father) so i 
don't
think any of these things were intentional. They weren't making music but
they sure as hell were looping.

     I just am in love with how the random becomes rhythmical to our
perceptions.    I personally love to set up to loops that are at randomly
different speeds and let them interact.   A fun trick is to set the Windows
Media Player (or Mac equivalent) on repeat mode and open up several
different drum or transient sounds at once and let them cycle in and out
with each other.