I have used investigations of the musical notions of gesture, dynamics, rhythmic and metrical analysis, phrase structure, timbral interrelationships, and pattern analysis at different scales to create an audible analysis (and composition) based on recordings of nightingale birdsong. I will discuss the processes involved in this analysis and its immediate results, and present the sound composition as well. My intention is to provide the listener with increasing insight into the relationships and structures that result from this analysis, in a way which I hope will enable the audible perception of these relationships and encourage the use of any aural knowledge that may be developed through this process to hear more deeply into nightingale vocalizations. I have been working with recordings of several different individuals of the species Luscinia megarhynchos and L. luscinia, and I hope that the results of my analysis/ synthesis will shed light on differences among individuals as well as cross-species similarities.
Made in Finland, for the Nightingalia Conference, Sibelius Institute,
from recordings of nightingales held by the Macaulay Library, Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
