Thousand-Mile Song by David Rothenberg

Author:David Rothenberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2010-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

FIG. 12. ONE COMPLETE HUMPBACK SONG, AS TRANSCRIBED BY SCOTT AND HELLA McVAY.

This is a medium-length song, with the whale going on for about eleven minutes before taking a break. The sonogram allows a machine to notate sounds that can’t be written in regular musical notation, revealing pattern and form. The horizontal tones are sustained, pure pitches, the lower ones more like moans, the higher like whistles. The big dark areas are washes of noise, many frequencies all at once. The vertical lines are rhythm-like pulses, the tall Ss are rapid upsweeps. A whole range of syllables are presented, with principles of organization visible at once.

This second song, recorded in a different season, shows how the whales combined the same elements in a somewhat different order in figure 13. It lasts for ten minutes:

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