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Biomusic is a form ofexperimental music which deals withsounds 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 thebrain 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 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 examplenew-age music uses the nature sounds as backgrounds for various musicalsoundscapes, andambient music sometimes uses nature sounds modified with reverbs and delay units to make spacey versions of the nature sounds as part of the ambience.
At the 2014 Cheltenham Music Festival (UK), "The Great Animal Orchestra Symphony for Orchestra and Wild Soundscapes," composed byBernie 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 theAlonzo King LINES Ballet, an international corps based in San Francisco, the score forBiophony, composed by Bernie Krause and Richard Blackford, consists almost entirely of biophonies and geophonies and premiered in 2015. It has since been performed worldwide.
The incorporation ofbird song in music is one of the most widely studied forms of biomusic. Notable in this regard is the French composerOlivier 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 hisCatalogue 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 isPines of Rome (1924) byOttorino Respighi – the third movement includes the sound of anightingale 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.[citation needed] A famous example of this technique can be found inCantus Arcticus (1972) by the Finnish composerEinojuhani Rautavaara: subtitledConcerto 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.[citation needed]
Birdsong also frequently features in popular music. Early examples includeschlager singerUlla Billquist’sNär Svalorna Komma Och Bygga Sitt Bo (1932) andTobourlika byrebetiko artistsStratos Pagioumtzis andIoanna Georgakopoulou (1940). A nightingale can be heard onPink Floyd's "Cirrus Minor" (More, 1969) or "Grantchester Meadows" (Ummagumma, 1969), tweeting birds onLaurie Anderson's "O Superman" (1981),seagulls inLéo Ferré‘sL'Opéra du pauvre (1983). Thanks to its inclusion as a preset in theE-mu Emulator II, a specific sample of aloon, notably heard inSueño Latino (1989) and in808 State’sPacific State (1989), has become a recurring motif in electronic-based popular music.[1]
The entirebiophony of asoundscape can be heard on theBeaver & Krause 1968 Warner Brothers album (released in 1970), "In a Wild Sanctuary", one of the first notableecology-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.[2]
Recordedwhale song also frequently inspired 20th century experimental music. One example is inGeorge Crumb'sVox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale), a composition for electric flute, electric cello, and amplified piano.[3] 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 isAnd God Created Great Whales, a piece written in 1970 by American composerAlan Hovhaness. This work for orchestra and whale songs brings the recorded sounds ofhumpback,bowhead, andkillerwhales directly into the concert hall.[4] The song "Il n'y a plus rien", from French singer-songwriterLéo Ferré's eponymous album (1973), begins and ends with recorded whale songs mixed with a symphonic orchestra. Another piece utilizing recorded whale song is theEarth Mass (Missa Gaia) byPaul 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.
Music created byneurofeedback relies on the brainwaves of a human subject to create music. AnElectroencephalophone (a musical instrument that converts brain waves to sound) was first designed byErkki Kurenniemi in the 1960s. American composerDavid Rosenboom further pioneered work withneurofeedback music as hasBraziliancomposerEduardo Reck Miranda. Neurofeedback composition is still in development, and though it is widely experimented with, it is still very uncommon to see it performed.
In 1975,Grateful Dead associateNed Lagin released an album of experimentalspace music entitledSeastones 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 theBuchla digital-polyphonic synthesizer.[5]
From 2004 to 2007,Pete Townshend collaborated with composerLawrence Ball and programmer Dave Snowdon to set up a project calledThe Lifehouse Method, an Internet site where applicants could "sit" for an electronic musical portrait made up from data they entered into the website.[6] On 23 April 2007, Ball released a double album oniTunes calledMethod Music - Imaginary Sitters, Imaginary Galaxies which is part of Pete Townshend's Lifehouse Method music project.
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 biomusicsoundtrack album to Roy Battersby's 1970 documentary filmThe Body, abouthuman biology, narrated byVanessa Redgrave andFrank Finlay. The music was composed and performed in collaboration betweenPink Floyd memberRoger Waters andRon 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 groupTribes of Neurot released an album titledAdaptation 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 betweenBreakcore artistsVenetian Snares andHecate entitledNymphomatriarch was composed entirely from sounds of the two performing various sexual activities together, which were distorted and time-stretched to resemble typicalBreakcore samples.
The Lake, by artistJulie Freeman tracked natural biological motion via electronic tagging systems, and transformed the data collected into musical composition and animation.
MusiciansCaninus,Hatebeak andLil B[7] have used animals aslead orbacking vocalists.
"Field recorder"Stuart Hyatt has used sounds created bybats which were then combined with music.[8]