Any
questions, comments or items of interest? Let
us know.
Dawn
chorus
A new show by artist Marcus Coates
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art : february 14 - march 18 2007
Are
female songbirds evolution's unsung heroines?
Research
reported in the New Scientist
Sunday
18th March 2007 3pm Sutton House
Music Society
Poppy Holden (soprano) and Will Hancox (piano)
"Nightingales" including Granados' Goyescas and nightingale
songs from Berg to Zeller
Look out for
musical compositions by Simon Mawhinney based
on and inspired by blackbird song. 'Starbog' will be performed
by Psappha on tour through 2006-7 and 'Merula',
for ancient viola d’amore and electronics, by Garth
Knox.
Cows
also have regional accents.
BBC News
Scottish
Crossbill: 'accent' confirms unique species.
BBC
News
The
Noise Abatement Society has reported a 28% increase in complaints
of garden noise compared with last summer.
The
Times
Royal
Navy sonar blamed for the deaths of four whales.
The
Independent
Male
mice serenade potential mates with ultrasonic love songs, a study
by US scientists has revealed.
BBC
News
Dolphin
sounds 'aid brain growth in unborn child'
Telegraph
news
Siobhan
Davies Dance Company perform bird song
Details
New
website for the International Bioacoustics Council (IBAC)
With information about IBAC, other bioacoustics organisations
and meetings:
http://www.ibac.info/
South
American bird sounds
Here's a new website devoted to the sounds of neotropical birds
- a collaborative base inviting participation from sound recordists
who've worked in the area.
Xeno-canto
Birds
that perform like a barbershop quartet
Researchers from St Andrews University studying the song
of plain-tailed wrens in Ecuador have found that the birds live
in groups of up to seven, joining together to sing choruses, often
continuously for up to two minutes at a time.
Story
in the Herald
Marine bioacoustics newsletter
The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has begun
a
roughly quarterly Marine Collection Newsletter for the marine
bioacoustics community, in PDF format. The first edition is available
for immediate download (file
of 280 KB).
Scientists
sound out noise-waves to save salmon from seals
Scientists plan to use a sound gun rather than a rifle to stop
seals feeding on wild salmon.
Scotsman.com
Elephant
mimicry
A
story from the NY Times on sound imitations by elephants,
along with a wav file of one of them.
Title is .... the 10,000 pound parrot.
Details
of the IBAC congress in Piran/Pirano (15 - 19 September 2005)
Off-earth
weather report
6 November 2004. News of an attempt to make what may be the first
microphone recording from Space. On Christmas day the robot module
Huygens will begin its descent to Titan, Saturn's largest moon
and the only moon in the solar system that has an atmosphere.
It will take around 3 weeks to reach Titan's dense atmosphere
and scientists admit they do not know what will happen at that
point. Huygens is carrying a microphone and a camera. Will we
get to hear the sound of Titan's storms?
http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1257.html
17 Jan 2005
AND NOW .....
The
first sounds from Titan
Bullfinch
dialects
Birders in Britain and Norway are reporting an influx of bullfinches
with strange calls. These have been variously described as 'like
a phone ring tone', 'resembled the call of Trumpeter Finch' and
'Similar to a short, distant burst of a car horn'. There's speculation
that these birds are from the eastern end of the range of this
species, but others disagree. 25 October 2004
THE
SCHOOL OF SOUND announces two events for 2004 and 2005
The School of Sound at Brief Encounters International Short Film
Festival: 18 &19 November 2004
The 6th School of Sound symposium, London: 30 March - 2 April
2005
Bookings now being accepted for both programmes.
Full programme details will be announced in Autumn 2004. For further
information about the School of Sound or to join our mailing list,
email sos@schoolofsound.co.uk or visit www.schoolofsound.co.uk.
WATER RACKET!
Noise in the ocean is killing sea creatures
DAILY
GRIST 23 Sep 2004 Environmental news from
The world's oceans are getting
noisier and it's killing the creatures that live there, scientists say. One major
culprit is oil and gas drilling, which involves low-frequency seismic pulses used
to survey geologic strata; military sonar and large shipping vessels also generate
their share of racket. The U.K.'s Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, which
recently launched an Oceans of Noise campaign, says there is evidence that all
the noise is causing hearing loss, injury, and even death in cetaceans (whales,
dolphins, and porpoises). In some cases, the animals can fail to hear predators
approaching, or fail to hear each other, causing mommy whales to lose their baby
whales (Disney, are you listening?). Also threatened is the mysterious giant squid,
unusual numbers of which have been found beached in Spain recently, some with
their organs damaged almost beyond recognition. Researchers speculate that noise
pollution drove them to surface too quickly, causing air-pressure issues that
we don't even want to think about.
straight
to the source:
BBC News, Alex Kirby, 22 Sep 2004
straight to the source:
The New Scientist, Debora MacKenzie, 22 Sep 2004
24 August 2004
RAVEN
1.2 SOUND ANALYSIS SOFTWARE NOW AVAILABLE FOR WINDOWS AND MAC OS
A new version
of Raven, an interactive sound recording and analysis program
designed specifically for the study of animal sounds, is now available
online at www.birds.cornell.edu/Raven.
Raven offers real-time spectrograms, the ability to handle arbitrarily
large signals, easily exportable measurements, unrivaled flexibility
of signal display, a friendly user interface, and comprehensive
documentation. This release, version 1.2, adds over twenty features
that are new since the release of Raven 1.1, including annotations
(named arbitrary text notes that you can add to selections, like
"Song Type", "Individual ID", etc.), selection spectrum views
(average spectrum of a selection), greatly improved image export
features, selection labels in views, and "drag and drop" file
opening. A free demonstration version of the program, including
the Raven User's Manual and a set of example sound files, is available
at the web site, and the fully functional version can also be
purchased there.
January
2004
Herring
communicate by FRTing?
Researchers
from Simon Fraser University have found that Herring communicate by blowing bubbles
from their anus. The sounds have been termed Fast Repetitive Ticks (FRTs) and
seem to serve a social function, since the fish make these sounds particularly
when they gather at the onset of darkness.
Further
details...
December
2003
Toadfish's steamy love life is revealed: singing fish sometimes
let meek males join a menage a trois.
Most
Sausalito residents know the humming toadfish, whose loud and incessant underwater
droning all summer long keeps angry shore dwellers and houseboat residents awake
for nights. More
...
November
2003
An
online database of references to sound in literature.
I'm
pleased to announce that the first edition of the World Soundscape Project's collection
of sound references in literature is now on the studio website. It includes over
a thousand quotes from sources as diverse as mythology to contemporary writers,
and was the initiative of Murray Schafer back in the 1970s - those familiar with
the Tuning of the World will recognize many of the quotes he used in that book.
Barry Truax
