Olivier Messiaen was really down with bird calls, too. He spent a good deal of time and energy recording and transcribing birdsongs from around the world and using them as compositional tropes (the 'Turangalila' symphony and the piano works are good examples). There's a great section in Deleuze/Guattari's 'A Thousand Plateaus' about Messiaen, bird calls and territorialization. One interesting thing there that pertains directly to Dolphy and jazz/improv in general is the investigation of certain species (I think the chaffinch was the primary example) that riff off of other calls they hear in an improvisatory fashion. I often think of improvisation as staking out aural territories through building off of existing sounds/tropes. (Zorn is a master of de/re-territorialization). --crowmeat bob

From: mr.dave@attbi.com To: skip Heller <velaires@earthlink.net> CC: Zorn-List <zorn-list@mailman.xmission.com>, <perfect-sound@furious.com> Subject: Re: Kenny G Date: Tue, 08 Oct 2002 17:13:19 +0000

Actually, and this is from the April 21, 1962 issue of Down Beat, the reviewer is relating a conversation he had with Dolphy:

"He described how bird calls had been recorded and then slowed down in playback; the bird calls had a timbre similar to a flute. Conversely, he said, a symphony flutist recorded these bird calls, and when the recording was played at a fast speed, it sounded like birds."

Dolphy went on to explain how birds sang using notes that were not on the western scale, and that he was thus inspired to play using quarter tones, and that he thought it was pretty. I guess that's imitating a bird in some abstract sense ...

Dave

...

on 10/8/02 8:18 AM, Dave Egan at mr.dave@attbi.com wrote:

...

Hmmph. Isn't that what the critics used to say about Eric Dolphy?

Dave

I thought the Dolphy mention was because he had actually -- and I remember him discussing this in an interview -- recorded some birdcalls, slowed them down, and transcribed them.

skip h

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