Mockingbirds are not only able to imitate the song of twenty other species, they are also able to construct their songs by following musical rules similar to those found in Beethoven’s work.
- The mockingbird is not just an imitator: it reproduces the songs of around twenty species of birds, using variations.
- These variations are very constructed: they are real musical rules, used by musicians like the composer Beethoven or the American rapper Kendrick Lamar.
Present over much of the United States and Mexico, the mockingbird is not famous for its shimmering plumage but for its unique gift: with a few variations, it is able to imitate the song of nearly twenty species of its congeners… but also alarm sirens, car noises and other sounds resulting from human activity.
In a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychologyan interdisciplinary team of researchers explains that they have made an astonishing discovery: the mockingbird actually composes its own melodies based on those of other birds, and follows the musical rules used by composers like Beethoven or rapper Kendrick Lamar. !
A composer and music lover bird
“When you listen to a mockingbird for a while, you can hear that the bird does not randomly string together the melodies it mimics. Rather, it seems to sequence similar snippets of melody according to consistent rules, explains Tina Roeske, of the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, and lead author. However, to scientifically examine this intuition, we had to resort to quantitative analyzes to check whether the data actually supported our hypotheses.”
Supported by a neuroscientist, a field biologist and a music philosopher, the researcher designed algorithms used to test hypotheses about the composition of the mockingbird’s song. The researchers then identified four compositional strategies that he uses to move from one sound to another: changing timbre, changing pitch, stretching the transition (lengthening it in time) and compressing it (shortening it in time). time).
The intricate melodies that the mockingbird creates are a musical composition for the ears not only of other birds, but also of humans. It is therefore not surprising that composers of various musical styles use similar techniques in their work, the researchers point out. This is the case, for example, of the famous overture to the Fifth Sympphony, in which Beethoven uses a pitch change similar to that of the mockingbird. The song “Show Yourself” from the movie Frozen 2 by Disney shows the stretching of sound transitions, while on the song “Duckworth” by Kendrick Lamar, taken from the album Damnyou can clearly hear tight or shortened transitions.
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