Birds are fascinating beings with extraordinary abilities and orOne of the great enigmas that surrounds these winged beings is the song of the nightingale.. He has inspired numerous artists and there are even complete works dedicated to him, such as the opera by Igor Stravinsky, one of his greatest works. But the nightingale’s song is so intricate and melodious that it took him more than 9 years to capture his melismas.
The story told by the famous piece The Nightingale is that of a bird that is in charge of cheering the emperor of China, until one day it is replaced by a mechanical bird that imitate their singing After discovering that humans stop appreciating its beautiful melodies, the songbird decides to return to nature. And although the operatic narrative goes in another direction, it does brilliantly capture one of the most astonishing characteristics of these birds. Its peculiar song is unique and complex, something that could not be imitated by a machine.
The unique melody of the nightingale’s song
An example of the complicated process that these beings carry out to produce incomparable melodies is the case of the nightingale North American (Mimus polyglottos). This is a species that produces unique music thanks to its small beaks that emit the most intricate sounds. In addition, each song is different because, just like humans who have different colors of voice, ceach copy reproduces a unique intonation with a different tonal development and length.
A study of IThe Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics and the New Jersey Institute of Technology found that this species is capable of «composing» melodies in a way similar to that of humans.
not previously There was a lot of information about the way in which nightingales make their songs, but now it is known that they do it by means of techniques such as imitation and variation between different melodies.
The researchers found that the nightingale actually uses musical techniques similar to those that musicians apply in the composition process. These are: change the tone, vary the timbre, lengthen the transition time between fragments or shorten them. Additionally, this species of mockingbird mimics excerpts from the song of other common North American birds, helping them to create new tonal cadences.
“What is rarely noticed is the systematic way in which the bird changes from one syllable to the next, often with a subtle transition in which one sound gradually morphs into a related sound, revealing a specific, audible mode of composition. ”, mention the researchers.
How does the nightingale produce its song?
Unlike humans, birds do not have vocal cords. Evolution endowed them with other anatomical structures to generate sounds with peculiar modulations. Like other birds, Mockingbirds have an organ in their trachea that allows them to make sounds. This organ, called syrinx, it is flexible and works by allowing air to pass through it. In this process it generates vibrations that are perceived as sounds..
The syrinx is located where the trachea branches into the bronchi. This allows birds to modulate each of the vibrations in a different way, controlling the air that passes through the bronchi to produce more than one sound at a time. This is how they produce their beautiful singing and why it sounds so melodious.
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