Earful Birds disquiet0446 by Bill Parod

I love to listen to the interactions of birds in my neighborhood near Chicago - Robins, Cardinals, Red-winged Blackbirds, Woodpeckers, Gulls (Lake Michigan), others. I often go for walks and record them. I first started recording birds years ago on a trip to Sumatra in the forest. I was occasionally lucky enough to encounter Siamangs (gibbons). As a composer and improviser I’ve often wanted to achieve that natural sounding sense of the forest ensemble - and wondered, what this is. In my music, I’ve come to explore interactions of birds as well as musical material by using a behavior-based approach. I do this by orchestrating articulations according to behavioral models in the Unity game development engine. This piece takes a listener path through behavior-based interactions of 10 different locationally separate but coexistent groups: Robins, Cardinals, Red-winged Blackbirds, Woodpeckers, Sumatran birds, insects, and Siamangs, as well as Illinois Gulls, Surf, and crickets. All the animals are created with real recorded vocalizations. Their interactions / orchestration however are/is done with stochastic state profiles, behavioral definitions, and behavioral transitions resulting from spatial and vocal interactions. I’m still working on this approach, but am so motivated by the joy of listening that I thought I’d post for this week’s Disquiet Junto in honor of R. Murray Schafer and World Listening Day.

More on this 446th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Disquiet Junto Project 0446: WWWLDD — The Assignment: Celebrate World Listening Day for the whole weekend — at:

https://disquiet.com/0446/

More on World Listening Day at:

https://worldlisteningday.org/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0446-wwwldd/

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Image detail via the Wikipedia page for R. Murray Schafer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Murray_Schafer