I tried psyching him out by spreading my “wings” to see if he would follow but no dice (I do this with squirrels, pretending to eat and they just stop in their tracks). I guess without feathers I’m out of luck.

In the meantime a little vole clamored up over my shoe, the resident kingfisher did his best shrapnel attack impersonation, the bees buzzed and the spiders crawled.

Nature amazes me.

I find herons a most fascinating species….both prehistoric and elegant… but very hard to id. Their beaks, which seem long and pronounced from the side, almost disappear when you photograph them head-on. Their elegant necks when extended give the impression of great height, but the bird can also look incredibly squat when resting. The eye patch markings are white against grey and in dull light fade into each other. The bill changes colour over the seasons as does the presence of chest ruffles (ok I’m sure there’s a more scientific term for this..)

Prozac had a pretty unique bill structure but it still took me a long time to pick him out of a crowd.  It was more often his personality which gave him away – his constant “crauking” at the things which bugged him (which was pretty much everything).

I’ll keep photographing these “new ones” to see if I can learn more about them. With the lake levels high, they come into shore more often which should give me some good opportunities.

When it was raining, he’d put on his best woebegone look, tuck his beak into his feathers and sit out the storms on the highest branch. When it was sunny, he would assume his fishing position just past where the stream flows the lake, preening his feathers like he owned the place.

I became to be able to count on his presence, even rely on it, and when I became injured and couldn’t walk for 6 months, it was this bird who kept me amused. In the spring, a pretty young female started hanging around the tree and Prozac started to venture off, joining the other 30 or so  herons on the lake in the daytime and then flying to the colony near Deer Lake in the evening. By this time his plume was full and his beak bright yellow. I thot “good on ya, go an make some baby Prozacs”.

This summer the lake levels were low and Prozac had found other fishing areas further out from shore where he was harder to photograph. By last week, however, the levels had returned to normal and so had Prozac to his original haunts.  Last Monday I went out and photographed a Great Horned Owl hunting on the lake, never thinking for a second that heron might be on the menu. I saw the owl hover over the fishing spot, but saw him return empty handed. Yesterday tho, when I went out in my kayak I found Prozac’s body, throat slashed, but otherwise intact.

There are other herons on the lake which I will still enjoy watching, but my buddy, my beautiful blue, blue heron won’t be one of them. He will be dearly missed.

I’ve switched drums – from the djembe to a small panlogo which I play with mallets. My sound is now mid-level and it sticks out like a sore thumb amidst the djembes.

As such, my role in the circle is to fill in notes between the high frequencies of the bell and the low notes of the bass drum to help maintain the pace.

I’m finding playing this drum puts me into a deep-level trance. As I play the same pattern over and over (for 2 hours or so) I feel my consciousness being pulled into the sound I am making and my arms fall instinctively into synchronicity with the pulse. Although I find it hard to write about such an internal experience it is a head-space worth examining.

In the trance state it feels like my body is on automatic pilot. There is a lot less energy going into counting, calculating, executing. It all seems to happen naturally, like someone else has a hold on my mind and body.  And this sometimes feels scary, like I’m out of control.

A strong drummer is able to enter and exit this trance state at will  – to strengthen the beat when it needs strengthening, to resume the trance once the beat is established and to maintain the trance when all other forces are against you – very difficult things to do.

As a relative newcomer to drumming, my untrained mind flits out of the trance only too often to worry about whether or not I’m on the beat.   My goal is to practice being in this trance state as much as possible so once I enter it I am not so easily dislodged.

I would love to have a brain scan done on me while in this trance. I would love to see what aspects of my brain I am accessing and how it changes when I go in and out of trance.  Anyone out there have a spare set of electrodes?

I have always been curious about what makes a dancer a “good” dancer and awhile back found myself on the dance floor with what I consider to be two of Vancouver’s best musicians. I was amazed at how differently the two interpreted the beat. I tried copying their moves and found that in order to dance like the first, I had to conceptualize the beat in my hip region. To dance like the second, I had to conceptualize the beat at the base of my neck.

As I recover from my back injuries I beginning to realize what a huge role my neck plays in correctly interpreting the beat while drumming. If I sense the beat from any other region (hip, toe tapping etc.) I have to mentally calculate the strokes my arms have to make to accurately render the rhythm. However, if I let the back of my neck sense the pulse (whereby my chin and head fall down in time with the beat) my arms correctly fall into place without any conscious calculation – a side product of which is a deep trance.

The study raises a whole bunch of questions for me: Did the less attractive dancers limit their movements due to social conditioning? Physical ailments? Would the researchers find the same conclusions if they had men rate women dancing?

In any case, its well worth checking out the study and making your own conclusions from the video – but next time you are dancing/drumming, try feeling the pulse from the back of your neck and let me know what you find.

Listening back to all of the song’s versions its surprising how little the current version resembles its original form. When I’ve listened to various evolutions of whale song, the changes seem much more constrained. So why did I make the changes I made? What was the impetus?

First of all, there was dissatisfaction with the original piece. It worked as a piece of music – but only just – and I wasn’t satisfied with its flow and progressions. The mutation from 4/4 to 6/8 happened by accident. I had been playing around with a 6/8 beat and opened up the wrong file to paste it in. By pure happenstance it worked beautifully with the original violin trax I had laid down. I deleted the original rhythmic parts and began adding new ones which fit with the new time signature.

Now that I had a basic structure I could invite others to play on it. Over the course of the summer Kirk added his sonic styling through his bass, Alcvin on his various flutes and Haagen with his electronics. What’s curious to note is that each time we jammed on the song, it was never the same twice.

My current job is to now pick the best trax that we laid down, massage them into a cohesive whole and release the resulting entity to the world to begin its life as a song.  Where it goes, how long it will live, what it might spawn, we’ll have to wait and see….

“Cholewiak noticed two changes in song when humpbacks sang together. Overall, the first singers switched more often among various musical themes when a second singer hung around. Also, the first males adjusted their songs so that the pair was more likely to sing the same theme simultaneously.”

From a musical perspective, does this makes sense to me? Would my musical behavior take the same approach if I was joined by another player?

The first observation, that the initial singer switched more often among musical themes when joined by a second singer, certainly makes sense. You are no longer holding down the themes by yourself – you are now joined by another player and variation becomes more compelling. The challenge of switching, the finesse and skill by which it takes to switch, means that each player’s ability comes to the forefront. Can he catch me? Can he keep up? Can I keep up?

The second observation, that the first singer adjusted his song so the pair was more likely to sing the same theme simultaneously is interesting. My first impulse would be to think that the second singer would adjust his song to fit the first, but upon further thot, I can see that it is more important for the first singer to “rate” the joiner – is he a threat or just a pipsqueak? So the first singer, by adjusting his song to match the second singer, is laying the groundwork to compare apples to apples.

While Cholewiak does not use the term duet – only the author of the article – there are differences to note between this behavior and human musical duets. In a duet, the musical piece is realized by two voices, whereas in the case of the humpbacks, they synchronize their singing. There is no mixing and matching of parts to create the whole.

Is this synchronized singing evidence of musical behavior? More thots on this in a later post

Sez Wikipedia: The handicap principle is a hypothesis originally proposed in 1975 by biologist Amotz Zahavi to explain how evolution may lead to “honest” or reliable signaling between animals who have an obvious motivation to bluff or deceive each other. The handicap principle suggests that reliable signals must be costly to the signaler, costing the signaler something that could not be afforded by an individual with less of a particular trait.

First off, not only have I found concepts in Zahavi’s book “The Handicap Principle A Missing Piece of Darwin’s Puzzle” fun to apply to all things music but I love the way Zahavi and his co-authors write – as if they tried all the experiments on themselves and then wrote about their observations. For instance, consider Zahavi’s musings on the finding that great tits, whose songs were more rhythmic and contained more syllables, were more successful breeders.

“There is an inherent conflict between collecting information and precise execution of vocalization. Both activities demand concentration, but to collect information one must concentrate on listening, looking, discerning, and correlating, while precise vocalization demands that one concentrate on execution….One who tries both to listen and to vocalize is likely to falter a bit in the rhythm- a stumble that will display divided concentration.”

Maybe he tried talking and listening to someone talk at the same time – or is he also a drummer?

Based on my own observations “in the field” of the drum circle his ideas re: faltering are valid. Playing the drum (vocal execution) while listening for the beat (collecting info) is very hard. As one trains as a musician, the skill of listening while playing/playing while listening becomes so enforced that it becomes second nature, allowing the player to easily enter what I call a “musical state of mind”.

While this is probably not the goal of the great tits, I find studies such as these great fodder for understanding my own musical nature – insights which I’m getting excited about sharing as I prepare for the upcoming 2010 Annual Conference of the Canadian Acoustical Association in Victoria this October. This will be my first foray into the world of science and am looking forwards to meeting others who are intrigued as I am about the chirps, squeaks, hums, thrums, moans, calls and songs us humans and other animals make.

I know scientists are concerned about this effect wrt marine species such as orcas and bird populations that live next to the highway. What happens when you can’t properly communicate your message? Interesting to think about now that I’ve experienced the effect first-hand.

In the land of the laptop things are progressing. I managed to make my first beat and then added an audio track to the mix – which I then proceeded to mangle with a host of plug-ins. Kinda fun I have to admit. Still hate the mouse interface tho. Anyways, here’s a little snippet for your listening pleasure – nothing complete – just a rough mix of an experiment.
[See post to listen to audio]