Autumn Dance - Bird music track

Autumn has been officially inaugurated. It has for me at least. A skein, 110 strong, flew over the patch last Saturday - a fluxating chevron of south-bound Pink-footed Geese.

By way of celebrating I produced this track made just from samples (raw or processed) of the patch's autumn birds. The bird species are identified in the comments on the time line.

The percussive sounds are made from a Robin 'tick' and a Fieldfare 'chack'. The fluity 'melody', such as it is, is Whooper Swan. I've taken a bit of a liberty calling the Whooper swan a 'patch' birds as I saw 4 flying on one occasion! Brambling, Fieldfare, Redwing, Siskin, Chaffinch, Meadow Pipit, Pied and Grey Wagtails provide flight calls of the kind you might hear on an Autumn morning when migration is taking place.

I used a similar idea earlier in the year with Spring / Summer birds. Autumn bird sound consists mainly of calls - as opposed to spring version when there is a lot more song to work with - so I had to play fast and loose with some of sounds to get any kind tune going.

I also found, when making the spring version, that simply layering a lot of sounds in the normal bird song frequencies can produce something quite strident and indeed unpleasant. For this reason I tried to get a wide dynamic range with bassier notes prodced by lowering the pitch of sounds and vocoding other sounds.

Gratifyingly the track got through the 'Fresh on the Net' whittling down process. They have weekly submissions from around 200 artists from from which they select 30 - these then go to public vote to arrive at a top ten. So my track will be played on Tom Robinson's show on BBC 6 Radio show.

Dogs Vomit Slime mould
only the Dog's Sick slime mould
can compete in the slime mould
comedy name stakes

Recent Patch Sightings
18/9 - 110 Pink feet - south
20/9 - 80 Pink feet - south
22/9 - Purple brittlegill, Dyer's Mazegill - new fungi
23/9 - Dogs Vomit slime mould
23/9 - Influx of thrushes - c20 Song Thrush, c30 Blackbirds - probably continental birds
Far fewer moths though some Autumnal ones - Yellow-line Quaker, Pink barred sallow new - Firethorn Leaf Miner