There are 12 tones in music (repeated several times to form a piano keyboard or guitar fretboard) and a *trained* musician can usually play no more than 8 (66%) of them (in a diminished scale) at any given time before it, subjectively, sounds bad. I HAVE NEVER HEARD ANY BIRD SING OFF-KEY, not even once, EVER! Have you? Birds go on and on and on and it ALWAYS SOUNDS GOOD — or at least interesting — but never a sour note!
Are bird songs the result of random note selection? It would have to, according to the preposterous theory that you hold so dear (because it has relieved you of the burden of morality, self-denial and self-control). To say that birdsongs were "perfected over millions of years" (blah, blah, blah) and are no longer changing, would imply that "random, natural selection" has CEASED to operate as a force in the lives of birds. Something evolution cannot do BECAUSE IT DOES NOT EXIST! DAMN! Why is it so hard to accept something that is so obvious?!
In accord with that TOTALLY BOGUS THEORY of Evolution, bird songs (along with *every* other aspect of *every* other living thing) should ALWAYS be in flux. This would necessarily require that an appreciable portion of birdsong note selection end up perhaps working for a given species of bird but sounding "off-key" to humans.
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and a *trained* musician can usually play no more than 8 (66%) of them (in a diminished scale) at any given time before it, subjectively, sounds bad. I HAVE NEVER HEARD ANY BIRD SING OFF-KEY, not even once, EVER! play them on an instrument, but one person can't sing two notes simultaneously.)
Um....Bluejays just sit there and screech like a 2 year old child with a live carp down their shorts. Not melodic in the slightest. Buzzards make a sound like Rosie O'Donnell barfing up a tripple Whopper with Cheese and a quart of Tripple Sec. Crows sound like Keith Richards firing up the first Marlboro of the day.
Actually, it is possible for humans to generate multiple tones simultaneously. Look up 'throat singing' on, say, Wikipedia. Of course, doing so requires considerable training, and the resulting tones are all harmonics of each other, but it is possible.
ANd you based your research off of what? Listening to the cockatiel in your parent's living room? If you could translate the bird's beautiful singing it would probably be something like, "Let me out of this cage so I can fly like I'm supposed to you fucking twit!"
Man, the so-called "singing" of the bird is a device TO ATTRACT THE FEMALE BIRDS, to show them they are fertile and looking. They can´t sing so, please, don´t mix things.
Why do birds, suddenly appear, every time you are near? Just like me, they long to see, your head kicked in.
Well of course there are hardly songbirds with bad voices. If they have bad voices, they don't get mates. If they don't get mates, they don't have kids. The genetic code which makes them sing badly dies out.
As a music student, I really have no choice but to set this bullshit straight.There are 12 tones in music
Not true. This is SOMETIMES true in western music, but there are plenty of other musical cultures that use many more microtonal intervals. Take Hindu music for instance, idiot.
(repeated several times to form a piano keyboard or guitar fretboard) and a *trained* musician can usually play no more than 8 (66%) of them (in a diminished scale)
This is bullshit. First of all, the polyphony that you produce depends on the instrument. Second, there is no such thing as a "diminished scale". Third, A scale does not have to have 8 degrees in it. Learn about modality, you twit.
at any given time before it, subjectively, sounds bad.
This is just your western ear talking... the same ear that listens to Britney Spears [et al] all day long and then cannot accept anything outside a perfect cadence. If you don't know what the hell you're talking about, then shut the fuck up.
QED, bitch.
image
"To say that birdsongs were "perfected over millions of years" (blah, blah, blah) and are no longer changing, would imply that "random, natural selection" has CEASED to operate as a force in the lives of birds. "
Does this post even make sense to anyone? learned , not inherited, so they have nothing to do with evolution.
His argument is like claiming that evolution is impossible because all humans speak intelligible languages that never change. It's both wrong "facts" and wrong reasoning from them.
Crosis,
Interesting. Learn something new every day, I guess.
Bird calls have a purpose, dimwit. They 'sing' to attract a mate or to warn other birds of the same species off their territory. bird songs (along with *every* other aspect of *every* other living thing) should ALWAYS be in flux.
Wrong. They don't compose. They don't sing for pleasure (how ever pleasant some of the sounds may be to human ears). The calls serve specific purposes. Your evolutionary dollars at work!
The 12-tone, equally tempered scale is but one musical system. There are others with different numbers of pitches per octave, including 5-tone scales, 31-tone scales and others, plus there are many temperaments in which the spacing between pitches are not equal.
Oh, and just one other item that comes to mind regarding bird calls "being in flux": Mimicry. Many mynahs, parakeets, parrots, macaws, cockatoos, and even some crows have shown ability to mimic other sounds (such as Papabear's modem), including human speech -- and I expect that there are plenty of other species that do this that I don't know about. If this does not demonstrate the capacity for "flux," readily and ubiquitously observable, I don't know what does!
Oh, and just one other item that comes to mind regarding bird calls "being in flux": Mimicry. Many mynahs, parakeets, parrots, macaws, cockatoos, and even some crows have shown ability to mimic other sounds (such as Papabear's modem), including human speech -- and I expect that there are plenty of other species that do this that I don't know about. If this does not demonstrate the capacity for "flux," readily and ubiquitously observable, I don't know what does!
The question is whether they can mimic Ronnie James Dio.
What a twit! (pun intended)
Clearly you know nothing about music. Unless you're on a piano or guitar, a human cannot sing or play more than one note. And any true pianist--Bill Evans, et. al--does not have an issue with playing 8 or 9 or even 10 notes at once and having it sound all right. It might be physically hard to do in some cases, but it can still sound all right;
There is a bird that starts "singing" outside my bedroom every freaking morning at 5AM. You listen to him and then talk to me about birds always sounding good.
Shandooga, being a fundy fuckwit with no clue at life, sex or attraction, has obviously never heard of sexual selection.http://www.unm.edu/~psych/faculty/music.htm
And what Darwin said or referenced!
http://www.zoo.uib.no/classics/darwin/descent.chap13.txt
including
It is remarkable that only small birds properly sing. The Australian
genus Menura, however, must be excepted; for the Menura alberti, which
is about the size of a half-grown turkey, not only mocks other
birds, but "its own whistle is exceedingly beautiful and varied."
The males congregate and form "corroborying places," where they
sing, raising and spreading their tails like peacocks, and drooping
their wings.* It is also remarkable that birds which sing well are
rarely decorated with brilliant colours or other ornaments. Of our
British birds, excepting the bullfinch and goldfinch, the best
songsters are plain-coloured. The kingfisher, bee-eater, roller,
hoopoe, wood-peckers, &c., utter harsh cries; and the brilliant
birds of the tropics are hardly ever songsters. *(2) Hence bright
colours and the power of song seem to replace each other. We can
perceive that if the plumage did not vary in brightness, or if
bright colours were dangerous to the species, other means would be
employed to charm the females; and melody of voice offers one such
means.
* Gould, Handbook of the Birds of Australia, vol. i., 1865, pp.
308-310. See also Mr. T. W. Wood in the Student, April, 1870, p. 125.
*(2) See remarks to this effect in Gould's Introduction to the
Trochilidae,, 1861, p. 22.
To the long list of birds that don't sing well, I'd like to add the Great Blue Heron. Those guys sound like pteranodons ought to have sounded. In fact, I don't think I've encountered a heron that really sounds good.nobody.) And peacocks sound like they've busted a reed.
No, I'm not any sort of fanatic birder; everything I mentioned is native to my area except the peacock, which is native to all zoos everywhere.
Irene
Geese have a certain amount of tonality, I suppose, but I've never thought of them as musical, especially when they're running the dog off the lawn. (Geese take trash talk from nobody.)
I've always been amused that peacocks are such lovely birds that sound like mules with hangovers.
"To say that birdsongs were "perfected over millions of years" (blah, blah, blah) and are no longer changing, would imply that "random, natural selection" has CEASED to operate as a force in the lives of birds."
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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