I heard an article on NPR’s All Things Considered Monday night about a man who had tried to transcribe bird calls into musical notation. The article can be found at http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1783346
Some of the imitations were played on the flute. They were close, but because of the fact that birds don’t sing notes on a diatonic (or even chromatic) scale, you can’t imitate their calls exactly–at least, not on a flute. (The possibility of imitating a bird on a piano is even more remote, unless you’re imitating the sound of a woodpecker tapping on the keys of a Steinway.) This article made me wonder if the whistle would be more suited for imitating a bird call. Afterall, with a whistle you can play quarter tones with some effort, and there are some whistles that do a pretty good job at imitating a goose.
The great jazz musician, Eric Dolphy, used to try to imitate birds practsing flute. He had no problem playing quarter tones on bass clarinet and alto sax and I think his flute playing, although a bit less flexible, still involves some pitch manipulation.
Were not flaggeolets used to train birds to sing back in the olden days? It seems that I’ve read such a thing just lately. Bingo. Found it. http://www.kawells.fsnet.co.uk/flageolet.htm
Yes, Vommie this is very true. YOu can still buy a nifty little book of tunes designed to train different species of birds to sing. It’s called (something like) the Bird Fancier’s Delight. If you call Courtly Music (courtlymusic.com) and describe what you are looking for, they can probably send it to you.
Incidently, the process of teaching a bird to sing a song by playing the tune over and over and over on an instrument was called “recording” which some people think is the source of the name recorder for the whistle related fipple flute. Today, you could record a sound clip of the tune and loop it back for the bird…
During the Victorian era, bird enthusiasts used a “beaked” form of narrow bore flageolet called a bird whistle. I believe it is extinct. The closest you can come today (without a special order) is a Picco Pipe or a Garklein Recorder. The Picco Pipe uses a finger tip over the bore end hole to infinitely vary the pitch beyond tonehole limitations (this instrument is best to lure wild cell phones close with a finger trill . Here are the examples…
I have a Senegal parrot that imitates every whistle type noise it can, including my playing, mistakes and all. It never has whistled an original tune, and won’t speak (although capable.) At least someone in the house waits with bated breath when I get out my whistles!
. Here are the examples…