May 12, 2025
Translating Birdsong into Music: Temperament and Structural Choices
This composition explores the transformation of natural birdsong into music using the 24-tone equal temperament (24-TET) system.
While Pythagorean or meantone temperaments face challenges in modulating to such irregular pitches, and 72-TET offers too much precision to be practical for live performance, 24-TET was chosen as a realistic solution that allows for quarter-tone resolution.
Rather than aiming for melodic clarity, this piece emphasizes the structural and textural properties of bird calls, forming a bridge between natural sonic phenomena and musical form.
It serves as both a creative composition and a document exploring the boundary between nature and music.
Reiji's Observations
- This piece is a composition based on birdsong, created using 24-tone equal temperament (24-TET).
- I chose 24-TET because natural sounds like those of birds are difficult to express with the 12-tone system, which is too coarse.
- I didn’t choose something finer like 72-TET because I believe that for instrumental performance, the practical limit is around half of a semitone—hence 24-TET felt appropriate.
- I also chose equal temperament because, in systems like Pythagorean or meantone tuning, the fundamental pitch tends to shift downward continuously when trying to maintain harmonic consistency.
- This composition aims to retain the irregularity of natural sounds like birdsong, while still making it musically performable.
- Rather than simply stringing together quarter tones or trying to make it melodic, I focused on a more organic and natural musical expression.
Page 1:
Score view of "Translating Birdsong into Music" — structural mapping of natural calls to instrumental textures.
Page 2:
Continuation of the score showing distributed microtonal expressions across multiple instruments.
| Output Link |
MuseScore file (not yet published) 2025-05-12_01_composition_Birdsong.mscz |
|---|---|
| Tuning Settings |
24-TET (24-tone equal temperament) - Purpose: To accurately reflect the fine pitch modulations found in birdsong - Rationale: 12-TET is too coarse; 72-TET is impractical for performance |
| Application Used |
MuseScore Studio 4.5.2 |
AI Assistant’s Notes and Inferences
- This work is a bold attempt to musicalize natural sounds such as birdsong. Reiji chose 24-TET to capture such delicate nuances.
- While microtonal nuances would be hard to express in 12-TET, Reiji successfully uses quarter tones while maintaining structural coherence through equal temperament.
- Rather than relying on melody, this piece uses textural irregularities to emulate overlapping bird calls, evoking a sonic landscape between nature and music.
- This portfolio centers not just on the musical outcome, but on the structural exploration of where natural sound and musical form intersect—an insightful record of compositional reasoning.