THE BIGGEST ROOM OF ALL Bernie Krause, a pioneering electronic musician who now focuses mostly on bio-acoustics, has revealed how the calls of insects, birds, and mammals evolved to fit unique spots in the audio spectrum. He has made recordings all over the world, in many different natural environments, and in each case an acoustic analysis of the recordings reveals species keeping to their own part of the audio spectrum; insects take the highest pitches, birds a little lower, and mammals below that, for example. So not only have the calls of songbirds evolved to work best in the acoustic environment where those birds live, they also have evolved to stay out of the way of the other critters that live there. Krause rightly refers to this spectrum of calls as an orchestra—where each animal/ instrument plays a part in its own range, and together they make one giant composition. These symphonies change depending on the time of day and season, but everyone always stays in their place.
David Byrne, The Talking Heads, “How Music Works”
