Here are two things that bother me more than they probably should.
And this:
It seems that the general reaction to this nonsense is "Ooo my, how grand nature is! The wonder! Music is EVERYWHERE!"
I'm sorry. But birds and trees don't give a fuck about music. And if they did, they certainly wouldn't give a fuck about this bullshit.
Two big points here:
1) These things have absolutely nothing to do with nature.
They are all about a human being placing some sort of careful filter on nature.
OH I'M GETTING WORKED UP AGAIN!
I have an idea. Let's take a walk. We'll bring calipers. We'll measure the diameter of every piece of dog shit we see. Then we'll use the following table:
.5-1cm=C
1-1.5cm=D
1.5-2cm=E
2-2.5cm=G
2.5cm+=A
Then we come home and write some bad music! It'll likely be garbage. Dog shit, for sure. But since we've chosen a nice, lovely, pentatonic filter it'll be pleasant enough. And depending on the breeds that are common in your area, it'll either sound like C major or A minor. Like dog turd wind chimes.
2) Nature is amazing enough without our bullshit observations and extrapolations.
Birds on a wire. Treble clef. Stupid. An interesting exercise, maybe. But all this "oo ah music is all around us" nonsense is outrageous.
And trees rings. Tree rings are amazing enough! Don't get me wrong, the technology is VERY cool. But I don't need someone's vague minor chord rambling to tell me Nature's Hidden Secrets. I'll just look at some goddamned tree rings.
Someone did make the comment "Sounds like Chopin," which wins big points with me.
I had to get this out. If you've endured this post 'til this point, I'm sorry. But seriously. Go look at some birds. They're amazing. They don't need any of our nonsense. Then go home and write some music. How about that? With some work, your music won't need any sort of help from trees or birds.
UPDATE 12/17/14:
After months of searching and failed attempts, I finally got the chance to make my own bird music. I hope you enjoy it. Pardon the windshield wipers. It was raining.
