I think animal sounds are sorely underutilized in music.
I have thought that ever since first hearing the lovely introductory sounds in Lemon Jelly's A Tune for Jack (2001):
I wondered: why don't more bands do this? The sounds of animals are good for the soul and, as animals become less and less a part of our daily lives due to urbanization and population declines, it is deeply pleasing to get a supplement of their sounds...
In their song Furr (2008), Blitzen Trapper emulates the call of a loon with a small toy water pipe:
Luckily, there is an even better source than a water pipe. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Macaulay Library of Sound is an incredible resource for any music lover. One can explore the squawks of chickens, chirps of manatees, or the tweets of tropical birds. Really, they have almost every animal sound!
The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is the world's largest natural sound and video archive of animal behavior. Its mission is to collect and preserve recordings of each species behavior and natural history and to make them available for research, education, conservation, zoos and aquaria, wildlife managers, publishers, the arts, and both public and commercial media. Since 1930, recordists of all backgrounds have contributed their recordings, which now number to several hundred thousand in total. A large percentage of the recordings can be searched and played online. The Library also provides services for consultation, custom compilations, and professionally edited versions of its assets.
Please feel free to share other examples of great music with great animal sounds...
Environment
Comments
The Beatles used animal sounds as background in a number of their songs. But nothing exotic, more like farm animals and crickets and stuff.
Posted by: Kurt | May 8, 2009 11:07 PM
See if anyone is still keeping Bernie Krause & the Human Remains’ Gorillas in the Mix in print. It’s an entire album of music where all the sounds are sampled from a variety of critters.
Posted by: Max Kaehn | May 9, 2009 12:13 AM
I second the Bernie Krause Gorillas In The Mix recommendation. Tried to find it on YouTube for you but WMG has gotten all pissy about using the sound track there. It's out of print but you can get the whole CD for three bucks on Amazon - most enjoyment you'll ever get for that price.
Posted by: george.w | May 9, 2009 10:55 AM
Nice to see your new blog! Have you heard Neko Case's new album? She recorded it in an old barn, and left all the ambient sounds of birds, etc. It works brilliantly.
Posted by: Beth | May 9, 2009 1:37 PM
First thing that comes to mind is Graeme Revell - The Insect Musicians (1986) - created entirely from samples of insect sounds. (Graeme Revell was in industrial/noise band SPK & went on to score dozens of big Hollywood movies, plus TV series such CSI)
Posted by: Michael Norris | May 10, 2009 7:51 PM
Would it be ok to share a link to a song I wrote that utilizes whale song and has several taxonomy-related mistakes?
Posted by: Jason Brunet | May 11, 2009 8:41 PM
Paul Winter has been doing that for 30+ years.
Posted by: scott | May 12, 2009 7:52 AM
More cowbell!
Posted by: angst | June 19, 2009 9:47 PM
I had an old vinyl LP of a band "men without weapons" cant remember the album name? They used the sounds of many animals Does anyone knows where this music exists digitally ? Its amazing.
Posted by: davidl | February 2, 2010 6:12 AM
I've developed a fascinating lecture called "A Musical Bestiary," which includes several dozen classical works incorporating imitations of animal sounds--plus several which use recordings of real animal sounds . . . anyone interested?
MJA
Posted by: M. J. Albacete | June 11, 2010 4:31 PM
In response to Davidl, and to anyone who might be interested, the "band" were actually called "Gentlemen Without Weapons" and their album was called "Transmissions." It was a project of, amongst others, singer-songwriter Kenny Young.
Since I had it on vinyl (back at my parents' house in England), I was pleased to find it available as a used CD on Amazon.com
Here are some recordings on Youtube too:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gentlemen+without+weapons&aq=f
Posted by: Graham Gudgin | October 6, 2010 11:12 AM
Animal sounds were sampled in these two from the 80s:
Perfect Kiss by New Order: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--pSWLEVGhY&feature=BF&list=QL&index=6
and It's my life by Talk Talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdSfoO4Y_fg&feature=BF&list=QL&index=8
Posted by: Dr. Doevenless | November 27, 2010 8:47 AM