
Wild gorillas compose songs that they hum during meals - Turukawa
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2078781-wild-gorillas-compose-happy-songs-that-they-hum-during-meals/
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escherize
I've always hypothesized that humming while eatting (or saying "Mmmmm") is the
perfect pitch to vibrate the hummer's tounge, which makes the flavors
experienced more pronounced.

It would explain why we say "Mmmmm" not something higher pitched. Plus you can
feel your tounge moving when you say "Mmmmm".

Any thoughts?

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gohrt
"m" is a consonant. What does it mean to assign it a pitch?

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gliese1337
"m" is a nasal sonorant. It's assigned a pitch the same way nasal and oral
vowels are- based on the positions of its major formants.

Or, less technically, when someone successfully hums a non-monotone tune- you
have just heard what it means for them to assign a series of differing pitches
to "m".

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pmontra
Can anybody really hear anything in those samples? They seem random noise.

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fiatjaf
I couldn't hear anything.

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jamesrom
More samples would be cool.

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gohrt
The word "happy" is in the title but has no support in the article.

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dang
Ok, we replaced "happy songs" with "songs".

HN readers are like sandpaper for titles.

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adwf
The Ku Pteleopsis Hylodendron Humming sounded like C D F D D to me. Very deep,
possibly octave below left-most C on a piano, but for those saying it's just
noise I'd say there's some signal there.

The Bal Gilbertiodendron Dewevrei Singing clip I can't pick anything out. Bit
too quiet to tell.

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ommunist
Programmers also do that. This is somehow linked to survival in the long run.

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jessriedel
> The other was singing – a series of short, differently pitched notes that
> sounds a little like someone humming a random melody (listen to clip below).

> “They don’t sing the same song over and over,” says Luef. “It seems like
> they are composing their little food songs.”

Right. A "random melody". Also known as "random noise".

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rosser
Is it so implausible that these creatures who have displayed startling
emotional depth (Koko and her pet cat, anyone?) might also display musicality?

Why are we so quick to dismiss the notion that anything not human might do
something creative, like hum a happy little tune to itself?

Oh, no. That's just "random _noise_ ".

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said
The grandparent might be specifically talking about the sound clips from the
article. They don't sound melodic, let alone musical (at least to my human
ears).

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msutherl
I believe it's more of a semantic thing. A melody is inherently non-random.
"Random melody" is nearly oxymoronic.

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nitrogen
I think it's fair to call a non-repeating sequence of randomly selected,
sufficiently tonal notes, on a familiar scale, in the right frequency range, a
melody. So I don't think it's fair to say a melody is inherently non-random.
I'd say that there only needs to be a sequence of sounds identifiable as
individual notes, with a sufficiently dominant pitch as to sound tonal.

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msutherl
As someone who has composed aleatoric music and had many discussions with
people who have devoted their lives to generative music, I have to say it's
debatable whether what you described can strictly be called a "melody" unless
you take the broadest dictionary definition ('a pleasing sequence of notes'),
though I do think you can call it "melodic" as in 'melody-ish'. In other
words, I think there's an essential difference between melody as conceived
prior to the advent of generative music, which implies a decision by the
composer that ' _this_ is the melody', and a 'random melody' where that
decision is made in a different manner, i.e. "whatever this process produces
is 'the melody'". In the case of a randomly generated score, it gets a bit
confusing because it's not clear if the composer used a generative process to
determine 'the melody' or if it can meaningfully be called 'random'.
Ultimately we just don't have words for such things. Perhaps conveniently,
generative music still plays a very minor role in music culture outside of
i.e. some of Brian Eno's recent work and the enduring influence of John Cage.

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pluma
Aren't you then saying that melody-ness is being conferred by the composer?
That would make it extremely difficult to confirm that something is a melody
or not by observation alone (and thus likely impossible when determining
whether other apes can come up with melodies).

That said, I think the article is not using "random" in the literal sense but
in the sense of "arbitrary", as in "novel" (rather than being simply a
reiteration of a previously observed tune).

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izx
as if they would know the words..

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sarreph
As usual, the SoundCloud comments crack me up :') ... Such gems as:

> nice drop > When is the next one coming out? > love the 808s [drum kit]

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ascotan
"needs more cowbell"

