Below is an explanation of how each piece was composed, the programming languages used, and its connection to birds.
Email me at emmarwaddell@gmail.com if you have any questions!

Leading the Flock Visualization: www.youtube.com/watch?v=P72nKst-h_A
Feeding Fractals music video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX1dhwofWe0

Leading the Flock:
To see a visualization of the piece (recommended), click here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=P72nKst-h_A
This piece is based on the famous boid simulation (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boids). I used p5, because of its visualization features. There is a flock of boids (bird-oids) which follow three rules of flocking: cohesion, alignment, and separation. Each bird follows the average velocity of those birds nearest to it (for more details follow link). However, the saxophone's pitch and volume creates a new "leader" boid, which has a much stronger pull on the flock, even if it is fairly far from most of the other boids. Therefore the saxophone player can direct where the flock should move. 5 boids within the flock also have the capability to sing, which are the synth sounds. The grid that they can fly around in is mapped to pitch, so if the flock is higher so is the pitch of those singing boids. If you are looking at the video, then the smaller circle outlines represent each boid in the flock, and the red circle outlines are the "singing boids", their position on the map outputs a pitch based on its y coordinate. The large blue dot is the computer hearing the saxophone, so it is only drawn when the saxophone is playing. The blue dot has a stronger pull on the flock, and is therefore similar to a leader and can decide where the flock moves towards. The bars on the bottom also provide a way to change the cohesion, alignment, and separation of the boids while performing.


Cowbirds:
relevant article: www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Brown-headed_Cowbird/overview
This piece is based on an evolutionary algorithm I wrote to simulate the relationship between cowbirds and songbirds. Cowbirds are brood parasites, meaning they put their eggs in other birds nests so that the songbird raises the cowbird baby as their own. Cowbirds are louder and grow faster, so they often out compete their nest mates for food. The algorithm I wrote studies the nest dynamics of those nests with cowbird eggs. Each generation there is a certain amount of songbird mothers and cowbird mothers. Cowbirds can place their eggs in open songbird nests. The songbird mothers have a gene that allows them to either recognize the cowbird egg, or to see it as another songbird baby. If they do recognize the cowbird as an intruder, the songbird can either eject the egg from the nest, or abandon the nest completely, killing their own babies as well. If the egg is ejected, the cowbird can then retaliate by killing the other songbird nestlings. The simulation goes through 10 generations, with mother birds passing their genes on to the nestlings that survive, and then prints out the levels of those 3 genes (songbird recognition, songbirds' decision to eject versus abandon, and cowbird retaliation). These numbers were sent through Max/MSP which created the piece. The higher pitched melodic line represents the songbird population, and the tempo of the melody corresponds to the population size. The lower pitched line is the cowbird population, and the bass drum line is the amount of food available. If songbirds, on average, have a low recognition score (meaning they don't see the cowbird eggs as intruders) the cowbird melody has reverb added so that it has a less pronounced melody. For the other two genes, if the songbird is more likely to be violent toward the cowbird egg, and eject it, it has a bit of erosion added to the sound so it will sound buzzier. The same will happen to the cowbird line is they are likely to retaliate. Simply, the more violent they are, the "buzzier" their line will sound. The song moves through 4 simulations. The first is the standard simulation, with a varying amount of available food each day. The second represents when there is an abundance of food. The third when there is a very scarce amount of food. The last run through has a standard amount of food, but it details what happens when songbirds never recognize the cowbird eggs as intruders. Since cowbirds migrate into songbird territory, this is often a cause of a decline in songbird populations, since songbirds have not evolved to recognize and react effectively to these intruders.


Brain Duet:
relevant article: www.scientificamerican.com/article/bird-brains-have-as-many-neurons-as-some-primates/
Bird brains, on average, have more neurons for the size of their brain, which are less complicated than primate neurons. This duet turns that concept into a piece with two melodic lines. The top line represents a human brain. Each "neuron" is 2 measures long, composed by an algorithm that can make each line more or less complicated. The human line has a larger pitch range, more dynamics, more varied rhythms, etc to represent the larger more intricate melodies per cell. The lower line represents the bird neurons, where each cell is only 1 measure, and which contains more simplistic rhythms and melodies. These lines are then laid on top of each other so the listener can hear the difference in these two composition techniques. The first half of the recording is as the piece was originally composed. However, since the cells are not contingent on each other, and each is completely self contained melodically, the second half is the same cells in a new randomized order, to allow the listener to hear the 2 measure human cells in a new order within themselves, and compared to new 1 measure bird cells underneath them.


Feeding Fractals:
video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX1dhwofWe0
relevant info: academy.allaboutbirds.org/natural-selection-sexual-selection-an-illustrated-introduction/
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2012.2783
This piece plays off the observation that healthy birds have more naturally occurring fractals in their feather patterns (second link). It also relates to the sexual selection of mates within bird populations, and the tendency for sexual selection to actually make male birds less fit to survive, because of cumbersome tail feathers that make it harder to fly, or similar disadvantages. The piece is built off a recursive algorithm to create the Koch Curve using midi data. The more intricate the Koch Curve became, or the more iterations the recursive algorithm went through, the harder it became for my computer to actually process all that midi information, causing it to glitch. The glitching is very apt, considering the detriment that sexual selection can have on male bird populations. This one was just a fun little experiment in fractals and midi, and ended up having a very cool connection to real trends in ornithology.

Thanks for reading all of that if you did! The code for all the pieces, as well as the algorithm that generated the album cover, is available to use if you're interested. If you have any more questions on specific pieces or anything else, my email is emmarwaddell@gmail.com. Hope you enjoyed :)

Saxophone, composition, programming, editing, etc: Emma Waddell
thanks to my mom, itai, and alex for listening, reading, and general love/support