THE MUSIC

Each composition on Grooved Whale is inspired in some way by the sounds I heard while recording the acoustics of the Humpback Whale.

The whale sounds that run throughout the album consist of both "pure" and "altered" recordings. Through the use of spectrograms and spectographs as well as technological manipulations of pitch and time-shifting, the extraction of down beats, stanzas and phrases from the frequency-rich vocalizations created the structures upon which the songs were built.

Humpbacks have two main types of vocalizations, the first of which is the Winter Song - a resonating chorus of deep groans, stacatto bursts and high whistles that fills the waters of the Humpbacks' tropical breeding grounds with constant sound.

Sung exclusively by the males, the Winter Song is though to either attract females by the qualities of a particular singer's sound or to warn off competing males. Each year, small changes are introduced in the song's 30-minute composition, which are then incorporated into the following year's refrain.

The second type of vocalization is less well known and is classified as a "call" rather than a "song". The Feeding Call is characteristically short, swooping up and down in elegant phrases with trumpet-like timbre. Lasting anywhere from one to three minutes, these calls are a rare event and are heard only in the feeding grounds of southeast Alaska when the Humpbacks engage in a behavior known as lunge feeding. Lunge feeding consists of a group of Humpbacks acting in cooperation to encircle a group of herring in an underwater bubble net. The whales then blast the prey with sound before lunging upwards through the herring ball to the surface, mouths wide open to swallow as much prey as possible.

Feeding calls are always variations on a theme. Octaves change and parts rearrange, yet particular elements lend them a consistency - or as scientists would call it a signature or voiceprint. Certain whales have been creatively named for the quality of their calls: Screamer for his acoustic aerobatics, Melancholy for her mournful pleas and Trumpeter for his trumpet-like honks.

In addition to the whale sounds, violin and other instrumental tracks were then composed and broadcast underwater with the help of a special waterproof speaker to create textures similar to the whale recordings. The resulting material was then layered onto the initial field recordings, aligned and produced back home in my floating studio in Vancouver, British Columbia.

To hear some of the Grooved Whale tracks, please visit the MP3 page. For additional interpretations on my work, I have included several articles in the Review section.