The Origins of Music: Preface - Preface

140 Katharine Payne

Figur

e 9.2

Tracings of spectrograms of representative songs from March 1977 and 1978.

W

e selected songs that contained all possible themes

.In 1977,

theme three was rare

.Although the sample song shown here omitted it,

it was included in the next song sung by that same whale

.T

he star

• 
  

in-circle symbol in the tracing indicates where theme three was placed when it was sung

.T

he two phrases of theme three shown under the

song were produced by the same whale in the song following the one fully traced here

.T

he tracings omit all extraneous sounds (e

.g.,

ocean

noise such as ships

,other whales

,underwater echoes

,etc

.) as well as harmonics

.Pulsive sounds

,which on the spectrograms showed dense har

• 
  

monics

,are represented diagrammatically by closely spaced vertical lines

,whose spacing does not necessarily refl

ect the repetition rate of the

pulses

.(F

rom Payne

,T

yack,

and Payne 1983.)

Fig

.9.2

A