The Origins of Music: Preface - Preface

vocalizations characteristic of their species.In this regard songbirds share

a niche with humans,whales,and dolphins.

The role of learning in song production has made songbirds important

subjects in research on both the neurobiology of learning (Konishi 1994;

Nottebohm 1991) and the process of vocal learning (Kroodsma 1996;

Marler 1987) with an eye toward parallels with language acquisition in

humans.It is my hope that by reviewing knowledge of birdsong learn-

ing,we may have another angle from which to approach our inquiry into

the way that people acquire knowledge of music.An important idea to

emerge from the study of birdsong is that this process is shaped by pref-

erences and constraints.I will organize my discussion around two such

constraints:song learning is often restricted to one period during devel-

opment or to one time of year;and the learning preference influences

selection of an appropriate model to imitate.In other words,a what and

when are imposed on song learning,the details of which vary across avian

species.

Avian song learning occurs in two stages:first,songs must be memo-

rized and,second,they must be practiced.In some species these two

events overlap (zebra finches,Taeniopygia guttata;Immelmann 1969),but

in others memorization can precede practice by several months,provid-

ing an impressive example of long-term memory storage (swamp spar-

rows,Melospiza georgiana;Marler and Peters 1982).The young bird’s

initial efforts to reproduce the memorized song are usually not success-

ful.These early songs may have faltering pitch,irregular tempo,and

notes that are out of order or poorly reproduced.However,sonograms

of songs recorded over several weeks or months reveal that during this

practice period the bird fine-tunes his efforts until he produces an accu-

66 Carol Whaling

Figure 5.1

Sound spectrograms of normal and isolate white-crowned sparrow songs.A–C are normal

songs of three males singing different white-crowned sparrow dialects (noted under each

spectrogram).D–F are isolate songs of three males raised in captivity and prevented from

hearing white-crowned sparrow song during the sensitive period for song learning.

Fig.5.1

MUS5 9/14/99 11:59 AM Page 66