[HN Gopher] Earbirding - How to Visualize Sounds
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       Earbirding - How to Visualize Sounds
        
       Author : mellosouls
       Score  : 104 points
       Date   : 2022-08-07 14:54 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (earbirding.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (earbirding.com)
        
       | jayavanth wrote:
       | This is awesome! Thank you!
        
       | gbh444g wrote:
       | Another method of visualizing birdsongs is interpreting pitch as
       | direction:
       | 
       | https://github.com/soundshader/soundshader.github.io/tree/ma...
       | 
       | I suggest to call this field of science "birdographics" and its
       | researchers "birdographers".
        
         | musesum wrote:
         | Soundshader is amazing! Am writing a visual music synth. Maybe
         | I'll port to Metal.
        
         | shreyshnaccount wrote:
         | thats a cool link and I second this nomenclature.
        
       | peanut_worm wrote:
       | there are quite a few bird species that are so similar that the
       | only reliable way to tell them apart is their vocalizations. a
       | good example is red eyed vireos and black whiskered vireos.
       | 
       | I am terrible with calls, this article will be very helpful for
       | the fall migration, thanks OP.
        
       | chaosprint wrote:
       | Interesting topic. It Reminds me of my PhD supervisor's work
       | which is called motiongram:
       | 
       | https://www.arj.no/?s=motiongram
        
         | gregsadetsky wrote:
         | Fascinating, thanks for sharing!
        
       | sdenton4 wrote:
       | Pieplow's books on bird song are fantastic. Each page has a
       | tiiiiny picture of the bird up in the corner, then a big spread
       | of spectrograms and a decent chunk of text to give the
       | spectrograms context: eg, what are the 'typical' parts of it, vs
       | what varies, how likely it is that subsequent vocalizations are
       | the same/different, what to expect in variations by sex and age,
       | and so on.
       | 
       | But my favorite part of the book is the introduction. In addition
       | to just a great intro to reading spectrograms and what's up with
       | bird vocalization physically (they have a syrinx, not a larynx),
       | there's a lengthy section with a kind of 'phonetics' of bird
       | song. It's great.
        
       | adamgordonbell wrote:
       | If you never seen some of what audio restoration people do with a
       | spectrograph view in Izotope RX, you should check it out. They
       | clean up audio using a process somewhat akin to photoshopping
       | images. The ears are still involved, but it's a very visual
       | process.
       | 
       | I suspect doing it a lot leads to some purposeful synthesia where
       | you can hear things and know what they would look like in a
       | spectrograph.
       | 
       | Here's the first example I could find:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKNYYR-uUEo
        
         | monetus wrote:
         | On that note, I've been told Beethoven painted his music.
        
         | tpmx wrote:
         | Here's a 3d visualization of a dial up modem handshake sound
         | apparently made using iZotope Ozone 5 (from 2011):
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvr9AMWEU-c
        
         | dekhn wrote:
         | The guy who solved voice recognition at Google years ago told
         | me that after looking at enough spectrograms with human speech
         | he could tell exactly what was being said. "Oh, that shape-
         | it's an 'ooo' noise."
         | 
         | Armed with that knowledge I started looking at more
         | spectrograms of birds (I record birds around my house and pass
         | through bird.net's model. Amusingly, I kind of learned
         | eveyrthing in this article just by looking at lots of
         | spectrograms- they are far, far easier for me to parse than any
         | other musical representation.
         | 
         | I just found 'demucs' and am really enjoying doing source
         | separation and then looking at the resulting spectrograms, then
         | back at the original full musical spectrogram- it helps me
         | parse out the instruments a lot better when they overlap.
         | 
         | There is also a product called 'Celemony DNA' which can do some
         | editing in spectrogram space to remove individual notes.
        
           | gregsadetsky wrote:
           | Everyone should absolutely at least once pronounce every
           | letter from the alphabet and look at a spectrogram, it's
           | fascinating.
           | 
           | Try a rolled "r", vowels, consonants, "p", "f" ("eeeffff")
           | etc.
           | 
           | Also try whistling if you can.
           | 
           | ----
           | 
           | Online spectrogram options:
           | 
           | Sort of works on mobile, go to landscape and tap the mic
           | button: https://spectrogram.sciencemusic.org/
           | 
           | Doesn't work on mobile anymore? But should be good desktop
           | option: https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Spectrogram/
        
         | TheRealPomax wrote:
         | Heck, if you don't even know that modern editors come with a
         | "why would I look at an amplitude when the information we care
         | about is in the spectrogram?" view, you're going to learn
         | something pretty special.
         | 
         | The audio is a landscape, and anything that isn't a "global"
         | operation (like normalizing, noise reduction, cross-fades)
         | ranging from from just touching it up a but literal sound-from-
         | nothing is about sculpting that landscape.
         | 
         | Rather than Photoshop, it's more like 3D Modeling for your
         | audio. (while using a top-down view in RX, although some tools
         | will let you toggle between 2d and 3d because seeing the
         | landscape is quite valuable)
        
           | samstave wrote:
           | > _" The audio is a landscape..._"
           | 
           | Joy Division Logo is the signature of the audio of a Pulsar
           | 
           | https://www.radiox.co.uk/artists/joy-division/cover-joy-
           | divi...
        
             | samstave wrote:
             | * _1979... from a punk band, lest we not forget _QUEEN_
             | Brian May*_
             | 
             | [.] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May
             | 
             | Would love a podcast with Lex Fridman, Brian May and
             | DeGrasse Tyson. (Michio can sit this one out, as he as
             | transparent. I see plans within plans. I see yc, venture
             | backing behind it.)
             | 
             | I did not post this. I was not online.
        
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