A MUSICAL KEY. 
And yet again, some other bird may seem to sing as 
many as six eighth notes, or their equivalent, to a bar, 
as. for instance, the Song Sparrow, a great variety of 
whose music will be found among the pages farther 
along devoted to him. 
The fact is, no matter how doubtfully complete the 
song of the little bird proves to be, there is no question 
whatever about the singer keeping time! He can not 
sustain a melody of any considerable length, nor can he 
cenform to our conventional ideas of metre, but he can 
keep time perfectly, and a knowledge of his rhythmic 
method, is, I believe, the strongest factor in his identifi- 
cation by the ear ! 
This matter of time-keeping is one of the most import- 
ant elements of music. Naturally, therefore, the drum 
being a musical instrument, I begin this key by using 
its beat as the best marked illustration of mechanical 
vhythm. Now, if we return to this illustration of the 
drum-beat we will see that within a minute of time a 
drummer is supposed to keep the run of one hundred 
and twenty time beats, and to strike his drum rhyth- 
mically, twice skipping a time beat and then three times 
not skipping it. Although a singing bird does not keep 
this mechanical time with any greater degree of accu. 
racy than the artist pianist or vocalist, he does keep it 
with all the accuracy that art demands, and that is more 
than sufficient for our purpose. I have consequently 
placed over a great number of the bird songs, the metro- 
nome time in which they were sung. People who are 
undrilled in music are dreadfully heedless of time ; they 
rarely if ever give a note ‘‘its face value.” To use an 
apt simile a dollar passes for fifty cents, and vice versa ! 
This will never do in music; we must heed the relative 
values of notes and rests and movements in bird songs 
sary to complete the bar will be represented by the notes or rests 
in the last bar which will also lack the full complement of beats. 
The first and last bars, then, will together form but one completa 
bar. This condition is caused by the song beginning on an unac 
cented note which is usually short and merely introductory to the 
more important one which begins the next bar. (See the records 
of Oriole’s music for an instance.) 
XXXV 
