106 Correspondence. [j^. 



more definite. What we desire is a record of the bird's song as it is, not as 

 we think it ought to be. We cannot fit wild bird songs to our standards 

 of music. Then why not fit our method of making records to the bird 

 songs? Mr. Moore would have us believe that a method which cannot 

 record the pitch of a bird's song closer than a half-tone is more accurate 

 than a method that can record it closer than a quarter tone. Absolute 

 accuracy is out of the question, but relative accuracy should be as close 

 as the human ear can make it, and not limited by the graded pitches 

 allowable in human music. 



In this matter of pitch and accuracy of record I wish to explain that it is 

 entirely possible to use different colors for the coordinate lines, and the 

 hues representing the song. This obviates the necessity of making the 

 song lines heavier than the others, and thus makes the location of the pitch 

 of each note plainer. I hoped at first to have this done with the figures 

 used to illustrate my article. In work in the field I do this by simply 

 using quadrille paper note-books, in which the lines for both time and pitch 

 are already drawn in light blue. Such a note book has the advantage of 

 being purchasable ahnost anywhere, either in ordinary or loose-leaf form. 

 With such a note-book it makes little difference whether twelve or thirty- 

 six lines are necessary to record a given song. With two colors I have 

 been able to indicate an accented note, or other notes of greater intensity 

 than the main song by simply making the lines, representing these notes, 

 heavier when recorded in pencil, and broader when recorded in ink. 



The factor of pronunciation Mr. Moore considers of little importance 

 because musicians do not recognize it as a part of music. Pronunciation 

 may have nothing to do with music, but it has a great deal to do with bird 

 songs. The hquid 1 is an extremely important factor and its presence or 

 absence is of great assistance in the recognition of a song in the field. But 

 Mr. Moore wishes to have pronunciation classed as a sub-head under qual- 

 ity. What it has to do with quahty is hard to see. Too many people already 

 have quaUty, intensity and pitch, hopelessly confused, so why mix pronunci- 

 ation with it? Quality depends entirely on the presence or absence of 

 certain overtones, and the relative intensity of these overtones. Quality 

 includes nothing else. Is it scientific to make it include pronunciation? 



Mr. Moore tells us that the presence of marks indicating pronunciation 

 blurs the pitch of the note. If the loop used to indicate an 1 sound, starts 

 at a certain definite point and ends at that point, making no progress 

 horizontally or vertically it blurs neither pitch nor time. This is another 

 objection evidently originating in Mr. Moore's imagination. 



Too great a musical knowledge in some cases is liable to result in too 

 little along other important Hnes. It is. liable for instance to make one 

 conclude that such a term as "trill" has only one meaning. Looking up 

 "trill" in Webster's dictionary I find that my definition is more correct 

 for the ordinary use of the word than Mr. Moore's. The musical trill, 

 which Mr. Moore considers the only real trill, is referred by Webster to 

 the word "shake." The ordinary trill is defined in the dictionary as a 

 single note, interrupted by the regular recurrence of a consonant sound. 



