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 

 rrhose 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 

 conform 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 1 



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 

 rhythm. 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 complete 

 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 



