Title:
Whipbird Bowerbird and Lyrebird Meet In A Pub

Dates:
20-Jun-2025 (inception), 20-Jun-2025 (finalised), 21-Jun-2025 (released)

Artists:
Music composed, performed, produced by Norman Freund
Artwork by Norman Freund

BandCamp Purchase:
https://normanfreund.bandcamp.com/track/whipbird-bowerbird-and-lyrebird-meet-in-a-pub

Description:

DUE TO SOUNDCOULD SPACE LIMITATIONS, A BRIEF OUTLINE IS PROVIDED HERE.
See my BandCamp or FaceBook page for the full story.

A Whipbird, Bowerbird and Lyrebird walk into a pub ... the Austinmer Headlands Hotel. They share their ideas about the songs and sounds that interest them. The Whipbird reckons a high pitched crack in the sound is needed, the Bowerbird is distracted by the blue wrapping on the counter and the Lyrebird was busy imitating the Juke box. But soon, the conversation began to be musically more serious and they decided to have a music jam.

I spent most of my youth on the Eastern sea board on the state of NSW, Australia, walking in the forests (or the bush as it's known in Australia) and listening to the natural sounds of the trees and the birds that inhabited them. If you listen carefully, and are familiar with the calls of the Whipbird, Bowerbird and Lyrebird, you will hear where I got some of my inspiration from for this piece. Sure this is electronic music, but it is still played by a human with an organic feel and input.

Instruments featured in this piece are the PulseRectOsc, Soma Enner, Soma Pipe and the Soma Cosmos. Midi input comes from the Ableton Push2.

Read the full story on my BandCamp site or my FaceBook page.

The signal chain was as follows:
Audio:
Soma Enner or Soma Pipe -> Soma Cosmos -> Analogue to Digital Interface -> PulseRectOsc Audio Looper
Digital Synthesis:
Ableton Push2 midi hardware -> USB -> PulseRectOsc synthesiser -> PulseRectOsc Audio Looper

The scale used:
The Tuning is microtonal, combining two one dimensional frequency ratio vectors. The inner most frequency ratio vector defines the basic tuning, a untonal harmonic sequence of eight notes (fits nicely on the 8x8 pads of the Push2):

10/10
10/9
10/8
10/6
10/5
10/4
10/3
10/2

and the outer most tuning vector which transposes the first vector by increasing powers:

1/1
3/2

This is equivalent to tuning an eight string instrument in perfect fifths where each string has this untonal harmonic series.

See my BandCamp or FaceBook page for the final tuning system.


References:
[1] Eastern Whipbird, Psophodes olivaceus, native to the east coast of Australia, link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_whipbird
[2] Satin bowerbird, Ptilonorhynchus violaceus, endemic to eastern Australia, link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satin_bowerbird
[3] Lyrebird, Superb lyrebird, Menura novaehollandiae, south-eastern Australia, from southern Victoria to south-eastern Queensland, link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyrebird 
[4] Austinmer Hotel, AUSTINMER Headlands Hotel, 1932, Samuel Wood, Wollongong City Library, link: https://wollongong.spydus.com/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/FULL/OPAC/ALLENQ/95517605/17538511,4

Whipbird Bowerbird and Lyrebird Meet In A Pub

Welcome to my place of musical experiments and my endless journey of exploring new sound textures, rhythms and melodic ideas. I am a multi-instrumentalist coming from a background of having actively played, harmonica, recorder, piano, organ, clarinet, tin whistle, pan pipes, guitar, violin, Shakuhachi, jaw harp, didgeridoo and accordion. My genre is mostly a fusion of Jazz and Soundscape, however I often seek inspiration from a wide variety of music, Celtic, Rock, Heavy Metal, Classical, Folk, Micro-tonal, just to name a few. I also build my own instruments, various Shakuhachi using them either directly in recordings or sample the sounds to incorporate in pitch shifting tools in Ableton Live. I often set myself a music challenge, taking every day sounds not considered musical, sampling, transforming and moulding them into a virtual musical instrument. Experimenting with evolving polymeters is a favourite feature of my works. I have been classically trained but soon ventured into free improvisation, which is my happy place.

I am based on the South Island of New Zealand, enjoying the great outdoors there. I often take inspiration from this for my music and associated cover art.

I have a no cover’s policy, all my works being original compositions, the only exception would be the odd jazz interpretation of a Bach piece from the Baroque era. My percussion sections do not use any artificial intelligence drum machines, nor do I use auto tuners for my violin playing. Paid likes and plays — none of that either. 

I also participate in musical collaborations, from accepting sound samples to see what I can do with them, to instrumental collaborations. Send me a message if interested.

Please join me on this wonderful journey of music exploration.