Crow Music

This idea is based on the hypothesis that the ability to appreciate music emerged together with the ability to converse - music is the hidden sister of language. Conversation and music are similar in many ways. Meaningful inflections, changes of pace and volume, even word sounds are echoed in music, still carrying their connotations from language. It is sometimes hard to separate out the music of someone speaking in your mother tongue - your analytical brain keeps stepping forward to make sense of the words. This is somewhat less of a problem with foreign language. I posit that music is appealing because it allows the suppressed part of the language brain to step forward.

Ok - so what? I propose that an effort be made to extract the music from the conversation. For human languages I bet this could be done by someone with a good ear and some practice. This person could help design a computer program. The computer program would then be applied to conversations between animals.

There is no doubt that some animals communicate with language like sounds. Chimps and dolphins are two examples. I think crows may be another. With the aid of this program, species-specific music could be generated. You would need to take care that the full range of tone and infection was captured - not just what humans can hear. Computer generated music lacks the spark of real music, but it can sometimes come close.

So you have crow music? Then what? I propose that listening stations be set up, with nothing more than a somewhat comfortable environment and the ability to play the generated music. Possibly there could be a switch the animals could trigger when they wanted to hear. Crows, chimps and dolphins all find pleasure in exercising parts of their brain outside of the context of survival - they play. If we get the music right, they should want to come and hear.

The final goal? To make musicians. This is why crows are well suited for this experiment. There are millions of them. If one in a million has the brain hardware to not only appreciate our generated music, but to come up with his own, those crows should congregate around the listening stations, listening to the music we made and trading new music with one another. The same might be true for dolphins or chimps. Once these pioneers show it can be done, other individuals will join in.