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Communication with cetaceans
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© 2004, Interspecies.com
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A method to Our madness
Music provides the form and structure for realtime interaction between species. In this excerpt, listen as an orca responds to a human song with harmonically accurate phrasing. This phrase is atypical of the whale's usual repertoire.
This next excerpt displays a different relationship. Here, a guitarist responds to phrasing initiated by the orcas.

 

We never chase the whales. We anchor our boat, and only transmit from this location. If the whales are interested, they swim to us. We never transmit louder than the volume of a 10 horsepower outboard.

Because our goal is interaction between species, we never play recorded music to the whales. Although a whale may be able to reflect the mood of a recording, a recording can not, in turn, modify its response.

Music with Whales

Page 2 of four pages about whale communication
Many CDs utilize the magic of the multi-track recording studio to overdub the calls of various whale species onto classical, newage, and folk compositions. Humpback whale calls are by far the most common choice. A favorite of newage composers, humpback calls are haunting, and can bring tears to people's eyes. Other cetacean calls are used much less frequently. Orca calls are jazzy, edgy, and strident. Beluga calls are dense and otherworldly, with more kinds of sounds than any other animal. Dolphins are as high pitched as the hearing tests we all took as kids. The great whales — the blues, fins, bowheads, etc — sing low and monotone. IC is probably the only group in the world that regularly records interactive music with free swimming whales and dolphins out on the ocean. We rely almost completely on techniques of improvization, and use a digital sound system to transform any boat into an underwater recording studio. Our intent is straightforward: to seek out the whales where they live and invite them to join an interspecies band.

What is the potential for a cetacean language?

Orcas...The orcas residing along the northeast shore of Vancouver Island communicate among themselves using frequency-modulated whistles and echolocation clicks. The first term denotes melody; the second term, rhythm. Orca calls are thus musically complex in structure and remind some listeners of jazz soloing over chords. For this reason, IC has produced sixteen summers of sessions focused on making music with the wild orcas off western Canada. We have invited musicians of every persuasion — some quite famous — to try to communicate directly to the orcas. For three summers, we invited Tibetan Lamas to transmit their Buddhist prayers directly to the whales.

Bottlenose dolphins...possess at least the rudiments of a true language. For example, when bottlenose dolphins communicate among themselves, the animals commence the sonic correspondence by vocalizing the unique signature whistle of the intended recipient. Apparently, individual dolphins are thus able to conduct a focused "discussion" even while many members of the pod are vocalizing. You can find more about bottlenose dolphins in this article about animal communication. Cachalots...or sperm whales are the only cetacean known to use echolocation clicks in a social context. It is speculated that the resultant communication could include the physical modeling of echolocation, resulting in a kinetic, three dimensional vocabulary; essentially a holosonic-based language. Cicks are also rhythmical, and cognitive scientists studying sperm whales in the Canary Islands have recently demonstrated that this whales' language possesses many attributes in common with African tribal drumming. One well-known researcher is collaborating with a Senegalese drum master who, so far, is the only one able to discern individual whales by identifying the polythryhms of each whale's signature. This page, describes our own uncanny experience with these beings.

Beluga Whales...make more different kinds of sounds than any species except humans, leading some of the researchers who study them to conclude that of all animals, this species is the most likely to possess a true language. We at Interspecies are now collaborating with a team from the Russian Academy of Science trying to devise techniques to test this hypothesis of language. For one example, we are currently developing a software sampler triggered by the whales' themselves; with certain increments of delays triggering different macros that vary the response, essentially testing the acoustic sophistication of beluga communication. The only thing standing in the way of developing this project is funding, which we actively seek. And yet how ironic, that the most likely candidate for ET living right here in the oceans of planet Earth now exists on the edge of extinction in many parts of its habitat . Beluga whales are hunted by Inuit in many parts of the Arctic. Click here to listen to several excerpts of beluga calls.

The Editing Process
We at Interspecies.inc have recently begun an ambitious project of editing over seventy hours of audio tape of music with animals including turkeys, wolves, kangaroo rats, lemurs, as well as orcas and beluga whales. Almost all of it was recorded on various IC sponsored projects between 1976-2002. For the technically adept, the editing process consists of re-recording the original monaural cassettes onto a Mac. We do filter the sound, although primarily to eliminate noise caused by water current flowing across a hydrophone. Digidesign DINR is our tool of choice. The noise of nearby boats also poses a problem. To solve this, we try to keep our music-making schedule to late at night when whalewatching dwindles.
Go on to page 3 to learn about the science of researching language in toothed whales.
  • To read about Interspecies' many projects with cetaceans, purchase, by credit card, Jim Nollman's book The Charged Border: Where Whales and Humans Meet.
  • You can order the Orcas Greatest Hits CD and the Interspecies DVD on our products page.