Bird Sounds

Germany · 1890s

Chill Dreamy Happy Sentimental Sad

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Description

Bird sounds is a non-music audio genre centered on the recording and presentation of avian vocalizations—songs, calls, alarm notes, wing sounds, and choruses—captured in natural habitats. Releases typically feature unprocessed or minimally edited field recordings that highlight species identification, behavior, and ecological context.

While often issued as documentary or educational material for ornithologists and birders, bird-sound albums have also been widely used for relaxation, meditation, film and game sound design, and as source material in electroacoustic and ambient composition. Projects range from single-species studies to immersive “dawn chorus” soundscapes and region-focused guides.

History

How to make a track in this genre

Top albums

Lovregana: Music From a Tasmanian Forest

Environments (Disc 2)

Syntonic Research, Inc.

Voices of North American Owls

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Main artists

Top tracks

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Influenced by

Field Recording

Field recording is the practice and genre of capturing sounds in situ—outside the studio—using portable recording equipment. It centers on documenting environments, human activities, wildlife, weather, machinery, rituals, and music as they actually occur, often with minimal intervention. As a listening genre, field recording foregrounds place and presence. Releases may present unprocessed, extended takes (e.g., a shoreline at dawn), or carefully edited sequences that map a soundwalk, a village festival, or a factory floor. The results range from documentary-style fidelity to abstract, immersive soundscapes that emphasize texture, spatiality, and the ecology of sound.

Nature Recordings

Nature recordings are unaccompanied, minimally edited captures of natural soundscapes such as birdsong, wind, rain, surf, rivers, amphibians, insects, and other environmental ambiences. The emphasis is on documentary fidelity, long-form listening, and preserving dynamic range rather than musical composition in the traditional sense. Releases often present extended, uninterrupted tracks from a single habitat or time window (e.g., dawn chorus, coastal storm, tropical rainforest at night), inviting listeners to experience place through sound. While closely related to field recording and soundscape composition, nature recordings typically avoid added instruments or overt sound design, privileging biophony and geophony with as little anthrophony (human-made noise) as possible.

Animal Sounds

Animal sounds is a non-music, documentary-focused genre centered on the unaccompanied vocalizations and behaviors of animals—such as birdsong, whale song, insect choruses, amphibian calls, and mammal vocalizations—captured in the field. Rather than emphasizing melody, harmony, or beat, works in this genre present the acoustic ecology of a place and time. Producers often favor minimal processing to preserve scientific, educational, and experiential value, though some releases organize recordings into thematic "soundscapes" (e.g., dawn chorus, coastal rookeries). The genre is commonly used for education, research, relaxation, and as raw material for ambient, electroacoustic, and sound art contexts.

Non-Music

Non-music is an umbrella category for recorded audio whose primary purpose is not musical performance. It encompasses spoken word, speeches, interviews, poetry readings, comedy, audio documentaries, instructional recordings, field recordings, sound effects, and other forms of organized sound meant to inform, narrate, document, or entertain without relying on melody or conventional song structure. Rather than emphasizing harmony, rhythm, and instrumentation, non-music foregrounds voice, text, ambient sound, narrative flow, informational content, and sonic texture. Its aesthetics range from raw, unedited actuality to highly produced studio works, and its scope spans archival preservation, education, performance art, and mass entertainment.

Sound Effects

Sound effects is a non-music audio category focused on recorded or designed sounds created to represent actions, environments, and phenomena. Rather than songs or compositions, it consists of single events (one-shots), short sequences, or loops used to support storytelling, worldbuilding, and user feedback in media. Its practice spans on-location recording, foley performance, and studio sound design using synthesis and processing. Typical subjects include footsteps, doors, vehicles, weather, animals, impacts, whooshes, and abstract textures. Sound effects function as building blocks for radio, film, television, games, theater, podcasts, immersive installations, and UI/UX audio.

Has influenced

Ambient

Ambient is a form of electronic and electroacoustic music that prioritizes tone, atmosphere, and texture over conventional song structures and rhythmic drive. It typically features slow-moving harmonies, sustained drones, gentle timbral shifts, and extensive use of space and silence. Rather than drawing attention to itself through hooks or beats, ambient is designed to be as ignorable as it is interesting, rewarding both background listening and focused immersion. Artists often employ synthesizers, samplers, tape loops, field recordings, and subtle acoustic instruments, with reverb and delay creating a sense of place. Substyles range from luminous, consonant soundscapes to darker, more dissonant atmospheres.

New Age

New age is a largely instrumental, mood-driven genre that emphasizes calm, spacious textures and a sense of spiritual or contemplative uplift. It blends gentle electronic timbres, acoustic instruments, and global/folk influences to create immersive soundscapes intended for relaxation, meditation, and introspection. Hallmarks include slow tempos or free time, long sustaining pads, modal and consonant harmonies, nature field recordings, and unobtrusive rhythms. The music often avoids dramatic tension in favor of openness and continuity, conveying themes of inner peace, nature, and the transcendent.

Musique Concrète

Musique concrète is an electroacoustic approach to composition that uses recorded real‑world sounds (objets sonores) as primary material rather than traditional instruments or notation. Composers edit, splice, loop, reverse, time‑stretch, filter, and otherwise transform these recordings to create works designed for loudspeakers. Emerging in late‑1940s France, it introduced acousmatic listening—focusing on the sound itself, detached from its source—along with a morphology‑based vocabulary of gesture, texture, and timbre. Historically realized on tape and now on digital audio workstations, musique concrète privileges montage and transformation over conventional harmony and meter, inviting listeners into a rich, tactile world of sonic phenomena.

Acousmatic

Acousmatic music is a form of electroacoustic composition created specifically for loudspeakers, where the audience hears sounds without seeing their sources. The genre privileges timbre, morphology, and spatial movement over traditional melody and harmony, and it is often experienced in darkened auditoria to sharpen attention to pure listening. Composers typically work with recorded or synthesized sounds—ranging from environmental recordings and instrumental fragments to purely electronic textures—then edit, transform, and organize them into a fixed medium. Performance focuses on diffusion: the live projection of a fixed track across a multichannel loudspeaker array to sculpt space and perspective in real time.

Sound Art

Sound art is an interdisciplinary practice that treats sound itself as the primary artistic material, often prioritizing listening, space, and context over conventional musical form. It commonly appears as installations, sculptures, site‑specific works, and conceptual pieces presented in galleries, museums, and public spaces rather than on a traditional stage. Rather than focusing on melody, harmony, or beat, sound art emphasizes timbre, texture, perception, and spatialization. Works may use field recordings, environmental sound, feedback, room acoustics, silence, psychoacoustic phenomena, or generative and interactive systems. The listener’s movement, the architecture, and the social environment frequently become integral to the piece, encouraging attentive, situation‑based listening.

Electroacoustic

Electroacoustic music is a broad art-music tradition that integrates recorded acoustic sound and electronically generated or processed sound into coherent musical works. It privileges timbre, gesture, texture, and spatialization over conventional melody-and-harmony song forms, often employing tape manipulation, synthesis, live electronics, and computer-based signal processing. Works are frequently composed for fixed media (stereo or multichannel loudspeakers) and may also involve live performers who are transformed in real time. Concert presentation typically emphasizes spatial diffusion and immersive listening, and the repertoire spans concert works, radio pieces, installations, and soundscape compositions.

Chillout

Chillout is a broad, downtempo-oriented style of electronic music designed for relaxation, decompression, and after-hours listening. It emphasizes spacious atmospheres, gentle grooves, and warm timbres over intensity or virtuosity. Emerging from the “chill-out rooms” of UK and Ibiza clubs, the sound blends ambient pads, soft 4/4 or broken-beat rhythms, and melodic fragments drawn from lounge, jazz, bossa nova, and Balearic traditions. Typical tempos range from about 70–110 BPM, with extended chords, subtle basslines, and abundant reverb and delay to create a sense of depth and calm. Though often used as an umbrella for related styles (ambient, downtempo, trip hop, lounge), chillout retains a distinct focus on mood: it privileges texture, space, and gentle momentum, making it a staple for late-night sets, beach bars, and home listening alike.

Field Recording

Nature Recordings

Challenges

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