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A Music Student Inspired by Bird Sounds
Creating piano compositions inspired by bird calls and songs
© Gérard Cachon
Eleven-year-old Zjencès Bell took an early interest in birds after he learned his first bird call. As a piano student, Zjencès soon blended his love of birds with his musical skills by creating piano compositions inspired by bird calls and songs. In this show, hear an excerpt of his composition inspired by the otherworldly voice of the Common Loon.
BirdNote®
A Music Student Inspired by Bird Sounds
Written by Conor Gearin
This is BirdNote.
Eleven-year-old Zjencès Bell took an early interest in birds after he learned his first bird call.
Zjencès Bell: For me, birding just brings a lot of joy. I just got compelled to it, because I saw like a whole bunch of chickadees in my backyard, and I was like, what are they called?
[Black-capped Chickadee call]
Zjencès Bell: The chickadee call — it sounded just, like, so happy that I just wanted to learn more. And so I just kept on taking a little bit of time to listen.
And as a piano student, Zjencès soon blended his love of birds with his musical skills by creating piano compositions inspired by bird calls and songs — like this one, inspired by the otherworldly voice of the Common Loon.
[Clip Zjencès playing his Common Loon composition]
Zjencès Bell: A lot of bird calls are actually kind of high. Usually, like an octave higher than what I first thought. With the call of the Common Loon, I realized that it wasn't very high. It was just like this smooth going up sound.
[Common Loon call]
Zjencès Bell: But it's really hard to do that without playing, like, a whole bunch of notes. And so I realized that I'd have to play, like, a note under it and sustain that while playing the other notes to create a kind of like echoey, smooth, upward tone.
[Clip Zjencès playing his Common Loon composition and Common Loon wails]
Hear Zjencès play the rest of the piano composition when you visit our website, BirdNote dot org. I’m Conor Gearin.
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Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Common Loon ML197039 recorded by Bob McGuire, and Common Loon ML108763751 recorded by Jeff Ellerbusch.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2024 BirdNote June 2024
Narrator: Conor Gearin
ID# bellz-01-2024-06-19 bellz-01
Conor Gearin
Writer NarratorSights & Sounds
