Computational evolutionary musicology

Abstract

The beginning of Chapter 2 offered a sensible definition of music as temporally organized sound. In the broader sense of this definition, one could arguably state that music is not uniquely human. A number of other animals also seem to have music of some sort. Complex vocalizations can be found in many birds (Marler and Slabbekoorn 2004), as well as in mammals such as whales (Payne and McVay 1971) and bats (Behr and von Helversen 2004). In a chapter suggestively entitled 'Zoomusicologie' in the book Musique, Mythe, Nature ou Les Dauphins d'Arion, Mâche (1991) presents an interesting discussion on the formal sophistication of various birdcalls. Recently Holy and Guo (2005) demonstrated that the ultrasonic vocalizations that male mice produce when they encounter female mice or their pheromones have the characteristics of song. What is intriguing is that primates who are close related to humans are not as 'musical' as those mammals that are far more distantly related to us. This intriguing fact suggests that music might have evolved independently among various types of animals, at various degrees of sophistication. In this context, it would be perfectly plausible to suggest the notion that robots might also be able to evolve music. © 2007 Springer.