Saratoga High senior discovers link between whale songs and human sonatas

"When Lucy Zhang first listened to recordings of humpback whale songs, she didn't expect to hear the makings of a symphony. But while playing the recordings, the Saratoga High School senior recognized music patterns she had encountered while practicing piano sonatas. Zhang listened to these recordings as part of collaboration with John Ryan, a senior research specialist studying ocean soundscapes at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) and discovered structural similarities between whale songs and human sonatas. On Thursday, Zhang showcased their research as part of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) annual meeting in New Orleans."

"The project started when Zhang decided to take her science studies out of the classroom. "I wanted a real-life application of the things I learned," she said. She turned to Ryan, her father's longtime coworker - Ryan recalls hearing Zhang play piano in the background of work calls when she was only a child. When Zhang shared that she was interested in doing a research project with whales, Ryan sent her whale song recordings previously collected from underwater microphones in the Monterey Bay and simply asked her to listen to the sounds of ocean giants."

"Zhang discovered that, like human music, the whale songs had different sections. Three parts make up a sonata in human music: exposition, development and recapitulation. "The exposition has a main theme that's repeated in the third section. So, the first section and the third section are very similar, and the second section is the development-it's a little bit more unique, and flows by itself," Zhang said. The whale songs sections showed a similar pattern. Nestled between an introduction section and an ending, Zhang found a familiar pattern: exposition, development and recapitulation."

A high school student working with a Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute specialist analyzed humpback whale song recordings and identified structural similarities to human sonata form. The whale songs displayed distinct sections analogous to exposition, development, and recapitulation, framed by an introduction and an ending. The exposition presents a main theme that reappears in the recapitulation, while the development contains more unique material. The analysis drew on musical pattern recognition from piano practice and used underwater microphone recordings from Monterey Bay. The findings were presented at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in New Orleans.

Read at The Mercury News