The Steel Guitar Forum

The latest National Geographic magazine has printed music that scientists have recorded from whales.
Check it out . Have any of you seen it and played it. It would be interested to see if there is a melody or ? 8

What tuning do they use? Sea 6th?

I used to play in a surf band. We always had a whale of time.


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There's always got to be a few jokers in the crowd.
Can they even play steel or just try to make jokes? I'm almost sure they haven't even seen the magazine

Don R Brown wrote:What tuning do they use? Sea 6th?

🤯🥺🤪🤣

They don't mean no harm, Wally. They're just kidding. You gotta admit that the "sea 6th" thing was a good one.

Mitch

What a coincidence-going through all the original Star Trek movies with my kids and just this weekend saw Star Trek IV-The Voyage Home (it's about whales). No pedal steel though.

Yeah.- I know they're kidding. Just proves you can make a joke out of anything. And some people are just natural jokesters. Like the dolphin said to the whale,-"Sea you around big boy". Groan-n-n-n

Four guys got together to sing down by the riverside. There was a first tuna, 2nd tuna, barracuda and a bass.
They were singing just for the halibut...

Don R Brown wrote:What tuning do they use? Sea 6th?

Well done, sir.

There was an album of humpback whale "songs" that got a fair amount of attention when I was in high school (70/71). Friends had it and I heard it quite a bit; pretty cool in small doses. I'm sure there are clips of this kind of thing on Youtube.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_of_ ... le_(album)

Josh Moss wrote:
Well done, sir.

I don't usually do that well, it was just a fluke.

Any plans to put that whale music on line? It would make a great podcast.

Pete -- I remember it (too) well.
I was working with an artist and one song really wanted some 'ambient' treatment. I have a large pedalboard to provide a palette for this sort of thing but I asked the artist (and friend) to PLEASE let me know if it started to sound too humpbacky. That's NOT where I want to go. Or was it? There was a reason that it caught on, back then -- it IS cool. In small doses.

Seriously, I was asked at a session once could I make whale sounds, and I said if you let me hear some I probably could. I didn't have time to search it so I just played steel sounds.

Wasn't all that whale music in the 70's speeded up about twenty times? I remember hearing the real sounds and it was very low sounding and lasted for minutes at a time. Not cute little cherps and blips. Has anyone heard the "whale meat" song? No? Just imagine Earnest Tubb... Whale meat again baby and then......"

Wally Pfeifer wrote:There's always got to be a few jokers in the crowd.
Can they even play steel or just try to make jokes? I'm almost sure they haven't even seen the magazine

Wally, I figured a thread on whale music in the "Steel Players" section was not to be taken seriously. If it was, my apologies. As for National Geographic, I have not looked at one since about 4th grade, and that was just to see the pictures of...well, never mind.


That said, you hit the nail on the head, my jokes would attract fewer tomatoes than my steel playing. Let's hope I don't have to rely on either one to put food on the table!

The late, great Dan Hicks may have been listening when he composed this tune:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTElxrjbmY0

Sorry for injecting my attempt at humor, but the post seemed a little fishy to me.

So when the whales want to play music, they join an orca-stra?

Don, I enjoyed all your comments. Great humor!

Anybody remember the Paul Winter Consort from the 80's? The new age saxophonist would incorporate whale sounds, packs of wolves howling and other natural voicings into his compositions, often imitating them with his soprano and alto saxes. Some of it was pretty cool.

I believe he still plays at St John Cathedral in manhattan. He used to do a yearly concert. I attended one year, and it was amazing to hear his sax reverberate through the church.

I Have the CD by Paul Winter, got it back during the Windham Hills days.

Wally Pfeifer wrote:The latest National Geographic magazine has printed music that scientists have recorded from whales.
Check it out . Have any of you seen it and played it. It would be interested to see if there is a melody or ? 8

Wally, do you have a copy? It would be cool to share a shot of one of the pages, or a link to where the score can be found online. Also, given that very few instruments are as capable of microtones as ours is, it might even be possible play it from the score.