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Presenting Whale Song. Cover of the August 1971 issue of Science (Vol. 173, no. 3997) displaying a photonegative image of the traced humpback whale song spectrograms from Payne and McVay’s article published within. The frontmatter indicates that this tracing was made by Roger S. Payne. The spectrograms can be read left to right and top to bottom, the same as sheet music, with pitch or frequency on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal. Used with permission of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), as conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.
Published: 01 June 2025
Figure 1: Presenting Whale Song . Cover of the August 1971 issue of Science (Vol. 173, no. 3997) displaying a photonegative image of the traced humpback whale song spectrograms from Payne and McVay’s article published within. The frontmatter indicates that this tracing was made by Roger S. Payn... More about this image found in Presenting Whale Song . Cover of the August 1971 issue of Science (Vol. 1...
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Taking Apart the (Human) Voice with Spectrograms.
Published: 01 June 2025
Figure 2: Taking Apart the (Human) Voice with Spectrograms . 2a : The universal phonetic features from the spoken phrase “be up at five” are dissected via sound spectrography in J. C. Steinberg and N. R. French, “The Portrayal of Visible Speech,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 1... More about this image found in Taking Apart the (Human) Voice with Spectrograms . 2a : The universal pho...
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Among the earliest spectrograms of underwater sound, the NDRC juxtaposed sounds from a naval destroyer vessel (top) with “deep sea ambient noise” (bottom). From Summary Technical Report Vol. 7: Principles and Applications of Underwater Sound. NDRC. Division 6 (Department of the Navy, 1946), 239.
Published: 01 June 2025
Figure 2b: Among the earliest spectrograms of underwater sound, the NDRC juxtaposed sounds from a naval destroyer vessel (top) with “deep sea ambient noise” (bottom). From Summary Technical Report Vol. 7: Principles and Applications of Underwater Sound . NDRC. Division 6 (Department of the Navy, ... More about this image found in Among the earliest spectrograms of underwater sound, the NDRC juxtaposed so...
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Signals of Submarines, Noises of Whales. Another spectrographic juxtaposition shows the “sound of submarine” (left) and the “sound of whales” (right), with the intensity or “loudness” of the sounds represented by color contours. The illustration was provided to Life by Hank Walker and Peter Stackpole of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. From “New Power for the Navy Underseas,” Life Magazine 45, no. 9 (1958), 46. Reproduced with permission from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Published: 01 June 2025
Figure 3: Signals of Submarines, Noises of Whales . Another spectrographic juxtaposition shows the “sound of submarine” (left) and the “sound of whales” (right), with the intensity or “loudness” of the sounds represented by color contours. The illustration was provided to Life by Hank Walker an... More about this image found in Signals of Submarines, Noises of Whales . Another spectrographic juxtaposit...
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Taking Apart the (Whale) Voice with Spectrograms. This graph from a 1959 WHOI “Vibragram analysis book” detailed the number of “moans” in different sound recordings as a function of their duration in seconds, using colored pencils to demarcate different recordings. A 1958 humpback whale recording from Frank Watlington is in orange. William Schevill (American, 1906–94), Graph “No. of Moans and Duration of Moans,” 1959. Pencil on paper. New Bedford Whaling Museum, Gift of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, MSS 165, Schevill notebooks, box 3, folder 7. Image courtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum: https://www.whalingmuseum.org/.
Published: 01 June 2025
Figure 4: Taking Apart the ( Whale ) Voice with Spectrograms . This graph from a 1959 WHOI “Vibragram analysis book” detailed the number of “moans” in different sound recordings as a function of their duration in seconds, using colored pencils to demarcate different recordings. A 1958 humpback ... More about this image found in Taking Apart the (Whale) Voice with Spectrograms . This graph from a 1959...
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More Songs of Humpback Whales. As recorded from 1–2 April 1970 off Puerto Rico’s Mayagüez Harbor. Like Figure 1 above, this spectrogram should be read left to right and top to bottom, with each row demarcated on the far left by the frequency scale indicators (0-3 kHz). Unlike Figure 1, this spectrogram was not glued together in individual sheets, but was a continuous spectrogram—a technology and technique accessed through Poulter and only gradually increasing in use by bioacousticians over the 1970s and 1980s. Winn, Perkins, and Poulter distinguished sequential units of the song using onomatopoetic descriptions marked by symbols above each row (e.g. M = “moan,” C = “cry,” c = “chirp,” e = “eee”). Note in particular that this spectrogram was not traced over as Figure 1 above, and the harmonics or overtones in the vocalizations produce what appear as dense, stacked columns of sound in some rows. From Winn, Perkins, and Poulter, “Sounds of the Humpback Whale” in Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Conference on Biological Sonar and Diving Mammals (Stanford Research Institute: Biological Sonar Laboratory, 1970), 42. In the acknowledgments, “special appreciation is given to Lois Winn and Deborah Brennan for analyzing the calls and editing the manuscript” (45).
Published: 01 June 2025
Figure 5: More Songs of Humpback Whales . As recorded from 1–2 April 1970 off Puerto Rico’s Mayagüez Harbor. Like Figure 1 above, this spectrogram should be read left to right and top to bottom, with each row demarcated on the far left by the frequency scale indicators (0-3 kHz). Unlike Figure... More about this image found in More Songs of Humpback Whales . As recorded from 1–2 April 1970 off Puerto ...
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Drawing a New Science of Birdsong. From Peter Marler and Donald Isaac, “Song Variation in a Population of Mexican Juncos,” Wilson Bulletin 73, no. 2 (1961), 194; 203. Reproduced with permission from the Wilson Ornithological Society. 6a: Compilation of spectrograms from eleven Mexican juncos near El Salto, Durango. Marler and coauthor Donald Isaac indicated the songs A-E were characteristic examples, while F-K represented less common “extremes” (p. 194).
Published: 01 June 2025
Figure 6: Drawing a New Science of Birdsong . From Peter Marler and Donald Isaac, “Song Variation in a Population of Mexican Juncos,” Wilson Bulletin 73, no. 2 (1961), 194; 203. Reproduced with permission from the Wilson Ornithological Society. 6a : Compilation of spectrograms from eleven Mexi... More about this image found in Drawing a New Science of Birdsong . From Peter Marler and Donald Isaac, “So...
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Marler and Isaac wrote that “It is in the structure of the component notes and syllables that we find the greatest diversity” (p. 202). They classified around 500 spectrographic “notes” as “vibrato” (5–8) or “non-vibrato” (1–4) and subdivided these classes based on “inflection”—e.g., upward (1), downward (2), upward then downward (3), etc. All spectrograms were analyzed through “ink tracings” made of the spectrograms “on tracing paper” (p. 193).
Published: 01 June 2025
Figure 6b: Marler and Isaac wrote that “It is in the structure of the component notes and syllables that we find the greatest diversity” (p. 202). They classified around 500 spectrographic “notes” as “vibrato” (5–8) or “non-vibrato” (1–4) and subdivided these classes based on “inflection”—e.g., up... More about this image found in Marler and Isaac wrote that “It is in the structure of the component notes ...
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The Ocean is a Noisy Place. In addition to the long-form charts like Figure 1 above, Payne and McVay published more detailed diagrams like this one to delineate the structure of different themes and phrases within the song. The above shows the pattern of theme 3 on the left and theme 4 on the right. The top row is a generalized, schematic version of the themes’ development phrase to phrase, allowing Payne and McVay to classify units according to diagrammatic types—e.g., “the phrases in theme 3 have as their first unit a loud, ascending frequency sweep”—thus grouping the more individuated variations into the same kind. The actual tracings of individual songs from three whales underneath also compressed the information in each whale’s voice and environment, “emphasizing loud notes of the song” (p. 586)—as tracing minimized relative variations in volume—and reinserting the higher-pitched “arpeggios” that could be more clearly heard than seen on the raw spectrogram. They wrote: “The ocean is a noisy place (some of the tapes include wave noise, ship noise, dynamite blasts, and distant whales), and because loud sounds in the water are invariably followed by trains of echoes, we have isolated the whale sounds by tracing them on a separate sheet, thus omitting echoes and noise. Our tracings also exclude [most] harmonics, since they are of little or no consequence in establishing sequences and are often spuriously generated by the spectrograph” (p. 592). From Roger Payne and Scott McVay, “Songs of Humpback Whales,” Science 173, no. 3997 (1971), 593. Used with permission of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), as conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.
Published: 01 June 2025
Figure 7: The Ocean is a Noisy Place . In addition to the long-form charts like Figure 1 above, Payne and McVay published more detailed diagrams like this one to delineate the structure of different themes and phrases within the song. The above shows the pattern of theme 3 on the left and theme... More about this image found in The Ocean is a Noisy Place . In addition to the long-form charts like Figu...
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The 1970s Evolutions of Whale and Bird Song. 8a: Katy Payne traced spectrograms from Hawaiian humpback whale songs over the course of two seasons from 1976 to 1978, working to show not only the gross song pattern change over time as her work in Bermuda had shown, but the more detailed “processes that lead to change” within the minute evolutions of sub-unit “structure.” Here, her tracings illustrated how songs over a five month period in 1977 subtly shifted in the ratio of “r”-shaped and “j”-shaped notes. Further statistical analysis showed that “the rate at which the replacement occurred was surprisingly regular” (p. 25). From Katy Payne, Peter Tyack, and Roger Payne, “Progressive Changes in the Songs of Humpback Whales: A Detailed Analysis of Two Seasons in Hawaii” in Communication and Behavior of Whales, edited by Roger Payne (Westview Press, 1983), 27. Reproduced with permission from Peter Tyack, Taylor & Francis, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Published: 01 June 2025
Figure 8: The 1970s Evolutions of Whale and Bird Song . 8a : Katy Payne traced spectrograms from Hawaiian humpback whale songs over the course of two seasons from 1976 to 1978, working to show not only the gross song pattern change over time as her work in Bermuda had shown, but the more detaile... More about this image found in The 1970s Evolutions of Whale and Bird Song . 8a : Katy Payne traced spect...
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Spectrograms of one village indigobird song type “tradition” changing over a period from 1972 to 1979 within a population at Lochinvar National Park, Zambia. Robert Payne [no apparent relation] wrote about “a process of accumulation of minor year-to-year changes,” such that the “song type was scarcely recognizable if 1972 songs were compared only with 1979 songs, but songs in the intervening years were intermediate in structure” (p. 23–4). From Robert Payne, “Behavioral Continuity and Change in Local Song Populations of Village Indigobirds Vidua chalybeate,” Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie 70, issue 1 (1985),” 28. Reproduced with permission from John Wiley and Sons.
Published: 01 June 2025
Figure 8b: Spectrograms of one village indigobird song type “tradition” changing over a period from 1972 to 1979 within a population at Lochinvar National Park, Zambia. Robert Payne [no apparent relation] wrote about “a process of accumulation of minor year-to-year changes,” such that the “song ty... More about this image found in Spectrograms of one village indigobird song type “tradition” changing over ...
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