Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise in 100+ Books in 2025

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Apr 30, 2013 Dolly rated it liked it

Shelves: art, germany-german, australia, poetry-song-music, science, iran-persia, virginia, nonfiction, africa, washington-dc

I wasn't sure what to expect when I borrowed this book from the library, but I did hope to learn more about the music of the insects that surround us.

I have to admit that I was hoping for a more anecdotal and less scientific account, but this book offers a mixture of both. It's an entertaining book and when my eyes weren't glassed over by the numerous sonograms, graphs, diagrams, and musical scores, I was very engaged by the narrative.

I learned quite a bit, but I wish that a CD was included wi I wasn't sure what to expect when I borrowed this book from the library, but I did hope to learn more about the music of the insects that surround us.

I have to admit that I was hoping for a more anecdotal and less scientific account, but this book offers a mixture of both. It's an entertaining book and when my eyes weren't glassed over by the numerous sonograms, graphs, diagrams, and musical scores, I was very engaged by the narrative.

I learned quite a bit, but I wish that a CD was included with the book, so I could hear the music he references throughout. The author, David Rothenberg, has produced one and even has the tracks of the CD listed in the book, but you have to purchase it separately. At least he has provided links to a website (www.bugmusicbook.com) with more information and videos (mostly of him playing music with the cicadas) as well as other sites for listeners to explore the world of insect sounds. He even offers an iTunes playlist.

interesting quotes:

Mark Changizi: "But one of the most salient beat-like sounds we make is when we walk, wherein our legs hit the ground over and over again in a regular repeating pattern...Natural human movement has a beat, and so music must have a beat." (p. 96)

"Crickets and katydids make diverse rhythmic and tonal sounds by stridulation, where one part of the body is rubbed against another. Some rub legs against wings, wings against wings, and there is a water beetle that vibrates its own penis against his abdomen underwater to produce one of the loudest sounds made by any aniimal. Cicadas make the loudest airborne insect sounds with a tymbal in their abdomen that they vibrate to make an enormous noise." (p. 118)

"I want to learn why it is that sometimes we value noise, love it for its pure power of sound, and at other times we shun it and scream as it disturbs us. This is not always a matter of personal choice, sometimes it is woven into the very fabric of our culture." (p. 162)

"All of us are searching for that enveloping soundscape that takes us beyond to indescribable realms of beauty, what the Persian philosophers once called the 'sharawadji effect,' the greatest of all sonic illusions." (p. 193)

Robert Henke: "...once I was barefoot at an outdoor rave in Australia, and I felt a searing pain in my toe that immediately went right up to my head, and I suddenly blacked out. 'Crikey,' said my hosts, 'you must've been bitten by a bull ant, mate.' After that I decided it was safer to stay home in Berlin and imagine such journeys." (p. 203)

"I have always questioned my abilities as a teacher of music because I'm really not interested in sounding quite like anyone else, and if I'm teaching, I always ask students to create their own unique musical identities, rather than telling them how to do the job, how to make the sounds required from them that that someone might ask them to make. I'm always looking for something I've never heard before, a movement of sound that will surprise me but still remain perceptible as something musical. That's why I like music tools that do not explain themselves too readily." (p. 204)

"Long before humans ever arrived, and long after we're gone, the ancient rhythm and noise of the singing insect world will live one, proving that music is in the basis and roots of continuing life. These sounds wax and wane with the temperature and the tides, and their steadfastness always reminds us that time keeps coming back upon itself, no matter how worried we are that all we love may be inadvertently destroyed. (p. 233)

new words: hocketing, gamelan, lek ...more

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Jul 10, 2015 Jim marked it as to-read

Shelves: bees-ants-worms-and-other-bugs

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