01The score
Nobody sampled a single bird. Each voice is arithmetic — oscillators, a little frequency modulation, and short bursts of filtered noise.
Birdsong is mostly pure tone with fast pitch glides and a hard percussive edge, which is exactly what a synthesiser is good at. Below are the four instruments MATINS carries, and how each one is drawn from silence.
02Field notes
The dawn chorus is a queue, not a crowd. The birds with the largest eyes sing first, in light too dim for the sparrowhawk to hunt by. MATINS keeps that order: the blackbird opens alone in the dark, and the hedge fills in only as the horizon reddens.
- What advances
- Sixty real seconds carry the sky from nautical dawn to full morning. Voices join at fixed light-levels, not fixed times — pause, and the queue waits with you.
- Second listen
- Every spark of light in the sky sits at the exact stereo position of the note that made it. Watch the left tree while the blackbird sings.
- Once in a while
- When the light is fully up, listen past the hedge. Something two-note and far off answers, perhaps one dawn in six.