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Introduction to Digital Music
with Python Programming

Introduction to Digital Music with Python Programming provides a foundation

in music and code for the beginner. It shows how coding empowers new
forms of creative expression while simplifying and automating many of
the tedious aspects of production and composition.
With the help of online, interactive examples, this book covers the fun-
damentals of rhythm, chord structure, and melodic composition along-
side the basics of digital production. Each new concept is anchored in a
real-world musical example that will have you making beats in a matter
of minutes.
Music is also a great way to learn core programming concepts such as
loops, variables, lists, and functions, Introduction to Digital Music with Python
Programming is designed for beginners of all backgrounds, including high
school students, undergraduates, and aspiring professionals, and requires
no previous experience with music or code.

Michael S. Horn is Associate Professor of Computer Science and Learn-

ing Sciences at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he
directs the Tangible Interaction Design and Learning (TIDAL) Lab.

Melanie West is a PhD student in Learning Sciences at Northwestern

University and co-founder of Tiz Media Foundation, a nonproft dedi-
cated to empowering underrepresented youth through science, technol-
ogy, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs.

Cameron Roberts is a software developer and musician living in Chicago.

He holds degrees from Northwestern University in Music Performance
and Computer Science.
Introduction to Digital
Music with Python
Programming
Learning Music with Code

Michael S. Horn, Melanie West,

and Cameron Roberts
First published 2022
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Michael S. Horn, Melanie West, and Cameron Roberts
The right of Michael S. Horn, Melanie West, and Cameron
Roberts to be identifed as author of this work has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-0-367-47083-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-47082-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-03324-0 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003033240

Typeset in Bembo
by codeMantra
Melanie dedicates her contribution of the book to the
memory of her friend, Bernie Worrell, who taught her
how to listen.
Mike dedicates his contribution to his wife, Diana Reed,
and his children, Madeleine and Lucas.
Contents

List of fgures ix
Photo and illustration credits xiii
Foreword xiv
Acknowledgments xvi

1 Why music and coding? 1

Interlude 1: Basic pop beat 12
2 Rhythm and tempo 18
Interlude 2: Custom trap beat 49
3 Pitch, harmony, and dissonance 53
Interlude 3: Melodies and lists 68
4 Chords 71
Interlude 4: Playing chords 84
5 Scales, keys, and melody 88
Interlude 5: Lean on me 100
6 Diatonic chords and chord progressions 103
Interlude 6: Random chord progressions 114
7 Frequency, fourier, and flters 117
Interlude 7: Creative efects 136
8 Note-based production efects 140
Interlude 8: How to make a drum fll 153
9 Song composition and EarSketch 158
viii Contents
Interlude 9: How to make a snare drum riser 172
10 Modular synthesis 177
Interlude 10: Drum machine function 191
11 History of music and computing 194

Appendix A: Python reference 207

Appendix B: TunePad programming reference 231
Appendix C: Music reference 240
Index 255
Figures

1.1 A TunePad program to play a simple rock beat 5

1.2 Typical DAW software 6
1.3 TunePad project workspace 13
1.4 Selecting instruments in TunePad 13
1.5 Parts of a TunePad cell 14
1.6 Python syntax error in TunePad 15
1.7 Selecting an instrument’s voice in TunePad 16
2.1 TunePad project information bar. You can click on the
tempo, time signature, or key to change the settings for
your project 19
2.2 Standard notation example 20
2.3 Waveform representation of Figure 2.2 21
2.4 Piano or MIDI roll representation of Figure 2.2 21
2.5 Common note symbols starting with a whole note (four
beats) on the top down to 16th notes on the bottom.
The notes on each new row are half the length of the
row above 23
2.6 Drums in a typical drum kit 26
2.7 Roland 808 drum sequencer 28
2.8 Changing an instrument’s voice in TunePad 28
2.9 Example of a Python syntax error in TunePad. This line
of code was missing a parenthesis symbol 29
2.10 Calling the playNote function in TunePad with two
parameters inside the parentheses 30
2.11 How to show the print output of your code in a TunePad cell 35
2.12 Anatomy of a for loop in Python 36
2.13 Example of a Python syntax error. The command
‘ployNote’ should instead say ‘playNote’ 39
2.14 Example of a Python syntax error. Here the problem is
actually on line 1, not line 2 39
2.15 TunePad composer interface provides drum and
bass sequencers 47
x Figures
2.16 Basic drum pattern 50
2.17 Declaring a for loop for hi-hat runs in Python 51
2.18 Hi-hat stutter patterns 51
3.1 Sound is made up of compression waves of air molecules
that expand outward at a speed of around 343 meters
per second. The frequency of a sound wave refers to
how fast it vibrates; amplitude refers to the intensity of
the sound; and wavelength refers to the length of one
complete cycle of the waveform 54
3.2 Drawing of the cochlea (inner ear) 54
3.3 A waveform with varying amplitude 56
3.4 A half step is the distance between two adjacent piano
keys, measured in semitones 58
3.5 The harmonic series 60
3.6 Two waves at an interval of an octave 63
3.7 The ratio between the note C 262 Hz and the note
G 393 Hz is considered a perfect ffth 65
3.8 Select the 808 Bass voice 70
4.1 C major chord with MIDI note numbers 72
4.2 Creating chords as lists of numbers in Python. Each
major chord follows the same pattern 73
4.3 How to declare a user-defned function in
Python 74
4.4 C major chord 77
4.5 D minor chord 77
4.6 B diminished chord 78
4.7 C major 7th chord 79
4.8 D minor 7th chord 79
4.9 G dominant 7th chord 80
4.10 Csus2 chord 81
4.11 Csus4 chord 81
4.12 C augmented chord 82
5.1 Whole step and half step intervals of the C major scale 89
5.2 C Major Pentatonic Scale (top) and F♯ Major Pentatonic
Scale (bottom) 91
5.3 A representation of a list with values and indices 94
5.4 The Circle of Fifths arranges musical keys 96
6.1 The seven diatonic chords of C major 104
6.2 The dominant V and viio chords share two notes in
common. This is easy to see when you line piano
diagrams up vertically 107
6.3 Flowcharts for generating chord progressions in major
and minor keys 108
6.4 Example of using the fowchart to generate a chord
progression 108
 Figures xi
6.5 C major chord in root position (top), frst inversion
(bottom left), and second inversion (bottom right) 109
6.6 Chord progression I-V-vi-IV without voice leading (top)
and with voice leading (bottom). Chords V, vi, and IV
are inverted to reduce the pitch range and to minimize
the movement of individual voices “singing” the notes
of the chords 110
7.1 Sound energy generated by a fute playing a single
note. The sound contains a series of spikes at regular
“harmonic” frequency intervals 118
7.2 Frequency combinations: fundamentals, partials,
harmonic, and inharmonic 119
7.3 A square wave (or any other audio signal) can be described
as a series of sine waves making up the partial frequencies 121
7.4 ADSR envelope 122
7.5 A spectrogram shows the intensity of frequencies in an
audio signal over time. The heatmap colors correspond
to intensity or energy at diferent frequencies. Time
is represented on the horizontal axis and frequency in
kilohertz on the vertical axis 123
7.6 Mixing console with magnetic tape 124
7.7 The mixing interface in TunePad allows you to adjust
gain, pan, and frequency response for each track
in a mix 126
7.8 Lowpass flter response curve 129
7.9 Highpass flter response curve 130
7.10 Bandpass flter response curve 131
7.11 Notch flter response curve 132
7.12 Peaking flter response curve 132
7.13 Low shelf and high shelf response curves 133
7.14 Graph of two methods for fading audio in 137
8.1 Intermediate pitches between C and C 141
8.2 Code cell in TunePad showing import statement 154
8.3 Drum fll pattern A 154
8.4 Drum fll pattern B 155
9.1 Songs are composed of nested and repeating notes,
phrases, and sections 159
9.2 The main EarSketch interface features a large library
of samples (left), an interactive timeline (middle top), a
code editor (center), and extensive documentation and
curriculum (right) 162
9.3 Close-up screenshot of EarSketch’s DAW 164
9.4 Using the ftMedia function in EarSketch 165
9.5 Snare drum riser pattern 172
9.6 Alternative snare drum riser pattern 173
xii Figures
10.1 Moog System 55 modular synthesizer 178
10.2 Audio signal from a microphone (top) and an audio
signal from an electric circuit 179
10.3 A simple Modular Synthesis patch created in TunePad 179
10.4 A patch with a delay efect 182
10.5 Two variations of an Additive Synthesis patch 184
10.6 A simple Subtractive Synthesis patch 185
10.7 An FM Synthesis patch where one sine wave is fed into
the frequency input socket of another sine wave 185
10.8 A more complex FM Synthesis patch 186
10.9 An example of physical modeling to create complex
string-like sounds 187
10.10 Complete Basic Poly/Lead patch in TunePad 188
10.11 Complete FM Synthesis example 189
11.1 The IBM 7094 computer at NASA. Public domain.
Available at Wikipedia 197
11.2 The Yamaha DX-7 200
11.3 Opcode’s Vision software for Macintosh in 1989 202
11.4 Screenshot of Teropa’s Music Mouse emulator 204
11.5 Jazz trombonist and scholar George Lewis working
on the IRCAM project. Image Credit: Michel Waisvisz
archives, ca. 1985 (used with permission) 205
A3.1 Parts of an audio wave 241
A3.2 ADSR envelope 242
A3.3 Natural notes on a keyboard 246
A3.4 Natural notes for a Treble Clef (top) and natural notes
for a Bass Clef (bottom) 247
A3.5 Circle of Fifths 250
Photo and illustration credits

George Folz (georgefolz.com) created original illustrations for

this book featured in Interludes 2, 4, and 8.
The photograph at the beginning of Chapter 3 is by
(unsplash.com/@jonathanvez)
The photograph at the beginning of Chapter 4 is by
(unsplash.com/@markus_gjengaar)
The photograph at the beginning of Chapter 5 is by
(unsplash.com/@jasmund)
The photograph at the beginning of Chapter 6 is by
(unsplash.com/@efrenbarahona3)
The photograph at the beginning of Chapter 7 is by
(unsplash.com/@pablodelafuente)
The photograph at the beginning of Chapter 8 is by
(unsplash.com/@makuph)
The photograph at the beginning of Chapter 10 is by
(unsplash.com/@didierjoomun)
The photograph at the beginning of Interlude 9 is by
(unsplash.com/@halacious)
The photograph at the beginning of Chapter 11 is by deepsonic
(fickr.com/people/73143485@N02). Creative
Commons License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0.
Foreword

When I was a kid growing up in Texas, I “learned” how to play viola. I

put learned in quotes because it was really just a process of rote memori-
zation—hours and hours of playing the same songs over and over again.
I learned how to read sheet music, but only to the extent that I knew the
note names and could translate them into the grossest of physical move-
ments. I never learned to read music as literature, to understand its deeper
meaning, structure, or historical context. I never understood anything
about music theory beyond being annoyed that I had to pay attention to
accidentals in diferent keys. I never composed anything, not even infor-
mally scratching out a tune. I never developed habits of deep listening,
of taking songs apart in my head and puzzling over how they were put
together in the frst place. I never played just for fun. And, despite the best
intentions of my parents and teachers, I never fell in love with music.
Learning how to code was the complete opposite experience for me. I
was largely self-taught. The courses I took in school were electives that I
chose for myself. Teachers gave me important scafolding at just the right
times, but it never felt forced. I spent hours working on games or other
projects (probably when I should have been practicing viola). I drew art-
work, planned out algorithms, and even synthesized my own rudimentary
sound efects. I had no idea what I was doing, but that was liberating. No
one was around to point out my mistakes or to show me how to do things
the “right” way (at least, not until college). I learned how to fgure things
out for myself, and the skills I picked up from those experiences are still
relevant today. I fell in love with coding.1
But I know many people whose stories are fipped 180 degrees. For
them, music was so personally, socially, and culturally motivating that
they couldn’t get enough. They’d practice for hours and hours, not just for
fun but for something much deeper. For some it was an instrument like
the guitar that got them started. For others it was an app like GarageBand
that gave them a playful entry point into musical ideas. To the extent that
they had coding experiences, those experiences ranged from uninspiring
to of-putting. It’s not that they necessarily hated coding, but it was some-
thing they saw as not being for them.
 Foreword xv
In the foreword of his book, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Pow-
erful Ideas, Seymour Papert wrote that he “fell in love with gears” as a way
of helping us imagine a future in which children (like me) would fall in
love with computer programming, not for its own sake, but for the cre-
ative worlds and powerful ideas that programming could open up. Part of
what he was saying was that love and learning go hand in hand, and that
computers could be an entry point into many creative and artistic domains
such as mathematics and music. Coding can revitalize subjects that have
become painfully rote in schools.
The process of developing TunePad over the past several years has been
a fascinating rediscovery of musical ideas for me. Code has given me a dif-
ferent kind of language for thinking about things like rhythm, chords, and
harmony. I can experiment with composition unencumbered by my mal-
adroit hands. Music has become something creative and alive in a way that
it never was for me before. Music theory is no longer a thicket of confusing
terminology and instead has become a fascinating world of mathematical
beauty that structures the creative process.
Melanie, Cameron, and I hope that this book gives you a similarly joy-
ful learning experience with music and code. We hope that you feel em-
powered to explore the algorithmic and mathematical beauty of music.
We hope that you discover, as we have, that music and code reinforce one
another in surprising and powerful ways that open new creative opportu-
nities for you. We hope that, regardless of your starting point—as a coder,
as a musician, as neither, as both—you will discover something new about
yourself and what you can become.

Michael Horn
Chicago, Illinois ( July 2021)

Note
1 I was also fortunate to have grown up in a time and place where these ac-
tivities were seen as socially acceptable for a person of my background and
identity.
Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the many people who have helped make this book possi-
ble. We especially want to thank Dr. Amartya Banerjee who has anchored
the TunePad development team. The TunePad project grew out of a col-
laboration with the EarSketch team at Georgia Tech that was initiated by
Dr. Brian Magerko and Dr. Jason Freeman. We thank Dr. Nichole Pinkard,
Dr. Amy Pratt, and the Northwestern Ofce of Community Education
Partnerships. We thank the TIDAL Lab team at Northwestern University
including Mmachi Obiorah, Wade Berger, Izaiah Wallace, Brian Andrus,
Jamie Gorrson, Matthew Brucker, Lexie Zhao, Ayse Hunt, Kallayah
Henderson, Cortez Watson Jr., Sachin Srivastava, and many, many oth-
ers. We thank our community partners including the Evanston Public
Library, the NAACP of DuPage County, the James R. Jordan Foun-
dation, the Meta Media program at the McGaw YMCA, the Hip-Hop
FIRM, EvanSTEM, the Center for Creative Entrepreneurship, Studio
2112, the James R. Jordan Boys and Girls Club, Lake View High School
and Marshaun Brooks, Lane Tech High School and Amy Wozniak, Gary
Comer Youth Centers, and Chicago Youth Centers, Project Exploration,
BBF Family Services, and the Museum of Science and Industry. Shout-
outs to Marcus Prince and Sam Carroll who gave us insightful curriculum
ideas, to Tom Knapp who contributed to TunePad’s graphical design, and
to the amazing interns we’ve worried with over the years.
Special thanks go to the people who gave input into the ideas and text
of this manuscript including George Papajohn and Diana Reed. We also
thank Joseph Mahanes, Abbie Reeves, and others who put up with us
while we worked on this book.
TunePad was created by the Tangible Interaction Design and Learn-
ing (TIDAL) Lab at Northwestern University in collaboration with the
EarSketch team at the Georgia Institute of Technology and with fund-
ing from the National Science Foundation (grants DRL-1612619, DRL-
1451762, and DRL-1837661) and the Verizon Foundation. Any opinions,
fndings, and/or recommendations expressed in the material are those of
the authors and do not necessarily refect the views of the funders.
1 Why music and coding?

Welcome to Introduction to Digital Music with Python: Learning Music with

Code. This book is designed for people who love music and are interested in
the intersection of music and coding. Maybe you’re an aspiring musician
or music producer who wants to know more about coding and what it can
do. Or maybe you already know a little about coding, and you want to
expand your creative musical horizon. Or maybe you’re a total beginner
in both. Regardless of your starting point, this book is designed for you to
learn about music and coding as mutually reinforcing skills. Code gives us
an elegant language to think about musical ideas, and music gives us a con-
text within which code makes sense and is immediately useful. Together
they form a powerful new way to create music that will be interconnected
with digital production tools of the future.
More and more code will be used to produce music, to compose music,
and even to perform music for live audiences. Digital production tools
such as Logic, Reason, Pro Tools, FL Studio, and Ableton Live are com-
plex software applications created with millions of lines of code written by
huge teams of software engineers. With all of these tools you can write
code to create custom plugins and efects. Beyond production tools, live
coding is an emerging form of musical performance art in which Infor-
mation Age DJs write computer code to generate music in real time for
live audiences.
In other ways, we’re still on the cusp of a radical transformation in the
way that we use code to create music. The history of innovation in music
has always been entwined with innovation in technology. Whether we’re
DOI: 10.4324/9781003033240-1
2 Why music and coding?
talking about Franz Liszt in the 19th century, who pioneered the persona
of the modern music virtuoso based on technological breakthroughs of
the piano,1 or DJ Kool Herc in the 20th century, who pioneered hip-hop
with two turntables and a crate full of funk records in the Bronx, tech-
nologies have created new opportunities for musical expression that have
challenged the status quo and given birth to new genres. We don’t have
the Franz Liszt or DJ Kool Herc of coding yet, but it’s only a matter of
time before the coding virtuosos of tomorrow expand the boundaries of
what’s possible in musical composition, production, and performance.

1.1 What is Python?

In this book you’ll learn how to create your own digital music using a
computer programming language called Python. If you’re not familiar
with programming languages, Python is a general-purpose language frst
released in the 1990s that is now one of the most widely used languages in
the world. Python is designed to be easy to read and write, which makes it
a popular choice for beginners. It’s also fully featured and powerful, mak-
ing it a good choice for professionals working in felds as diverse as data
science, web development, the arts, and video game development. Because
Python has been around for decades, it runs on every major computer
operating system. The examples in this book even use a version of Python
that runs directly inside of your web browser without the need for any
special software installation.
Unlike many other common beginner programming languages, Python
is “text-based”, which means that you type code into an editor instead of
dragging code blocks on the computer screen. This makes Python a little
harder to learn than other beginner languages, but it also greatly expands
what you can do. By the time you get through this book you should feel
comfortable writing short Python programs and have the conceptual tools
you need to explore more on your own.

1.2 What this book is not

Before we get into a concrete example of what you can do with a little bit
of code, just a quick note about what this book is not. This book is not a
comprehensive guide to Python programming. There are many excellent
books and tutorials designed for beginners, several of which are free.2
This book is also not a comprehensive guide to music theory or Western
music notation. We’ll get into the core ideas behind rhythm, harmony,
melody, and composition, but there are, again, many other resources avail-
able for beginners who want to go deeper. What we’re ofering is a dif-
ferent approach that combines learning music with learning code in equal
measure.
 Why music and coding? 3
1.3 What this book is
What we will do is give you an intuitive understanding of the fundamen-
tal concepts behind both music and coding. Code and music are highly
technical skills, full of arcane symbols and terminology, that seem almost
designed to intimidate beginners. In this book we’ll put core concepts
to use immediately to start making music. You’ll get to play with ideas
at your own pace and get instant feedback as you bring ideas to life. We
skip most of the technical jargon and minutiae for now—that can come
later. Instead, we focus on developing your confdence and understanding.
Importantly, the skills, tools, and ways of thinking that we introduce in
this book will be broadly applicable in many other areas as well. You’ll be
working in Python code, but the core structures of variables, functions,
loops, conditional logical, and classes are the same across many program-
ming languages including JavaScript, Java, C, C++, and C#. After you
learn one programming language, each additional language is that much
easier to pick up.

1.4 TunePad and EarSketch

This book uses two free online platforms that combine music and
Python coding. The frst, called TunePad (https://tunepad.com), was
developed by a team of researchers at Northwestern University in
Chicago. TunePad lets you create short musical loops that you can
layer together using a simple digital audio workstation (DAW) inter-
face. The second platform, called EarSketch (https://earsketch.gatech.
edu), was created by researchers at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. EarSketch
uses Python code to arrange samples and loops into full-length com-
positions. Both platforms are browser-based apps, so all you need to
get started is a computer (tablets or Chromebooks are fne), an inter-
net connection, and a web browser like Chrome or Firefox. External
speakers or headphones are also nice but not required. Both platforms
have been around for years and have been used by many thousands
of students from middle school all the way up to college and beyond.
TunePad and EarSketch are designed primarily as learning platforms,
but there are easy ways to export your work to professional production
software if you want to go further.

1.5 A quick example

Here’s a quick example of what coding in Python looks like. This program
runs in TunePad to create a simple beat pattern, variants of which have
been used in literally thousands of songs such as Blinding Lights by The
Weeknd and Roses by SAINt JHN.
4 Why music and coding?

1 playNote(1) # play a kick drum sound

2 playNote(2) # play a snare drum sound
3 playNote(1)
4 playNote(2)
5 rewind(4) # rewind 4 beats
6 for i in range(4):
7 rest(0.5)
8 playNote(4, beats = 0.5) # play hat for a half beat

These eight lines of Python code tell TunePad to play a pattern of kick
drums, snare drums, and high-hats. Most of the lines are playNote in-
structions, and, as you might have guessed, those instructions tell TunePad
to play musical sounds indicated by the numbers inside of the parentheses.
This example also includes something called a loop on line 6. Don’t worry
too much about the details yet, but the loop is an easy way to repeat a set
of actions over and over again. In this case, the loop tells Python to repeat
lines 7 and 8 four times in a row. The screenshot (Figure 1.1) shows what
this looks like in TunePad. You can try out the example for yourself with
this link: https://tunepad.com/examples/roses.

1.6 Five reasons to learn code

Now that you’ve seen a brief example of what you can do with a few lines
of Python code, here are our top fve reasons to get started with program-
ming and music if you’re still in doubt.

1.6.1 REASON 1: Like it or note, music is already defned by code

Looking across the modern musical landscape, it’s clear that music is al-
ready defned by code. One of the biggest common factors of almost all
modern music from any popular genre is that everything is edited, if not
created entirely, with sophisticated computer software. It’s hard to over-
state how profoundly such software has shaped the sound of music in the
21st century. Relatively inexpensive DAW applications and the myriad
ubiquitous plugins that work across platforms have had a disruptive and
democratizing efect across the music industry. Think about efects plugins
like autotune, reverb, or the ability to change the pitch of a sample with-
out changing the tempo. These efects are all generated with sophisticated
software. Production studios the size of small ofces containing hundreds
of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment now ft on the screen of a
laptop computer available to any aspiring producer with passion, a WiFi
 Why music and coding? 5

Figure 1.1 A TunePad program to play a simple rock beat.

connection, and a small budget. The reasons behind the shift to digital
production tools are obvious. Computers have gotten to a point where
they are cheap enough, fast enough, and capacious enough to do real-time
audio editing. We can convert sound waves into editable digital informa-
tion with microsecond precision and then hear the efects of our changes
in real time. These DAWs didn’t just appear out of nowhere. They were
constructed by huge teams of software engineers writing code—millions
of lines of it. As an example, TunePad was created with over 1.5 million
lines of code written in over a dozen computer languages such as Python,
HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and Dart. Regardless of how you feel about the
digital nature of modern music, it’s not going away. Learning to code will
6 Why music and coding?

Figure 1.2 Typical DAW software.

help you understand a little more about how all of this works under the
hood. More to the point, it’s increasingly common for producers to write
their own code to manipulate sound. For example, in Logic, you can write
JavaScript code to process incoming MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital
Interface) data to do things like create custom arpeggiators. Learning to
code can give you more control and help expand your creative potential
(Figure 1.2).

1.6.2 REASON 2: Code is a powerful way to make music

We don’t always think about it this way, but music is algorithmic in
nature—it’s full of mathematical relationships, logical structure, and
recursive patterns. The beauty of the Baroque fugue is in part a re-
fection of the beauty of the mathematical and computational ideas
behind the music. We call Bach a genius not just because his music is
so compelling, but also because he was able to hold complex algorithms
in his mind and then transcribe them to paper using the representation
system that we call Western music notation. In other words, music
notation is a language for recording the output of the composition
process, but not a language for capturing the algorithmic nature of the
composition process itself.
Code, on the other hand, is a language specifcally designed to capture
mathematical relationships, logical structure, and recursive patterns. For
example, take the stuttered hi-hat patterns that are one of the defning
characteristics of trap music. Here are a few lines of Python code that gen-
erate randomized hi-hat stutters that can bring an otherwise conventional
beat to life with sparkling energy.
 Why music and coding? 7

1 for _ in range(16):
2 if randint(6) > 1: # roll the die for a random number
3 playNote(4, beats=0.5) # play an eighth note
4 else:
5 playNote(4, beats=0.25) # or play 16th notes
6 playNote(4, beats=0.25)

Or, as another example, here’s a two-line Python program that plays a

snare drum riser efect common in house, EDM, or pop music. You’ll of-
ten hear this technique right before the beat drops. This code uses a decay
function so that each successive note is a little shorter resulting in a gradual
acceleration efect. Don’t worry about how all of this works just yet. We’ll
walk you through the details as we go along.

1 for i in range(50): # play 50 snares

2 playNote(2, beats = pow(2, -0.09 * i))

What’s cool about these efects is that they’re parameterized. Because the
code describes the algorithms to generate music, and not the music itself, it
means we can create infnite variation by adjusting the numbers involved.
For example, in the trap hi-hat code, we can easily play around with how
frequently stuttered hats are inserted into the pattern by increasing or de-
creasing one number. You can think of code as something like a power drill;
you can swap out diferent bits to make holes of diferent sizes. The drill bits
are like parameters that change what the tool does in each specifc instance.
In the same way, algorithms are vastly more general-purpose tools that can
accomplish myriad tasks by changing the input parameters.
Creating a snare drum riser with code is obviously a very diferent kind
of thing than picking up two drumsticks and banging out a pattern on
a real drum. And, to be clear, we’re not advocating for code to replace
learning how to perform with live musical instruments. But, code can be
another tool in your musical repertoire for generating repetitive patterns,
exploring mathematical ideas, or playing sequences that are too fast or
intricate to play by hand.

1.6.3 REASON 3: Code lets you build your own musical toolkit
Becoming a professional in any feld is about developing expertise with
tools—acquiring equipment and knowing how to use it. Clearly, this
is true in the music industry, but it’s also true in software. Professional
software engineers acquire specialized equipment and software packages.
They develop expertise in a range of programming languages and techni-
cal frameworks. But, they also build their own specialized tools that they
use across projects. In this book, we’ll show you how to build up your own
8 Why music and coding?
library of Python functions. You can think of functions as specialized tools
that you create to perform diferent musical tasks. In addition to the exam-
ples we described above, you might write a function to generate a chord
progression or play an arpeggio, and you can use functions again and again
across many musical projects.

1.6.4 REASON 4: Code is useful for a thousand and one other things
As we mentioned earlier in this chapter, Python is one of the most power-
ful, multi-purpose languages in the world. It’s used to create web servers
and social media platforms as much as video games, animation, and music.
It’s used for research and data science, politics and journalism. Knowing a
little Python gives you access to powerful machine learning and artifcial
intelligence (AI/ML) techniques that are poised to transform most aspects
of human work, including in creative domains such as music. Python is
both a scripting language and a software engineering platform—equal
parts duct tape and table saw—and it’s capable of everything from quick
fxes to durable software applications. Learning a little Python won’t make
you a software engineer, just like learning a few guitar chords won’t make
you a performance musician. But it’s a start down a path. An open door
that was previously closed, and a new way of using your mind and a new
way of thinking about music.

1.6.5 REASON 5: Coding makes us more human

When we think about learning to code, we tend to think about the eco-
nomic payof. You’ll hear arguments that learning to code is a resume
builder and a path to a high-paying job. It’s not that this perspective is
wrong, but it might be the wrong reason for you to learn how to code.
Just like people who are good at music love music, people who are good
at coding tend to love coding. The craft of building software can be te-
dious and frustrating, but it can also be rewarding. It’s a way to express
oneself creatively and to engage in craftwork. People don’t learn to knit,
cook, or play an instrument for the lucrative career paths that these pur-
suits open up—although by all means those pursuits can lead to remark-
able careers. People learn these things because they have a passion for them.
Because they are personally fulflling. These passions connect us to cen-
turies of tradition; they connect us to communities of teachers, learners,
and practitioners; and, in the end, they make us more human. So when
things get a little frustrating—and things always get a little frustrating
when you’re learning any worthwhile skill—remember that just like po-
etry, literature, or music, code is an art as much as it is a science. And, just
like woodworking, knitting, or cooking, code is a craft as much as it is
an engineering discipline. Be patient and give yourself a chance to fall in
love with coding.
 Why music and coding? 9
1.7 The future of music and code
Before we get on with the book, we wanted to leave you with a brief
thought about the future of technology, music, and code. For as long as
there have been people on this planet there has been music. And, as long
as there has been music, people have created technology to expand and en-
hance their creative potential. A drum is a kind of technology—a piece of
animal hide stretched across a hollow log and tied in place. It’s a polylithic
accomplishment, an assembly of parts that requires skill and craft to make.
One must know how to prepare animal hide, to make rope from plant
fber, and to craft and sharpen tools. More than that, one must know how
to perform with the drum, to connect with an audience, to enchant them
to move their bodies through an emotional and rhythmic connection to
the beat. Technology brings together materials and tools with knowledge.
People must have knowledge both to craft an artifact and to wield it. And,
over time—over generations—that knowledge is refned as it gets passed
down from teacher to student. It becomes stylized and diversifed. Tools,
artifacts, knowledge, and practice all become something greater. Some-
thing we call culture.
Again and again the world of music has been disrupted, democratized,
and redefned by new technologies. Hip-hop was a rebellion against the
musical status quo fueled by low-cost technologies like recordable cas-
sette tapes, turntables, and 808 drum machines. Early innovators shat-
tered norms of artistic expression, redefning music, poetry, visual art,
and dance in the process. Inexpensive access to technology coupled with
a need for new forms of authentic self-expression was a match to the dry
tinder of racial and economic oppression.
It’s hard to overstate how quickly the world is still changing as a re-
sult of technological advancements. Digital artifacts and infrastructures
are so ubiquitous that they have reconfgured social, economic, legal, and
political systems; revolutionized scientifc research; upended the arts and
culture; and even wormed their way into the most intimate aspects of our
personal and romantic lives. We’ve already talked about the transforma-
tive impact that digital tools have had on the world of music in the 21st
century, but the exhilarating (and scary) part is that we’re on the precipice
of another wave of transformation in which human creativity will be re-
defned by Artifcial Intelligence AI and Machine Learning ML. Imagine
AI accompanists that can improvise harmonies or melodies in real time
with human musicians. Or deep learning algorithms that can listen to
millions of songs and innovate music in the same genre. Or silicon poets
that grasp human language well enough to compose intricate rap lyrics.
Or machines with trillions of transistor synapses so complex that they be-
gin to “dream”—inverted machine learning algorithms that ooze imagery
unhinged enough to disturb the absinthe slumber of surrealist painters.
Now, imagine that this is not speculative science fction, but the reality of
10 Why music and coding?
our world today. These things are here now and already challenging what
we mean by human creativity. What are the implications of a society of
digital creative cyborgs?
But here’s the trick: we’ve always been cyborgs. Western music notation
is as much a technology as Python code. Becoming literate in any suf-
ciently advanced representation system profoundly shapes how we think
about and perceive the world around us. Classical music notation, theory,
and practice shaped the mind of Beethoven as much as he shaped music
with it—so much so that he was still able to compose many of his most
famous works while almost totally deaf. Beethoven was a creative cyborg
enhanced by the technology of Western music notation and theory. The
diference is that now we’ve externalized many of the cognitive processes
into machines that think alongside us. And, increasingly, these tools are
available to everyone. How that changes what it means to be a creative
human being is anyone’s guess.

1.8 Book overview

We’re excited to have you with us on this journey through music and
code. Here’s a short guide for where we go from here. Chapters 2 and 3
cover the foundations of rhythm, pitch, and harmony. These chapters are
designed to move quickly and get you coding in Python early on. We’ll
cover Python variables, loops, which both connect directly to musical
concepts. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 cover the foundations of chords, scales,
and keys using Python lists, functions, and data structures. Chapters 7, 8,
and 10 shift from music composition to music production covering topics
such as the frequency domain, modular synthesis, and other production
efects. In Chapter 9, we switch to the EarSketch platform to talk about
how various musical elements are combined to compose full-length songs.
Finally, Chapter 11 provides a short overview of the history of music and
code along with a glimpse of what the future might hold. Between each
chapter, we provide a series of short interludes that are like step-by-step
tutorials to introduce new music and coding concepts.
A few notes about how to read this book. Any time we include Python
code, it will be shown in a programming font like this:
playNote(60)

Sometimes we’ll write code in a table with line numbers so that we can re-
fer to specifc lines. When we introduce new terms, we’ll bold the word.
If you get confused by any of the programming or music terminology,
check out the appendices, which contain quick overviews of all of the
important concepts. We’ll often invite you to follow along with online
examples. The best way to learn is by doing it yourself, so we strongly
 Why music and coding? 11
encourage you to try coding in Python online as you go through the
chapters.

Notes
1 It’s said that fans were so infatuated with Liszt’s piano “rockstar” status that
they fought over his silk handkerchiefs and velvet gloves at his performances.
2 We recommend https://www.w3schools.com/python/.
Interlude 1
BASIC POP BEAT

In this interlude we’re going to get familiar with the TunePad interface by
creating a basic rock beat in the style of songs like Roses by SAINt JHN.
You can follow along online by visiting
https://tunepad.com/interlude/pop-beat

STEP 1: Deep listening

It’s good to get in the habit of deep listening. Deep listening is the prac-
tice of trying every possible way of listening to sounds. Start by loading a
favorite song in a streaming service and listening—really listening—to it.
Take the song apart element by element. What sounds do you hear? How
are they layered together? When do diferent parts come into the track and
how do they change over time? Think about how the producer balances
sounds across the frequency spectrum or opens up space for transitions in
the lyrics. Try focusing on just the drums. Can you start to recognize the
individual percussion sounds and their rhythmic patterns?

STEP 2: Create a new TunePad project

Visit https://tunepad.com on a laptop or Chromebook and set up an account.1
If you already have a gmail address, you can use your existing account. Af-
ter signing in, click on the New Project button to create an empty project
workspace. Your project will look something like this (Figure 1.3):

DOI: 10.4324/9781003033240-2
 Basic pop beat 13

Figure 1.3 TunePad project workspace.

STEP 3: Kick drums

In your project window, click on the ADD CELL button and then select
Drums (Figure 1.4).
In TunePad you can think of a “cell” as an instrument that you can
program to play music. Name the new instrument “Kicks” and then add
this Python code.

1 # play four kick drums

2 playNote(1)
3 playNote(1)
4 playNote(1)
5 playNote(1)

Figure 1.4 Selecting instruments in TunePad.

Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 WINTER FERN-HUNTING

THE spring of this, our new year of 1909, is set by the wise makers of calendars to
begin at the vernal equinox, say the twenty-first of March, but the weatherwise know
that on that date eastern Massachusetts is still in the thrall of winter, and spring, as they
see it, is not due till a month later.
Yet they are both wrong, and we need but go into the woods now to prove it. The
spring in fact is already here. The new life in which it is to express itself in a thousand
forms is already growing and much of it had its beginning in late August or early
September of last year. The wind out of the north may retard it indeed, but it needs but
a touch of the south wind to start it in motion again, and the deep snows that are yet to
come and bury it so that the waves of arctic atmosphere that may roll over its head for
weeks will never be able to touch it are a help.
Many a hardy little spring plant blooms first, not in April as we are apt to think, but
more likely in January, though it may be two feet deep beneath the snow and ice and
unseen by any living creature. To go no farther than my own garden, I have known a
late January thaw, rapidly carrying off deep snow, to reveal the “ladies’ delights” in
bloom beneath an overarching crust of ice. The warm snow blankets had effectually
insulated the autumn grown buds from the zero temperature two feet above, and the
warmth of the earth beneath had not only passed through the frost but melted a little
cavern beneath the snow, and there the hardy plants had responded to the impulse of
the spring that was already with them.
In this wise the chickweed blooms the year round though rarely are circumstances
such that we note it in the winter months. Now and then the hepatica opens shy blue
eyes beneath the enfolding snow and it is common in times of open weather in
midwinter to read newspaper reports of the blooming of dandelions in December, or
January. These are just as much in bloom on other winters but the snow covers them
from sight and it takes a thaw which sweeps the ground clear of snow to reveal them.
It is good now and then to get a green Christmas such as we have just had, for in it
we may go forth into the fields and realize that the spring has not retreated to the
Bahamas, but merely to the subsoil, whence it slips, full of warmth and thrill, on any
sunshiny day. If we will but seek the right places we need not search long to find April
all about us, though they may be cutting ten-inch ice on the pond and winter overcoats
be the prevailing wear.
To-day I found young and thrifty plants, green and succulent, of two varieties of
fern that are not common in my neighborhood and that I had never suspected in that
location. I had passed them amid the universal green of summer without noticing them,
but now their color stood out among the prevailing browns and grays as vividly as
yellow blossoms do in a June meadow.
Yet I sought the greater ferns of my acquaintance in vain in many an accustomed
place. Down by the fountain head is a spot where the black muck, cushioned with
yielding sphagnum, slopes gently upward to firmer ground beneath the maples till these
give way to the birches on the drier hillside. Here the ostrich fern waved its seven-foot
fronds in feathery beauty amid the musky twilight of the swamp all summer long.
It was as if giants, playing battledore, had driven a hundred green shuttlecocks to
land in the woodcock-haunted shelter. The tangle of their fronds was chin high and you
smashed your way through their woody stipes with difficulty, so strong and thick were
they. Now they have vanished and scarcely a trace of their presence remains. Brown
and brittle stalks rise a little from the earth here and there, and if you search among
fallen leaves you may find the ends of their rootstalks with the growth for next year
coiled in compact bundles there, ready to unfold.
From these rootstalks spring in all directions slender underground runners whence
will grow new plants. But none of this is visible. The only reminder of that once
luxurious thicket is the brittle, brown stalks that still, here and there, protrude from the
fallen leaves.
It is difficult to see where they all went, but there is something savoring of the
supernatural about ferns, anyway. Shakspeare says: “We have the receipt of fern-seed;
we walk invisible.” For men to use this receipt the seed must be garnered on St. John’s
eve in a white napkin with such and such incantations properly recited. The
Struthiopteris germanica had plenty of fern-seed on St. John’s eve. It must have used
the old-time incantations with success, for all the giant shuttlecocks that thronged the
swale with a close-set tangle of feathery green have vanished.
I sought another moist and shady woodland where all the early spring the ground
was a warm pinky brown with the fuzz of uncurling fiddle heads, and later the brown,
leaf-carpeted earth was hidden in a delicate lace patterned of the young fronds of the
cinnamon and the interrupted fern. To this woodland came the yellow-warblers for the
soft fuzz for use in nest building, it compacting readily into a felt-like mass that is at
once yielding and durable. The cinnamon fern when it has reached any size has an
underground stump that is as woody and tough almost as that of a tree. Its strong fronds
are next to those of the ostrich-fern in the woody vigor of their stipes. Surely these
might have lasted. Yet not one form of fern life was visible in this once thronged wood.
Like the ostrich ferns they had poured their own fern-seed on their heads and
whispered the correct incantation at the coming of the first chill wind. I am inclined to
think it all happened in a jiffy, when happen it did, for I have been back and forth
through that part of the wood all the fall and I cannot recall the day on which they were
first missing. It seems as if I would have noticed their gradual crumbling and decay.
 The same is true of the clumps of Osmunda regalis that grew here and there along
the pond shore. Rightly named “regalis” they stood in royal beauty four or five feet tall
and leaning over the water’s edge admired the bipinnate grace of their fronds, while the
tallest stalks bore aloft the clusters of spore cases that looked like long spikes of
plumed flowers. No wonder the plant which is common to England also drew the
notice of Wordsworth, who refers to it as—

“that tall fern,

So stately, of the queen Osmunda named.
Plant lovelier in its own retired abode
On Grassmere beach than naiad by the side
Of Grecian brook.”

Flowering fern it is rightly named, too, but it had flowered and gone, and I found of
all its regal beauty but a single stalk with brown spore-cases held rigidly aloft among a
tangle of brown leaves and bog grass.
Then I looked for the sensitive fern. This with its slender, creeping rootstock
sending up single fronds is less woody than any of the others and I began to suspect
that it would have disappeared utterly. So the sterile fronds had. There was no trace of
them in spots that in summer were a perfect tangle. But this was not true of the fertile
stalks. Here and there these, like the one of the royal fern, stood erect and bore their
close-lipped spore cases, seal-brown and stiff, high above dead leaves and other decay
of fragile annuals.
All this made a disheartening fern chase, and I turned to the steep side of the
hemlock-shaded northern hill, sure of one hardy variety that would have no use for
invisibility, however chill the north wind might blow. No smile of direct sunlight ever
touches this hill. It is set so steep that only the mid-summer midday sun overtops its
slant and this the dense hemlock foliage shuts out. No woodland grasses grow in its
dense shadow and only here and there the partridge berry and the pyrola creep down a
little from the top of the ridge where some sunlight slips in. Yet in its densest part the
Christmas fern revels and throws up fronds that seem to catch some of their dark
beauty from the deep green twilight of the place. In the spring these stand in varying
degrees of erectness, but autumn seems to bring a change in the cellular structure of the
lower part of the stipe and weaken it so that the fronds fall flat upon the earth. They
lose none of their firm texture or color, however, and be the temperature ever so low or
the snow ever so deep they undergo no further change till the next spring fronds are
well under way. Sometimes even in mid-summer you may find the fronds of the year
before, somewhat fungi-encumbered and darkened with age, but still green.
No other fern grows in the denser portions of this hemlock twilight, though the
Christmas fern clings close to it, and does not spread to the more open glades on other
portions of the hill. Another northern hill of similar steepness but shaded by an old
growth of pines through which certain sunlight filters during most of the day has
specimens of the Polystichum acrostichoides growing only in its most sheltered nooks
from which they do not seem to spread even to the brighter spots near by on the same
declivity. Hence I infer that the plant prefers the twilight, and does not thrive in even
occasional sunlight.
Just at the base of this second hill, however, where cool springs begin to bubble
forth in the mottled shadow, I caught a gleam of a lighter, lovelier green that was like a
dapple of sunlight on clumps of Christmas ferns, and I came near passing it by for that.
Then, because I had never seen this fern growing in a dapple of sunlight, I went to it
and found that I had chanced upon a group of the spinulose wood fern. The plumose
fronds showed no more winter effects than did those of the Christmas ferns. The keen
frosts had not shrivelled them, nor was there any hint of the brown that might come
with the ripening of leaves or the departure of sap.
Like the other ferns they had suffered a failing of tissues near the base of the stipe,
but pinnules, midribs and rachis were as softly, radiantly green as they had been under
the full warmth of the summer sun. Owing to this failure of tissues in the stipe they lay
flat to the ground, but they were still beautiful, perhaps more so than they had been
when they stood more erect in summer, and were obscured and hidden by the other
green things of the wood. I know I tramped within a few feet of them again and again
last summer without noticing them, yet to-day they caught my eye a long way off, and
held it in admiration even after a long and close inspection.
Farther down in the very swamp, laid flat along the sphagnum and oftentimes
frozen to it, were fronds of the crested shield-fern and the patches of these tolled me far
from my find and it was only on coming back for another look that I discovered the
prettiest thing about it. That was, near by and half sheltered by tips of the elder fronds,
young plants of the same variety, just advancing from the prothallus stage and having
one or two miniature fronds like those of the parent plant but not more than two or
three inches long.
These looked so tiny as compared with the mature ferns, but were so erect and
confident, so fresh and green and very much alive though the temperature about them
night after night had been far below freezing and their roots then stood in ice, that it
was worth a journey, just to look at them. How their tender tissues had stood the
temperature of ten above zero that had surrounded them a few nights before is more
than I can answer. The faintest touch of frost kills the fronds of the great seemingly
tough cinnamon and ostrich ferns. Yet these dainty little plants of Nephrodium
spinulosum with their miniature fronds of tender lacework had not even wilted or
cowered before deep and continued cold as had the stalks of their elders of the same
species, but stood erect, nonchalant and seemingly eagerly growing still.
We may say if we will that it is all a part of that magic of youth that makes a
million miracles each spring but that does not explain it. Why should these be so strong
and full of life when the fronds of the hay-scented fern, for instance, have been
shrivelled to dry and crumbling brown fragments under the same conditions? I cannot
answer this either.
Last of all I thought of the polypodys that grow in the rock crevices all down along
the glen, and went to see how they fared. It has been a hard year for these little fellows.
There must have been weeks at a time during the scorching days of the long summer’s
drought that their roots, clinging precariously in rock crevices and dependent for
moisture wholly on rain and dew, were dry to the tips. The very heat of the rock itself
under the blister of the sun would not only evaporate all moisture, but would so remain
in the rock all night as to prevent any dew from condensing on it.
I had seen the polypodys at midday curled up on themselves seemingly nothing but
dried tissues that could never be again infused with the breath of green life. Yet, let
there come but the briefest of showers and you would see them uncurl, lift their fronds
to the breeze, and go on as cheerily as their lower level neighbors the lady-ferns whose
pinnules flashed in the drip of the splashing stream and whose roots bathed in the
shallows.
The summer must have weakened them. Were they the sort to shrivel at the touch of
the freezing wind and vanish into the fern-seed magic of invisibility? Not they. The
slender crevice of black dirt in which their roots grow was black adamant with frost,
but the polypodys swayed in the biting wind as jauntily as they had in the soft airs of
summer and were as green and unharmed by the winter thus far as the Christmas ferns
had been.
While I gazed at them, admiring their toughness and courage, my eye caught a bit
of greenery on the rock high above and I had found the second unexpected fern of my
winter day’s hunt, for there from a crevice dripped the rounded, finely crenate, dark
green pinnæ of Asplenium trichomanes, the maidenhair spleenwort.
Many a day during the summer had I sat on that ledge, listening to the prattle of the
brook down the glen and watching the demoiselle flies flit coquettishly up and down
stream while the dragonflies with masculine directness darted hither and thither. The
polypodys must have often dropped their fern-seed on my head, but the magic that they
invoked with it must have been of the sort that made not me, but the little fern above
invisible, for it remained for this winter day of a green Christmas week to show me its
fragile beauty still green and undisturbed in the winter weather. No other evidence was
needed, nor could I have any so good, to prove that spring is indeed here before the
winter comes, and though the cold and snow may retard they cannot prevent it from
reaching the full beauty and climax of maturity.
 THE BARE HILLS IN MIDWINTER

TOWARD morning the south rain, whose downpour was the climax of the January
thaw, ceased, and in the warm silence that followed Great Blue Hill seemed like a
gigantic puffball growing out of the moist twilight into the dryer upper atmosphere of
dawn. Standing on its rounded dome you had a singular sense of being swung with it
upward and eastward to meet the light. At such times the whirling of the earth on its
axis is so very real that one wonders that the ancients did not discover it long before
they did. Surely their mountaineers must have known.
After a little the battlemented donjon of the observatory looms clear and you begin
to notice other details of the gray earth beneath your feet. The south wind has brought
and left with you for a brief space the atmosphere of the Bermudas, and you need only
the joyous hubbub of bird songs to think it June instead of January. Instead there is a
breathless silence that is like resignation and a portent all in one. Breathing this soft air
in the golden glow of daybreak it seems as if there could never be such things as zero
temperature and northwest gales; but the whole top of the hill keeps silence. It knows.
As the day grows brighter you can see the little scrub-oaks that make the summit
plateau their home crouch and settle themselves together for the endurance test which
is their winter lot. They have opened their hearts to the south rain while it lasted, but
they know what to expect the moment it is gone. They studied the weather from Blue
Hill summit long before the observatory was thought of.
All trees love the hill, but few can endure its winter rigors. You can see where the
hickories and red cedars have swarmed up the steep from all sides, and as you note
how the scrub-oaks compact themselves you will see also the cedars holding the rim of
rock as did that thin red line of Scottish Highlanders at Inkermann, all dwarfed and
crippled with the struggle till they seem far different trees from the debonair slim and
sprightly red cedars of the alluvial plain. You can fairly see them clench their teeth and
hang on.
Yet they love the rocks that they have gripped for some hundreds of years, and
nothing but death will part them. There are red cedars growing out of the gray granite
near the southern rim of Blue Hill that I believe were there when Bartholomew
Gosnold stepped ashore, the first Englishman to set foot on the soil of Massachusetts.
No such age belongs to the hickories that have managed to get head and shoulders
above the rim of the plateau, yet they too have lost their slender straightness. The cold
and the summit winds have pressed them back upon themselves till they are stubby,
big-headed dwarfs.
 Of how the other trees climb the hill we shall learn more if we begin at the bottom,
and we could have no better day in which to look them up than this, for the south rain
has swept the ground bare of all snow and left us for a space this temperature of the
Carolinas rather than that of Labrador, which is our usual portion in January. Indeed,
from the sunny plain which stretches from the southern base of the rock declivity you
can see where even tender and jocund plants once began the climb most jauntily.
Stalwart yellow gerardias, six feet tall some of them, grow in the rich black mould
that makes steps upward through the rock jumble. From August till the frost caught
them they scattered sunshine all along beneath the hickories and chestnuts, maples and
white oaks, tipping it out of golden bowls to be shattered into the mists of goldenrod
blooms that followed after. These gerardias, though dry and dead, stand now, and will
stand despite gales and snow all winter long, boldly lifting brown seed pods aloft, pods
that grin in the teeth of bitter gales and send their chaffy seeds floating up the slope to
plant the sunshine banner a little farther aloft for next year. Many centuries they have
been at it, but few of them have climbed far, yet they so love the hill that they cling
tenaciously to the ground they have gained and seem to grow more vigorously there
than on less rugged soil.
The roughest ledges of the hill jut boldly to the southward, showing gray granite
shoulders to the sun and making this side almost a sheer rock precipice. Yet here the
Highlander cedars have chosen to make their climb in battalions, plaiding the gray
surface with russet brown and olive green, clinging tenaciously by toe-tips where it
would seem as if only air-plants might find nourishment. No other trees dare the bare
granite steep, though hickories flank the cedars wherever the slopes of the ridge have
crumbled a little and given a better foothold of black soil.
Strange to say, the purple wood-grass that surely loves sandy plains best has sent
little scouting parties up with the hickories, and here and there occupies tiny plateaus
among the ledges well up toward the ridge, often rimmed round with the purplish green
of the mountain cranberry. At the bottom of the gullies the maples began the climb, but
they did not last long. Red and white oaks have won farther up, but stopped invariably
before the summit of the gully was reached.
From the beautiful Eliot Memorial Bridge, near the eastern limits of the summit
plateau of Blue Hill, you catch a wonderful glimpse southeasterly right down a narrow
ravine to a wider valley, and thence down again to a glow of white ice which is
Houghton’s Pond. The bare trees no longer hide one another and you see where they
made a flank movement in force for the summit, swarming over the wider upland
valley, and narrowing to a wild charge of great chestnuts up the gully. These chestnuts
do not seem to stand rooted. They sway this way and that and seem to hurrah and wave
flags in the wild excitement of a desperate and hopeful venture. They are motionless, of
course, but they have all the semblance of splendid action that genius has given to
sculpture, and they add romance to the most picturesque spot on the range. Yet never a
chestnut top is lifted above the ridge which tops the gully. To it they came in all the
fine enthusiasm of a well-planned and concerted advance, but stopped so suddenly that
you see them in splendid action still, as if with one foot in the air for the step that
should take them above the ridge.
The north wind of the ages has stopped them right there where their tops are just far
enough above the level of the ridge edge to be safe from it. You see them best by
climbing down the little gully among evergreen wood ferns which grow in the rich,
moist soil among the rocks, the only touches of green unless you happen upon some
polypodys seemingly growing out of the rock itself.
Right among the chestnuts the semblance changes again with the harlequin-like
magic of the woods. The big trees are no longer fixed in the attitude of desperate
charge upon a rampart, as you saw them from above. Among them they seem to be
tipsy bacchanals who have chosen the little secluded glen for a place of revelry, and are
reeling about it like clumsy woodsmen in a big-footed dance. A chestnut tree standing
by itself on a plain is as stately and dignified as a village patriarch. Grouped together in
level, rich woodland, chestnuts are prim and almost lady-like. Why these particular
trees in the little glen at the east side of Blue Hill summit should skip about in clumsy
riot is more than I can tell, but they certainly seem to do it, and I am not the only one
who has seen it and been shocked by it.
Right near by is a company of schoolgirl beeches, very straight and slim and fair-
skinned and pale. These have drawn together in a shivering group and show every
symptom of feminine dignity, very young and quite outraged. They whisper and draw
themselves up to the full tenuity of their height and you can hear the dry snip of
indignation in their voices long before you reach them. No doubt they thought to have
the glen all to themselves for a proper picnic with prunes and pickles, and here are
these great fellows thus misbehaving! It is a shame and the park police should put a
stop to it. The beeches are so frosty in their indignant withdrawal that the icy
whispering of their dry leaves sounds like fast falling sleet. Slip among them when you
are next on the hill, shut your eyes and listen. The day may be as sunny and warm as a
winter day can be, but you will think you hear the snow falling fast and will be sorry
you have not brought your fur muffler.
As for the chestnuts, I suspect they drank mountain dew at the illicit still just below
the gully. Surely no springs should have a license to do business among the hilltops of
this granite range. Yet they well up freely among the lesser spurs that lie between Great
Blue and Hancock, and their moisture, drawn from cool depths to little ponds where
the southern sun shines in and the north and west winds are held back by granite ridges,
make rallying places for all kinds of wood and pasture people that have yearned for
mountain heights, but could not stand the rigors of the summits. There are three of
these little ponds on the heights of the range almost within a stone’s throw of one
another. It may be that the seepage from surrounding ledges accounts for their flow of
water, but I am more inclined to think that cracks in the backbone of the hills let the
water flow up from subterranean depths. The margins of two of them are the happy
home of greenbrier which grows in tropical luxuriance all about, so binding the bushes
together with its spiny twine that it is almost impossible to pass through them to the
water. Button-ball and high-bush blueberry grow with it and hold out their branches for
its smilax-like decoration, and the solemn and secretive witch-hazel stalks meditatively
about wherever the overhead foliage is dense enough to make the mysterious twilight
that it best loves. It strolls up the gully beneath the shade of the chestnuts and you can
but fancy it smiling sardonically at their revelry and the prim indignation of the
schoolgirl beeches. Here and there swamp maples, strangely out of place on hilltops,
glow gray in the dusk as you stand below them, or blush red in the clear sun as you
look at their branch tips from the cliffs. It is a picturesque little three-spurred peak
lying here between Great Blue and Hancock so sheltered and warm in the midday sun
that it is only by watching the sky that you know it is winter, though the ice is white
and strong on the little ponds.
I think you can get the best view of all of Great Blue Hill from the summit of the
lesser hill beyond the spurs and ponds and south of Hancock, just overhanging
Houghton’s Pond. There you see the forest-clad slope sweep grandly up to form this
broad upland valley, wrinkle a bit with the folds where lie the three little ponds, then
rise again most majestically all along the steep side of the hill. At this time of year it is
one broad, majestic mass of the warm gray of bare tree trunks in which rock ridges
stand indistinct in purer color, while here and there clustering twig masses purple it.
You can see the black shadows in the face of the cliff where stands the little glen in
which the chestnuts disport, and down near the highest of the three ponds is a beautiful
little splash of white all flushed with pink. This marks the location of a group of young
birches, the only ones I find on the heights of the range.
Midday had passed and with it the genial warmth that the south wind had brought
us. Instead romping northern breezes had a tang in them and torn clouds sailed swiftly
into view over the summit of Great Blue, rushing deep blue shadows across the warm
grays of the landscape. The age-old battle of sun and wind was going on on every
summit of the range. Climbing the southerly slope of Hancock it was hard to believe it
winter. You got either season on the summit plateau according to the nook you chose,
but standing on the rim of the precipice, which faces north you had no doubts. From
your feet to the foot of the hill in this direction it was winter indeed. Yet here was the
greenest spot in the whole range. Scrambling perilously down the face of the cliff I
touched rich green vegetation with either hand and stood amid luxuriance at the
bottom. For here you are at the meeting place of ferns.
Little sunshine reaches the face of this cliff in the high noon of a midsummer day.
No direct ray touches it all winter long, yet in the chill twilight the polypodys swarm
all along the summit of the ridge and drip and dance down and stretch out their hands
to neighbor ferns that climb cheerily to meet them out of the moist shadows below.
These are the evergreen wood ferns. In the rich black frozen earth of the lower
woodland they grow in profusion. On the rocky acclivity they hold each coign of
vantage and splash the plaid of gray rock and brown leaves with their rich green.
Where cliff meets rock jumble the two draw together and fraternize, and the polypodys
come farther off the cliff than I have often seen them, and the wood ferns grow in
slenderer crevices of the bare rock than anywhere else that I know.
The sun was gone from all the little ravines on the way back from Hancock to Great
Blue, and the chill of the fern-festooned shadow of the cliff that I had just left seemed
to go with me all along. It was especially dark and chill in the little gully and I reached
the summit of the big hill too late to find the sun. There, where daybreak had breathed
of spring, nightfall shivered in the bite of winter winds. A million electric glints
splintered the purple dusk to northward, but there was no warmth in them even when
they fused into the glow of the great city. With the shadow of night the cruel grip of
winter had shut down on the hilltop and I knew again, as I had known in the golden
glow of the morning, that it was midwinter. The dwarfed and storm-toughened shrubs
seemed to crouch a little closer to the adamantine earth, and their frost-stiffened twigs
sang in the bitter north wind. I felt the chill in my own marrow and eagerly tramped the
ringing granite toward home.
 SOME JANUARY BIRDS

IT seems to be our lot this winter to have April continually smiling up in the face of
January. Again and again the north wind has come down upon us and set his
adamantine face against all such folly. The turf has become flint; the ice has been eight
inches thick on pond and placid stream, and the very next morning, maybe, the soft air
has breathed of spring, and bluebirds have twittered deprecatingly as if glad to be here,
but altogether ashamed to be found so out of season. As a matter of fact, of course,
some bluebirds winter with us, but they don’t warble “cheerily O” in the teeth of the
north winds. On those days you must seek them in the cuddly seclusion of dense
evergreens, more than likely among close-set cedars where the blue cedar-berries are
still sweet and plenty. But we have had many days in this January of 1909 when the
bluebirds have had a right to feel called to at least take a hurried glimpse at the bird
boxes or the holes in the old apple trees, just as people take a flying trip to the summer
cottage on a warm Sunday; they know they can’t stay, but it is delightful to just look it
over and plan.
I think the crows, though they are tough old winter residents, have something of the
same impulse to plan nests and make eyes and cooing conversation, one to another. To-
day I heard, in the pine treetops of a little pasture wood where several pair nest every
year, the unmistakable note. In that great song of Solomon which the whole out-door
world will chorus in the full tide of spring the crows have the bass part, no doubt, but
they sing it none the less musically. It is surprising what a croak can become, between
lovers.
I saw them slip away silently and shamefacedly as I approached, and I knew them
for callow youngsters, high-school age, let us say, to whom shy love-making is never
quite out of season. But they got their come-uppance the moment they sailed out of the
grove, for their appearance was greeted with a wild and raucous chorus of crow ha-ha-
ha’s. High in the air, flapping round and round in silence above the pines, a half dozen
riotous youngsters of their own age had been observing them, chuckling no doubt and
winking to one another, and now that the culprits were driven out into the open where
all could see them the chorus of jeers knew no bounds. It was as unmistakable as the
caressing tone, this jeering laughter. You had but to hear it to know very well what they
were saying. The crow language has but one word, which in type is caw. But their
inflections and tone qualities are such that it is easy to make it express the whole
diatonic scale of primitive emotion.
Many of our summer birds whose winter range barely includes us seem to be more
than usually prevalent this winter. It may be that the mild season has to do with this,
but it is equally probable that a plenitude of food is more directly responsible. Seed-
eating birds are particularly in luck this year. I do not know of a winter when the birch
trees have fruited so plentifully, nor have I noticed so many flocks of song sparrows as
this year. I find them twittering happily along through the wood, hanging in quite
unsparrow-like attitudes from slender birch twigs, busy robbing the pendant cones of
their tiny seeds. In the summer you know the song sparrow as a very erect bird. He sits
on some topmost twig of cedar or berry bush and pours forth quite the cheeriest and
sweetest home song of the pasture land. Or perchance he flies, and the usual short and
oft-repeated refrain seems to be broken up by flutter of his wings into a longer, softer,
and more varied song that has less of challenge and more of sweet content in it. In his
winter notes, which are really nothing but a cheery twittering, I always think I hear
something of the mellow singing quality of this song of the wing.
To-day I saw a sharp-shinned hawk, hunting noiselessly, no doubt for these same
sparrows. He flitted among the treetops like a nervous flash of slaty gray, and was gone
so quickly that had I not heard the welt of his wing tips on the resisting air as he turned
a sharp corner I should never have seen him. Most of our hawks, though well known to
take an occasional chicken, are mouse and grasshopper eaters. The sharp-shinned is the
real chicken hawk, for he eats more birds than anything else, though the small
songsters of the thicket form the greater part of his diet. I have rarely seen him here in
winter, though his summer nest is common in the deep woods, with its cream-buff eggs
heavily blotched with chocolate brown. Just as the plenitude of food of their kind kept
the song sparrows with us to enjoy the mild weather, so I think the multitude of song
sparrows and other succulent titbits made the sharp-shinned hawk willing to winter
where he had summered.
All these birds which are wintering as far north as they dare seem to come out and
cheer up in the April-like days, but in those which are distinctly January you may
tramp the woods for days and not see one of them. The flicker is a rather common bird
with us the winter through. In a warm January rain you will often surprise him
wandering about in the thawed fields, looking for iced crickets and half concealed
grubs and chrysalids among the stubble. Let the snow come deep and the wind blow
out of the north and the flicker vanishes from the landscape. It is as if he had gone into
a hole and pulled his thirty-six nicknames in after him, so completely has the flicker
disappeared. He is a strong-winged bird and I have always been willing to think that at
such times he simply whirled aloft on the northerly gale and never lighted till he was a
few hundred miles to the south. He could do it easily enough. He would find bare
ground and good feeding in the tidewater country of Virginia when New England is
three feet under snow and the zero gales are drifting it deeper and freezing the heart out
of the very trees in the wood.
The other day, though, I caught one of them sitting in the hollow of an ancient apple
tree. There was an opening of some size facing the south into which the midday sun
shone with refreshing warmth. Here, sheltered from the bite of the north wind the
flicker had tucked himself away and was enjoying his sunny nook much as pigeons do
in just the right angle of the city cornices. But he was better off than the pigeons for
there were fat grubs in the decaying wood that formed his shelter and he could use his
meal ticket without leaving his lodgings. Our woods are full of such hostelries and they
shelter more of the woodland creatures than we know as we tramp carelessly by.
But if the bluebirds and flickers hide themselves securely through the coldest winter
days and the song sparrows and even the crows are apt to be scarce and subdued, as is
certainly the case in my woods, there are other feathered folk who seem to delight in
the cold and be never so gay as when the sky is leaden, the wind bites, and the frost
flakes of snow squalls let the sun struggle through the upper atmosphere because it is
too bitter cold to really snow. Of these the chickadees lead. They seem to be never so
merry as when they hear the sweet music of the tinkle of cold-tense snow crystals on
the bare twigs.
In spite of the soft raiment in which the weather garbs itself to-day it is only three
days ago that the great organ of the woods piped to the northerly wind as it breathed
pedal notes through the pines and piped shrill in the chestnut twigs. And there was
more than organ music. The white and red oaks, still holding fast to their brown leaves,
gave forth the rattling of a million delicate castanets, and the wind drew like a soft bow
across the finer strings of the birches so that all among slender twigs you heard this
fine tone of a muted violin singing a little tender song of joy. For the trees were sadly
weary of being frozen one day and thawed the next. They thought the real winter was
at hand when the cold would
 There are other feathered folk who seem to delight in the cold

be continuous and the snow deep. All we northern-bred folk love the real winter and
feel defrauded of our birthright if we do not get it.
Strangest of all were the beeches. They have held the lower of their tan-pale leaves
and with them have whispered of snow all winter long. Whatever the day, you had but
to stand among them with closed eyes and you could hear the beech word for snow
going tick, tick, tick, all about. It seemed as if flakes must be falling and hitting the
leaves so plainly they spoke it. Now that the flakes were beginning the beeches never
said a word, but just stood mute and watched it come and listened to the music of all
the other trees. Or perhaps they listened to something finer yet. It was only in their
enchanted silence that I thought I heard it. Now and then the wind held its breath and
the oak leaf castanets ceased, and then for a second I would be sure of it; an elfin tinkle
so crepuscular, so gossamer fine that it was less a sound than a thought, the ringing of
snow crystal on snow crystal as the feathery flakes touched and separated in the frost-
keen air. It surely was there and the beech trees heard it and stood breathless in solemn
joy at the sound.
The chickadees were very happy that day. Little groups of half a dozen flipped gaily
from tree to tree, bustling awkwardly and jovially about picking up food continually,
though it is rarely possible to see what they get as they glean from limb to limb. Winter
is the time for sociability, say the chickadees, and they welcome to their number the
red-breasted nuthatches that have followed the season down from the Maine woods.
The chickadee in his cheery endeavors to take his own in the way of food where he
finds it does some surprising acrobatic feats, but they are almost always clumsy and
you expect him momentarily to break his neck. Not so the nuthatch. He runs along the
under side of a limb with his back to the ground as easily as he would run along the
upper side. He comes down the smooth trunk of a pine head down, just as a squirrel
does, his feet seeming to be reversible and to stick like clamps wherever he cares to put
them. All the time his busy little head is poking here and there with sinuous agility and
his slim, pointed bill is gathering in the same invisible food, no doubt, that the
chickadee is after. And as he eats he talks, a quaint high-pitched, nasal drawl of yna,
yna, yna, that gets on your nerves after a while and you are glad to see him let go his
upside-down hold, turn a flip-flap in the air, and light on another tree some distance
away. I think Stockton got his idea of negative gravity from watching the nuthatches. If
I were mean enough to shoot one I should as soon expect to see him fall up into the sky
as down to the earth, so usually regardless and defiant is he toward the proper and
accepted force of gravity.
Quite prim and upright as compared with these shifty wrigglers is the third boon
companion of these winter day expeditions, the downy woodpecker. You are not so apt
to find him as the other two, for his work is deeper and more laborious and they are
likely to flit flightily away while he still drills and ogles. Yet you can hear him much
farther away than the others, and it is not difficult to slip quietly up and see him at his
work. Prim and erect he stands on some rotten stub, his stiff tail-feathers jabbing it to
hold him steady, his head now driving his nail-like bill with taps like those of a busy
carpenter’s hammer, anon speeding up till it has almost the effect of an electric buzzer.
Then he looks solemnly with one eye in at the hole that he has made, prods again
eagerly and pulls out a fat white grub, gulps it, and goes hop-toading up the stub
looking for more probe possibilities. Or perhaps he writes scrawly Ms. in the
atmosphere as he flits jerkily over to the next tree that pleases him.
Thus though not of a feather these three flock together in the biting cold of winter
days and seem to be cheery and courageous if not exactly contented. They are all hole-
born and hole-building birds and when night overtakes them they know well where to
find wind-proof hollow trunks where they may snuggle, round and warm in their
fluffed out feathers till dawn calls them to work again.
Yet, with all the yearning of the trees and the joy of the woodland creatures in the
prospect of snow it ended in no snow storm. All day long the sun shone palely through
a frost fog and the frost crystals sprang out of it at the touch of the icy wind and tinkled
into snowflakes right before your eyes. The wind swept a feathery fluff together in
corners but at nightfall when the moon shone through a clearer air and a near-zero
temperature the crystals had begun to evaporate, and by morning hardly a trace of them
was left. To-day it is April-like; to-morrow we may have zero weather again and before
these words get into print perhaps the yearned-for snow will have come and with its
kindly shelter covered the succulent green things of pasture and woodland that need it
so badly.
It is wonderful, though, how they stand freezing and thawing and yet remain green,
firm in texture, and wholesome. The birds of the air have feathers which they can fluff
out and make into a down puff for a winter night covering. Here in the pine grove is the
pipsissewa starring the ground with its rich green clumps. It is as full of color and sap,
seemingly, as it was in July when its fragrant wax-like blossoms starred its green with
pink. No cell of the fleshy texture of its green leaves is broken nor is there a tarnish in
their gloss. Its seedpod stands dry on a dry scape in place of its flower, but that alone
shows the difference between summer and winter. Yet it stands naked to the north wind
protected by neither feathers nor fur. Who can tell me by what principle it remains so?
Why is the thin-leaved pyrola and the partridge berry, puny creeping vine that it is, still
green and unharmed by frost when the tough, leathery leaves of the great oak tree not
far off are withered and brown?
Chlorophyl, and cellular structure, and fibro-vascular bundles in the one plant
wither and lose color and turn brown at a touch of frost. In another not ten feet away
they stand the rigors of our northern winters and come out in the spring, seemingly
unharmed and fit to carry on the internal economy of the plant’s life until it shall
produce new leaves to take their places. Then in the mild air of early summer these
winter darers fade and die. Here in the swamp the tough and woody cat-o’-nine-tails is
brown and papery to the tip of its six-foot stalk. The blue flag that was a foot high is
brown and withered alongside it, yet the tender young leaves of the Ranunculus repens
growing between the two and not having a tenth of their strength are tender and young
and green and unharmed still. The first two died at a touch of the frost. The buttercup
leaves have been frozen and thawed a score of times without hurt.
You might guess that the swamp water has an elixir in it that saves the life of the
repens; but how about the Ranunculus bulbosus, European cousin of the repens? That
grows on the sandy hillside, and even the root tips that extend below its little white
bulb have been frozen stiff a score of times since the woody stemmed goldenrod beside
it dropped dead, sere and brown, at the first good freeze. Yet to-day in the smiling sun I
found the young leaves of the Ranunculus bulbosus green and succulent and unharmed
of their cellular structure, and so I am sure they will remain, under the snow or bare, as
the case may be when the first yellow bud pushes upward from that white bulb where it
is now patiently waiting the word. Our botanists who study heroically to find some
minute variation in form that they may add another Latin name to their text-books
might study these variations in habit and result and tell me the reason for them. I’d be
glad to buy some more books on botany; but none that I have seen have so far within
their pages any explanation of this puzzle.
 WHEN THE SNOW CAME

I HAVEN’t seen my friend the cottontailed rabbit for some days. All the winter, so far,
he has frequented his little summer camp on the southern slope of the hill, well up
toward the top, among the red oaks. Here in a little tangle of tiny undergrowth and
brown leaves, with a fallen trunk for overhead shelter, you might find him any
forenoon. He had backed into this place and trampled and snuggled till he had a round
and cosy form just a bit bigger than himself, where the sun might warm him until he
was drowsy and he could sit in a brown ball with his feet tucked beneath his fluffy fur,
his ears laid along his back, and his eyes half closed in dreamy contentment.
I could step quietly up the path and see him sometimes a second before he saw me,
but only for a second. Then his dream of succulent bark of wild apple trees and other
delicacies of the winter woods would pass with a single thump of his sturdy hind feet
as he struck the earth a half dozen feet away from his snug lodging, and more thumps
and the bobbing of a white tail would carry him out of sight in a flash. He bobs and
thumps just as a deer does when you surprise him in the forest, and flies a white flag in
just the same way. Both go jerking away like sturdy but nervous sprites, and though a
deer in the forest is supposed to be the epitome of grace, I can never see it. The startled
fawn and the startled bunny are both too eager to get on to be graceful.
We have just had some touches of real
 Here in a little tangle of tiny undergrowth and brown leaves, with a fallen
trunk for overhead shelter, you might find him any forenoon

winter and these have sent the cottontail to the seclusion of his burrow, where he lacks
the health-giving warmth of the sun, it is true, but where he is snug and comfortable
beneath the frost line. Like the rabbit most of the wild creatures of the wood seem to
endure the snow with cheerful philosophy, but I am convinced that few of them like it.
It hides their food from them, and if it is deep or a strong crust makes its surface
difficult of penetration its long-continued presence mean short rations or even
starvation and death. The squirrels have some stores within hollow trunks and these are
available at any season, but much of their winter food is buried helter-skelter beneath
brown leaves and too deep snow shuts them off from it. The fox must range farther and
pounce more surely, for the field mice which are his bread and butter are squeaking
about their usual business in pearly tunnels where he may not reach them. The
woodchucks are tucked away for the winter, the skunks are dozing fitfully on short
rations, hungry but inert, and even Brer Rabbit does not venture out of his hole for days
at a time when his enemies, winter and rough weather, are upon him.
Yet if the furred and feathered people of pasture and woodland have no occasion to
love the snow it is far different with the trees and shrubs and tender plants of the out-
door world. These have yearned for it with love and a faith that has rarely lacked
fulfilment. They talked about it incessantly, each in the voice of its kind, the big forest
oaks with the cheery rustle of sturdy burghers, the little scrub oaks with the tittle-tattle
of small-natured folk. Let the wind blow north or south or high or low the birches sang
a little silky song of snow and the pines hummed or roared to the same refrain. Then it
came, “announced by all the trumpets of the sky,” as Emerson says, but muted trumpets
that blared without sound. The eyes saw the flourish of them, the nose mayhap whiffed
the rich odor of the storm. You could see it in the sky and feel the light touch of its
unwonted air on your cheek, but you could not say that the wind blew north or blew
south when the culmination of signs made you sure of it. The storm may bleat along
the hillside like a lost lamb or roar high above in the clashings of the infinite skies after
it is well under way, but always before it begins is this little breathless pause between
the dying of one wind and the birth of another.
So it was that the first of this snow came to the woods. In the hush of expectation
there was a certain feeling of awe. The trees felt it as much as I did and stood as
breathless and expectant. Instead of clearly defined clouds, the whole air seemed to
thrill with the dusky gray presence of a spirit out of unknown space, of whose
beneficence we might hope, but of whom we were not without dread. And so the dusk
of the storm we hoped for gloomed down on us in the breathless stillness and tiny
flakes slipped down so quietly that the touch of their ghost fingers on my cheek was
the first that I knew of their actual coming. The pine boughs high over my head caught
these first flakes and held them lovingly and let them slip through their fingers only
after many caresses, and soon through all the pine wood you could hear a little sigh that
was a purr of contentment in the first faint breathing of the north wind bearing many
flakes.
Thus the snow comes to the woods. You can see its portent glooming in the sky for
hours beforehand, smell it in the rich, still air and feel its touch on your cheek. When I
stepped out from under the cathedral gloom of the space beneath the pines, I found the
air full of flakes whirling down from the north and the field white with them.
Standing in the midst of the storm in the field, you have a chance to see something
of its color, for after all falling snow is only relatively white. Looking toward the
dense, dark foliage of the pine wood, you see it at its best, especially across the wind,
for the contrast is most vivid and the color most distinct. Each individual flake is so
distinct and so white, from those near you, which go scurrying earthward as if in a
great hurry, to those of the distance, which float leisurely down. Look again up the
wind toward the gray of the hard-wood forest and you shall find the falling hosts
almost as gray as the wood which they half blot out. But if you would see black snow,
you have but to lift your eyes to the leaden gray sky out of which, as you see them
from below, flakes float in black blots that erase themselves only when they lie at your
feet. In open wells in the deep wood you can see this still more definitely as you look
up, a black snow falling all about you, to be changed to spotless white by some miracle
of contact with the earth.
In the deep woods, too, you hear the cry of the snow, not the song of the trees in the
joy of its coming, but the voices of the flakes themselves, their little shrill cries as they
touch leaf or twig. To the pines that held up soft arms of welcome and clasp them close
and will not let them go away though each bough is weighted down, they whisper a
soft little cooing word that is surely “love” in any language. No wonder it is warm
under pine boughs in a snow-storm. The great trees glow with the happiness of it and
the radiance of their delight filters down to you as you stand beneath. The flakes seem
to love the bare, smooth twigs of the hard-wood maples less, they give them just a pat
and a gentle word of greeting as they go by, and they touch the birches almost
flippantly. Among the fine pointed tridents of the pasture cedars, however, they linger
somewhat as they do among the pines, though their song here is of jovial friendship
only, with even something waggish about it. They linger in groups among the cedar
boughs for awhile, but often start up in gentle glee and shake themselves clear, leaving
the tree in a sort of blank dismay until more of their fellows come to take their places.
There is a little swish of fairy laughter as they do this, as of the snickering of fat bogles
as they play pranks in the white wilderness.
But it is over on the oak hillside where the red and black oaks still hold resolutely
to their dried leaves that the cry of the snow will most astonish you. It is not at all the
rustle of these oak leaves in a wind. It is an outcry, an uproar, that drowns any other
sound that might be in the wood. It is impossible to distinguish voices or words. It is as
if ten thousand of the little people of the wood and field and sky had suddenly come
together in great excitement over something and were shouting all up and down the
gamut of goblin emotion. After I have stood and listened to it for a minute or two I
begin to look at one shoulder and then the other fully expecting to see gabbling goblins
grouped there, yelling to one another in my very ears. Here with closed eyes you may
easily tell the quality of the snow about you by the sound. Each sort of flake has its
distinct tone which is easily recognized through all the uproar. At nightfall of this first
snow of ours it happened that in the meeting of northerly and southerly currents which
had brought the storm, the north wind lulled and the south began to have its way again.
This gave us at first a great downfall of big flakes that seemed to blot out all the world
in an atmosphere of fluff. Then, evidently, the warmth in the upper atmosphere
increased for the big flakes gave way to a fine fall of rounded sleet. Then, indeed, we
got outcry the most astonishing in the oak wood. The voices shrilled and fined and all
crepitation was lost in a vast chorus of a million peeping frogs. Nothing else ever
sounded like it. It was as if a goblin springtime had burst upon us in the white gloom of
the oak wood and all the hylas in the world were piping their shrillest from the boughs.
I went home. I think it was time. People used to get among goblins at dusk in this
way in the old country and when they got back from goblin land they found that they
had been gone three years, and I didn’t care to stay away so long.
During the night the sleet changed to rain which froze as it fell, and in the morning
the snow everywhere was but an inch or two deep and covered with an icy crust that
broke underfoot with a great noise and effectually scared away any woodland thing that
you approached, provided it had powers of locomotion. Fox or crow, partridge or
rabbit, must have thought that Gulliver was once more walking in among the
Lilliputians with his very biggest boots on. Never were such thunderous footsteps
heard in my wood, at least not since the last icy crust. Frozen in the icy surface were
the trails that had been made when the snow was soft, the squirrel’s long, plunging
leaps with his hind feet dropping into the hole his front feet had made, giving
something you might mistake for deer tracks, except that they went back up the tree.
You saw where the crow had dropped to earth and trailed his aristocratically long hind
toe, with its incurving claw. The crow’s foot is fine for grasping a limb, but it does not
fit the ground well. On the other hand, the trail of the ruffed grouse which may lie
beside it shows an ideal footprint for walking woodland paths, the hind toe stubby
nailed, short but firm, and the whole print well planted and fitting the earth.
These and many more I found modeled in ice, but the trails that interested me most
were those beneath the crust, the long tunnels that wound here and there, intersected
and doubled and made portions of the fields and forests for all the world like the blue
veining of a white skin. These were the trails of the shaggy-coated, crop-eared, short-
legged, shorttailed meadow mouse. This firm crust had opened to him the opportunity
of safety in paths that had been before dangerous in the extreme. He knew where
chestnuts had lain open to the sky for months, but he dared not go into the open path to
get them. Fox, cat, skunk, weasel, hawk, owl, crow, all watched the paths and the edges
of the thick grass for him. He must burrow or die. So he does burrow all the year
through, just beneath the surface, in dirt if he must, under light leaves and brush and
matted grasses by preference, for there he may go the more easily and quickly to his
food. His eyesight and hearing are good, and he moves like a little brown flash when
he has to go into the open.
If I wish to see him I watch well-worn footpaths through matted grass and leaves.
Here his tunnels end on one side of the path and begin on the other and he takes the
chance of crossing this risky opening to sun and sky as often as he feels he must, but he
wrecks the speed limit every time he does it. So quickly does he go that you cannot be
sure what has happened; there was the stirring of a leaf on one side and a grass stem on
the other and a sudden vanishing touch of brown between the two, but which way it
went or whether it went at all is doubtful. So, too, his tunnels come down and open at
the water’s edge by the meadow brook and if you are patient and have rare luck you
may see him swim across. Here trout and mink are on the watch for him. His numbers
need to be great if, with all his caution and agility, he is going to survive all these
huntsmen, and they are great. He may breed at two months of age and have many
litters a season and his progeny, if unchecked, soon swarm. All the meadows are full of
them this year, but it is only when such a snow as we now have comes that we have a
chance to see what they may do.
In the summer-time they stick close to their meadows, living on succulent roots and
stems. They are especially fond of tuberous roots of the wild morning-glory, which
they store by the pound in their grass larders near their nests. But under the welcome
cover of the snow they push their excursions far afield and their netted-veined trails
come even to your house itself, though they rarely dispute the wainscoting with the
house mouse. Now and then they do, however, and I fancy they have no trouble in
holding their own against their slighter and more aristocratic cousins. When they do
come you will know their presence by the extraordinary noise of their gnawing. Once a
stone crusher, no less by the sound, got into my garret, and after one sleepless night I
set the biggest trap I had, expecting to get the most enormous brown rat that ever
happened, if not some new and more elephantine rodent. What I caught was a well-
grown field mouse, and the noise passed with him.
The rain which produced this thunderous and telltale snow crust brought a new and
gorgeous growth to the trees. From trunk to topmost twig, each was garmented in regal
splendor of crystal ice. I had been in goblin land when I fled, at twilight, from the eerie
shrilling of bogle hylas among the oak trees. I had come back into fairyland with the
rising sun. The demure shrubs, gray Cinderellas of the ashes of the year, had been
touched by the magic wand and were robed in more gems than might glow in the
wildest dreams of the most fortunate princess of Arabian tale. Ropes of pearl and
festoons of diamonds weighed the more slender almost to earth. The soft white
shoulders of the birches drooped low in bewildering curtsey, and to the fiddling of a
little morning wind the ball began with a tinkling of gem on gem, a stabbing of
scintillant azure, so that I was fain to shut my eyes with the splendor of it.
Then came the prince himself to dance with them, the morning sun, flashing his
gold emblazonry through their gems till the corruscation drowned the sight in an
outpouring of fire. The princesses all began to speak as he came among them, a speech
wherein dropped from their lips all jewels and precious stones. Sunbursts of diamonds
fell from dainty young pines and ropes of pearls slid from the coral lips of slender
birches. The babble fell all about their feet in such ecstasies of brilliant speech, such
tinkling of fairy laughter as the wood had never yet seen. Brave revels have the little
people of the forest under the moon of midsummer night, no doubt, but never could
they show such royal, dainty splendor as their own trees did this midwinter day when
the sun shone in upon them after the ice storm.
 THE MINK’S HUNTING GROUND

I WISH I could have seen the country about the great spring which goes by the name,
locally, of “Fountain Head” the year that the clock stopped for the glaciers hereabout.
That year when the last bit of the ice cap, that for ages had slid down across
southeastern Massachusetts and built up its inextricable confusion of sand and gravel
moraines, melted away, would have shown a thousand great springs like it, bubbling up
all through the region, almost invariably from the northerly base of gravelly cliffs over
which the sun can hardly peep at noonday, so steep they are. Here they flow to-day in
the same mystery. Why should these unfailing springs rush forth so steadily, be the
weather hot or cold, or the drought never so long or so severe? Why should their
temperature like their flow be changeless, summer or winter?
I sometimes believe that their waters filter through deep caverns from far Arctic
glaciers continually renewed. Perhaps to have looked at them before the changing
seasons of more thousands of years had clothed the gravel and sand with humus, grown
the forests all about and choked the fountains themselves with acres of the muck of
decayed vegetation no one knows how deep, would have been to see them with clearer
eyes and have been led to an answer to the questions. Now I know them only as bits of
the land where time seems to have stood still, fastnesses where dwell the lotus eaters of
our New England woods, where winter’s cold howls over their heads, but does not
descend, and where summer’s heat rims them round, but hardly dares dabble its toes in
their cool retreat.
Progress has built its houses on the hills about them, freight trains two miles away
roar so mightily that the quaggy depths tremble with the vibrations, and you may sit
with the arethusas in mossy muck and hear the honk of the automobile mingling with
that of the wild geese as they both go by in spring. Yet the one makes as much
impression on the land and its inhabitants as the other. The lotus eaters know not
Ulysses; if he wants them for his ships of progress he must capture them by force and
tie them beneath the rowers’ benches, else they return. Even the temperature of those
last days of the ice cap seems to have got tangled in the spell and to dwell with the
mild-eyed melancholy of the place the year round. In midsummer the thermometer may
stand at 120 in the quivering nooks where the sun beats down upon the sandy plains
above; the waters of the fountain head are ice cold still, and give their temperature to
the brook and its borders. In midwinter the mercury may register twenty below, and the
gales from the very boreal pole freeze the pines on those same sandy plains till their
deep hearts burst; the waters that flow from those mysterious fountains will have no
skim of ice on their surface.
 From what unfathomed depths the waters draw their constancy we may never know,
nor on what day may well forth with them some new form of life bred on the potency
of their elixir. To-day is freezing cold and now and then snow-squalls whirl in among
the swamp maples, eddying in flocks as the goldfinches do, yet the surface of the
biggest pool where the waters well up is covered with the vivid green of new plant life.
Millions of tiny boreal creatures swim free on the cool surface, plants reduced to their
simplest terms, born for aught I know in depths below like those

“Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea,”

whence they ooze in the seeping of the upward current to our shores. No one has here
found the seeds of these stemless pinheads of green that lie flat on the surface and send
down for a wee fraction of an inch their two or three tiny root hairs into the water.
No one can say they are apetalous or monosepalous or sporangiferous or call them
other hard names in Latin having reference to their flowering or fruiting for we may
not say that they flower or fruit at all. These minutest Lemnas give us no sign of stamin
or spore, of carpel or indusium, yet they multiply by millions and cover the surface of
the spring pools whence they depart constantly with the outflowing current, voyaging
gayly down Brobdingnagian rapids to the sea. The time of year when it is winter in the
sky above and on the bank a few feet up the hillside, when all green life except that
which grows with its roots in this magic water from the deep caves of earth is either
killed or suspended, seems to be their time for growth.
They grow a little, to a certain stage when perhaps a plant covers surface to the size
of a pinhead and a half, then split and become independent plants with a tiny root hair
apiece. Brave equipment this for facing the January gales and frost of a northern
winter. Yet they sail forth from the home pool as confidently as liners from the home
port and rollick all along down the stream, making harbor in every tiny bay and
collecting a fleet in each eddy. What potency of perpetual spring they sow as they
traverse all the ways that wind in and about the levels below the fountain head we do
not know, any more than we know what elixir vitæ dwells in the waters on which they
are borne, yet something makes the region the lotus land of creatures of the wild where
they linger on unmindful of their vanished kindred.
Out of the rich vegetable mould of ages, in the cool, moist shadows grow the rarer
New England orchids in the summer, and the rarer migrant birds of our summer woods
find asylum here for their nests and young. In the winter the ruffed grouse comes here
to drink, finds gravel for his crop always bare and unfrozen on the hillside where the
first seepings of water come forth, and no doubt gets an agreeable change of food in the
succulent green things of the shallows. Several of these birds cling to the place, nor can
I drive them away by simply flushing them. They circle and come back to the brook
margin or its immediate neighborhood every time.
Where the swamp maples have grown large on the bank and lifted the soil with
their roots high enough to form miniature dry islands the mink have built their burrows
and thence they go forth to hunt the region all about, but especially
 You may get a glimpse of the weasel-like head of one lifted above
the bank as he sniffs the breeze for game and enemies

the brook and its tributaries, most ravenously. If you are patient, fortunate, and the
wind is right you may at dusk get a glimpse of the weasel-like head of one lifted above
the bank as he sniffs the breeze for game and enemies. In that light his fur will look
black though it is really a pretty shade of brown, but you will not fail to see the white
streak which runs from his chin downward. But, though you may not see the animal
himself you cannot, if there is snow on the ground, fail to see his slender, aristocratic
track with its clutching claws, for the mink is a desperate hunter and always hungry. All
is fish that comes to his net,—trout, turtles, toads, snails, bugs, or anything he can find
in the brook that seems in the least edible.
The semi-aquatic life of the enchanted region is sadly destructive of other life, and I
feel little pity for the mink or the weasel, sleek and beautiful wild creatures though they
are, if they in turn fall into the steel jaws which the trapper sets for them in the narrow
passes all up and down the stream. It is the common lot of the woods and only the
swiftest and most crafty can hope to escape it. The mink devour the trout, and they,
seemingly innocent and beautiful enough to have come up, water sprites, from that
unknown underground world whence well the crystal waters in which they live, are as
greedy and irresponsible in their diet as the mink themselves. Like them, when hungry
they will devour the young of their own species and smack their lips over the feast.
The trout will eat anything that looks to be alive either in the water or on the
surface. I often amuse myself in summer by biting small chunks out of an apple and
dropping them in, to see the trout swallow them as ravenously as if they had suddenly
become vegetarians and had all the zeal of new converts. What the Jamaica ginger
preparation of the brook world is I don’t know, unless it is watercress. That grows,
green and peppery, all up and down the brook the year through. Perhaps the trout go
from my green apple luncheon over to that and thus join the remedy to the disease.
One of the trout titbits is the gentle little caddice worm, grub of the little miller-like
caddice fly that flits in at the open window of a May night and lights on the table under
the glare of your lamp. He dwells on the bottom in these same pure waters and he has
much to do to defend himself against the jaws of his nimble hunter. He is but a worm
that crawls, so speed may not save him. His skin is tender and he has no weapon of
defense save his brain which one would hardly think adequate in so humble a creature.
Yet if you will sit on the brink and watch what goes on in the cool depths you will see
how cleverly and in what a variety of ways he and his kindred, for there are several
varieties, have become skilled in self-defense. The little fellow has, like most grubs, the
power to spin fine silk. This would count for little though he spun a whole cocoon, for
the trout would swallow him, silken overcoat and all. But he does better than that. He
collects bits of log from the bottom and winds these in his silken warp till he has
knotted himself firmly within a log house. There is no incentive to a trout to eat twigs