This maxim governs people, too, Baptista says, and a composer's variations on a theme catch the attention through novelty. However, unrelieved novelty eventually exhausts the perceiver, and a reference to the familiar relieves the fatigue. Birds and people share these reactions, Baptista argues, so he's not surprised that they also share composition strategies. The most musicianlike of the whales, male humpbacks sing while cruising around their summer breeding grounds or migrating. The loud, wavering songs string together several repeated phrases or themes, and one whale's session of song after song can stretch more than 24 hours.
Males change their songs as the months pass.
All the males in the same ocean sing basically the same tunes, even though the current hit takes some time to travel. There seems to be no limit to what they can come up with. He detects rhythms, phrases that last just a few seconds, song lengths ranging between those of human ballads and symphonic movements, and percussive elements as an occasional emphasis in longer strains of pure tones. Even though a whale can woo-oo over at least seven octaves, Payne finds that it combines notes that have wavelength relationships familiar to people's ears. Most surprising, says Payne, is the discovery that humpbacks use rhymes.