Last fall, music producer and sound designer So Wylie pioneered what can only be called bird beat. The genre was born from her discovering the insistent call of the Saw-whet Owl, using that sound as the key sample in a pounding, immensely catchy instrumental, and posting the results on TikTok. A few months later, Wylie’s not only created a bunch of follow-up bird beats but she has also been embraced by communities of online birders eager to hear their avian pals feature on her releases.
The National Audubon Society, a bird conservation group, interviewed Wylie for a story about her work, which now spans the original Saw-whet Owl track and songs based on the calls of the Hermit Thrush, Common Potoo, Eastern Screech Owl, Barred Owl, and more. She says she approaches each tune the same way she would when using other samples, hearing a given bird’s song, and then finding the right tempo and chords to accompany it.