Biomusic is a form of experimental music which deals with sounds created or performed by non-humans. The definition is also sometimes extended to include sounds made by humans in a directly biological way. For instance, music that is created by the brain waves of the composer can also be called biomusic as can music created by the human body without the use of tools or instruments that are not part of the body (singing or vocalizing is usually excluded from this definition).
Biomusic can be divided into two basic categories: music that is created solely by the animal (or in some cases plant), and music which is based upon animal noises but which is arranged by a human composer. Some forms of music use recorded sounds of nature as part of the music, for example new-age music uses the nature sounds as backgrounds for various musical soundscapes, and ambient music sometimes uses nature sounds modified with reverbs and delay units to make spacey versions of the nature sounds as part of the ambience.
At the 2014 Cheltenham Music Festival (UK), "The Great Animal Orchestra Symphony for Orchestra and Wild Soundscapes," composed by Bernie Krause and Oxford (Balliol College) former composer-in-residence, Richard Blackford, premiered, and was performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. This composition is the first symphony based on ecological themes and the first to perform, live, with whole natural soundscapes informing the orchestral form and themes, just as biophonies and geophonies inspired music (rhythm, melody, organization of sound, timbre, and dynamic) at the dawn of cultural time. Commissioned by the Alonzo King LINES Ballet, an international corps based in San Francisco, the score for Biophony, composed by Bernie Krause and Richard Blackford, consists almost entirely of biophonies and geophonies and premiered in 2015. It has since been performed worldwide.
The incorporation of bird song in music is one of the most widely studied forms of biomusic.