Music From Tree Rings

Modified Turntable Reads Tree Rings As Music

What you will hear is a musical translation or "interpretation" of the growth of a tree :

player.vimeo.com...

For nearly a century, dendrochronologists have practiced reading tree-rings for clues about the lives of trees. And though the field of study has helped immensely to shed light on historic growth cycles for scientists, it's all been rather dry and clinical. But now, thanks to a special turntable designed to read tree-rings like tracks on an LP, a tree's biography can now actually be heard as its discography.
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German artist Bartholomäus Traubeck recently debuted a record-player he developed which is capable of digitally reading tree-slices and translating them into surprisingly moving piano music.
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A tree’s year rings are analysed for their strength, thickness and rate of growth. This data serves as basis for a generative process that outputs piano music based on the year ring data.
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Like any great composition, the sounds produced from reading tree-rings are both aesthetically beautiful while at the same time a strangely ethereal glimpse into the otherwise silent life of our planet's most essential organisms.

I've heard trees groan and creak before, the sounds of wind in the branches, leaves rustling. The sound of a forest fire is particularly disturbing. Never heard them interpreted this way however. Kind of haunting and beautiful at the same time.

Link for article

That was really beautiful and made me feel deeply connected with the trees. I love trees so much, and we have so few of them out here on the wide open prairie. When I was a kid and I would be around a tree being chopped down, I could swear I heard it crying.

Thanks for this, S & F!

Excellent....

Now this sort of art, should be a candidate and win the Turner Prize, instead of all the other dross associated with it.

Wow, that's amazing, a forest needs to get together and form a band
The music itself is really deep and fascinating, like you can really visualize the birth, life, and death of a tree. Wonder how different each type of tree sounds like?

Its nice but i think instead of the piano key effect, a resonating pulse would be better. Kinda like different frequencies instead of actual notes. Just a thought

Originally posted by FissionSurplus
That was really beautiful and made me feel deeply connected with the trees. I love trees so much, and we have so few of them out here on the wide open prairie. When I was a kid and I would be around a tree being chopped down, I could swear I heard it crying.

Thanks for this, S & F!

You are most welcome. The technological age has given us a way to hear them sing. They do that anyway and that is pleasing as well; ever drift off to sleep with wind whispering in the pines? But the composition as it were of their life span (in LP form even) blew me away too.

Hasn't it been proven that certain types of music can stimulate animal and tree growth,

The next obvious step would be to play it back to trees / animals and monitor the results.

Originally posted by Shangrila

 

Wow, that's amazing, a forest needs to get together and form a band

The music itself is really deep and fascinating, like you can really visualize the birth, life, and death of a tree. Wonder how different each type of tree sounds like?

Form a band... lol. That rings, arg, arg. The video plays two "albums", the second one is more "vibrant"?

Originally posted by jrmcleod

 

Its nice but i think instead of the piano key effect, a resonating pulse would be better. Kinda like different frequencies instead of actual notes. Just a thought

Excellent thought... it seems that notes just capture certain points like you say. Maybe a graph thru a synthesizer of the up and down track of the rings would lend more "detail".

Originally posted by mr-lizard

 

Hasn't it been proven that certain types of music can stimulate animal and tree growth,

The next obvious step would be to play it back to trees / animals and monitor the results.

Good idea. Might take a while for tree study. As an animal myself, I like to warped out of my head when I first heard the playback. It sounded like wind chimes almost, to my ear. Soothing?
It is just optical data run thru code with preset notions, maybe if we hears it as low frequency buzzing it might have an altogether different effect on cellulose... dunno.

Oh God, the future of tree language. Thay all get IPhones and be singing to each other in the deep forest

reply to post by intrptr


i remember read/hearing somewhere that Trees are really a sound, and that they only appear as trees in our physical dimension.

this has always been a beautiful idea to me....trees really do look the way I imagine a sound to look.

the initial "attack" of the sound/vibration would be the first chute stemming from a seed singularity....

and as a short time passes, the original sound/tone will increase amplitude and begin to resonate to it's dominate frequency, which would be analogous to the "trunk" of the tree..

and as a long time passes, the sound/vibration begins to dissipate into the surrounding air, until it's amplitude has been completely diffused and infused with the environment. this is the many branches and leaves, which all get smaller and spread out according to the Fibonacci sequence as the tree reaches closer toward the light.

How incredibly bizarre, wonderful and intriguing all at once.

It is not very often I come across something genuinely new and interesting like this.

Thankyou for sharing

reply to post by intrptr


Wow!

That's incredible, really haunting.
Oh and for those who haven't listened to it, it gets better at the end

his is awesome i love the sounds very haunting..Made me want to run out and hug a tree after listening to this it makes me wonder if trees have a life..Trees have always fasanated me peace,sugarcookie1

Pretty incredible. I wonder if young trees of the same specie would grow better hearing its own music. I have heard that vineyards in Italy play Simon and Garfunkle, the vines grow better and produce better grapes

Seems like most of today's musicians are no match for a tree. I wonder how an onion sounds like.

OH MY G.... what if....

really bad people go to hell, but hell is being born as a tree!?!?!?!?

and then you gotta be a tree for a long time?

reply to post by intrptr

Dude, that is beautiful, thanks for posting.

German artist Bartholomäus Traubeck recently debuted a record-player he developed which is capable of digitally reading tree-slices and translating them into surprisingly moving piano music.

Now they should make some duplicates and then synchronize the music of the trees together.

I wonder if and how much different the noises will be when using different tree species.

I wonder what a giant sequoia tree would sound like? That would be one big record player!!

Originally posted by Alchemst7
I wonder what a giant sequoia tree would sound like? That would be one big record player!!

Cool Idea. There are disks of old trees that they display in museums. Maybe one day they could take a picture of one and shrink it to to LP size? That would be interesting to hear what a 5000 year old life form has to say.