He Puts A Ring From A Tree Trunk On A Record Player. When It Starts To Play, I Got Chills All Over!!

Music is indeed all around us, but I never thought a gorgeous piece of music could be found in a cross-section of a tree trunk.

Artist Bartholomaus Traubeck designed and built a record player that “reads” the texture and color variations of tree rings and interprets them as music. Because every tree has its own configuration of rings, every tree has its own song. By doing this, Traubeck has essentially created the infinite library of records. You must love the time we live in.

If you think Nature would sound like crackling and random noises, think again. This is actually beautiful.

Source

 

It is all about translation. Beauty is in the mind of the creator and how the textures are interpreted. If those piano notes were instead car horns, you might be telling quite a different story.

 

There's not really anything special, it's not like the trees are making music.
But is it a beautiful concept? Yes, very nice indeed.

 

I really liked the idea until i figured out that having all the trees' music, translates to cutting all the trees first , and then put them on a record player

 

I wish some pop stars were forced to make music in this manner. As a trade off for not being able to play instruments and such. That way we'd only hear one record from them.

 

The actual wind whistling by the leaves is more beautiful than that. So are the birds on a tree while singing. And sometimes they're fucking annoying, but that's the point.

 

No need to cut more trees - I don't like that idea too. But if the tree will be cut down for whatever reason, only one small piece should be removed from trunk to hear "The Tree Song". As the tree is already destroyed cutting out and preserving his personal anthem is not additional damage.

 

Semi-generative composition with opto-triggered notes (in a predetermined scale), probability, velocity sensitivity, etc. Been there, done that. It's quite fun. I used my webcam, pointing at the TV once, and let it trigger notes (by location, light, color, etc) in a specific scale. Some of it was awesome. But most of the time it sounded like the video in the OP.

What's fun is that he could have thrown on a porn magazine instead, and people would go "oh, there is beautiful music in porn magz.

 

We're actually listening to Traubeck's understanding of music, and nothing else. The source is pretty much neglectible. I could as well draw rings on a paper and it would create the same kind of music. That's why it doesn't impress me much. It serves well as an art installation, but it is far from a tree's music.

Using nature as instruments impresses me much more actually, as the instruments are very unique (the branch you use today won't sound the same in a week)

 

Percussive sounds were the first sounds that man created because... you know it's easy.And they were all natural instruments .But what about modifying a nature's element , a potato lets say to make it woodwind? That was man's next move. Something like this

 

exactly.

 

I went to see what to me was a very special art installation by Brian Eno in the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center in NYC some time in the late 80's. This huge space was converted into a facsimile of a rain forest and employed hidden speakers throught the room, emitting recorded sound of of various indigenous bird and animals as well as other ambient sound of space itself. It was quite impressive and I remember feeling very much at ease for the time of my visit that day (surely quite opposite of my probable emotion if in the real Amazon being thought of as a food source for many blood sucking insects, reptiles and other predators intent on my absorbion). A very nice memory, indeed.

 

Brian is a genius, but in my mind he was a bit overshadowed by Radiohead (i confusing him with Jonny Greenwood).He is an impressive and "experimental" composer.Much of his work though isn't known to the average person.You have to search his bio to see his achievements , and listen to his music to get the feeling.