Forest trees all grow in the same key..!

[Woodsman]

I was chatting with a friend today, a musician, and he shared the most interesting story with me.

For a school music project, he'd been asked to go into the woods and "Play the Forest". It was a wide open mandate with almost zero structure; He could do anything from building a musical instrument from found materials, to just finding inspiration for a song, or look for some other way to experience music through the forest.

In the course of experimenting, he knocked a tree trunk with a stick to produce a sound. Okay. He knocked another. (You already know where I'm going with this as it's in the post title...) He cheated a bit; he called a friend over who had a musical tuning app on his smartphone, and they used that to measure the resulting sounds from various trees.

Turns out all the trees in that area, while they each delivered different notes up and down the scale when struck, were notes in the same key. -There was only one tree which gave a discordant result. (I joked about Darth Vader's ghost living in that one.)

I thought that was a really interesting discovery! I'd never heard anybody describe something like that before.

Anyway, he composed a piece, got all his friends together (each stationed at a different tree), and they "Played the Forest".

I just wanted to share that story here. :)

 

[Phill4]

You know that is interesting, i was watching recently a video on the deepest holes on earth, turns out the earth itself has a "heaetbeat-like" sound as reported by some gelologists.

Now trees are big and dense a better medium for these earth waves i guess.

 

[RflctnOfU]

Something I have observed in my neck of the woods (Florida), is that a local species of frog "speaks" in a diatonic scale, all of them in the same key. To me, when I first noticed ths, it was further verification of G's teaching on the law of 7.

Kris

 

[MusicMan]

This is an interesting concept, and one I had not considered, although I knew that wood will resonate, and you can make xylophones out of it.

It is made all the more interesting when you consider that trees grow in a fractal pattern, by nature.
Once I realised that trees are fractal, I began to see the fractal patterns everywhere I went.

A good example of a fractal plant is broccoli. Not a tree, but you get the idea.
Hey, learning is Fun!

 

[casper]

Each type of wood is unique and produces its sound by striking the stick by him.
Therefore it can not be from the same tree to make guitar and flute, everything that exists has its own frequency at which lingers. More about that you can read at this link, link:
https://translate.google.hr/translate?sl=hr&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=hr&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.svijet-gitare.com%2Fblog%2Fvrste-drva-za-gitare%2F&edit-text=

 

[WIN 52]

Placing my heart against old trees that have never been cut down gave me quite an experience. I can see where the term tree hugger arose from. You become connected to Earth, the thing that humans seem bent on destroying.

Just curious about the connection this would give to the universal Symphony Orchestra.

 

[cope]

Turns out all the trees in that area, while they each delivered different notes up and down the scale when struck, were notes in the same key. -There was only one tree which gave a discordant result.

Permaculture uses this effect when composing gardens.
A selforganised forest has this quality, as opposed to a human-planted one.
So probably those tree seeds that would resonate in another tone than appropriate for the particular place, get selected out, being less vigorous there.
In planted forests i notice sometimes something 'apologetic' about the trees, as if they are saying: i can't help it, somebody put me here.

 

[Skyfarmr]

Turns out all the trees in that area, while they each delivered different notes up and down the scale when struck, were notes in the same key. -There was only one tree which gave a discordant result.

Maybe the "discordant result" was the minor of that key?

 

[MusicMan]

Turns out all the trees in that area, while they each delivered different notes up and down the scale when struck, were notes in the same key. -There was only one tree which gave a discordant result.

Maybe the "discordant result" was the minor of that key?

Or, perhaps that particular tree was sick?