The Incredible Music of Tree Rings

For the German musical artist Bartholomäus Traubeck, the sound of trees is not just rustling leaves, birds, or the occasional falling acorn. For him, trees apparently look like giant stacks of vinyl records.

And when you think about it, if you cut out a slice from a tree trunk, the resulting circular object with its ring pattern has a lot in common with LPs visually.

The obvious next question then is, what might playing these tree rings sound like? Is there such a thing as tree music?

This is exactly what Traubeck has set out to imagine by creating a record player which reads tree rings and converts them into piano music. Each tree sounds unique.

Take a listen to this one.

While Traubeck’s tree player of course produces merely a sonic interpretation of the data found in tree rings, it is an incredibly creative way of weaving together tree music. And a very beautiful one as well.