He Puts a Ring from a Tree Trunk on a Record Player. This Is the Most Extraordinary Sound of Nature I Have Ever Heard

Sounds like Crickets chirping on a dark night, the combination of several birds singing together, spring frogs croaking, or the sound of a gentle breeze through the leaves, etc seem easy to listen for. However, have you ever thought to listen to a tree trunk? Yes, you read that right – a tree trunk.

In this case, this is referring to the rings inside a tree trunk. We may know that the rings of a tree trunk tell a lot about a tree, primarily regarding the water availability during each season of its existence.

However, have the tightly packed circles ever reminded you of a larger version of a vinyl record? Well, artist Bartholomaus Traubeck thought it did. He was curious to find out what those rings would “say,” so he invented a type of record player that reads the color and texture variations of the rings inside the cross-section of a tree trunk. It interprets the rings into audible sounds, a type of music if you will.

How is something like this even possible? Traubeck’s “record player” uses light to interpret the color and texture variations of a tree’s rings into musical notes and instruments. While it may sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, the actual technology behind it is nothing far-fetched or top secret.