Diego Stocco - Music from a Tree

In the garden of my house there's a tree with lots of randomly grown twigs. It looks odd and nice at the same time. One day I asked myself if I could create a piece of music with it.

To tune the tree I picked a fundamental note and tuned the twigs by trimming them with a pencil sharpener. I used two Røde NT6 and a NTG-2 as microphones, combined with a customized stethoscope.

I recorded the tracks live on a Pro Tools LE system. I didn't use any synthesizer or sampler to create or modify the sounds. All the sounds come from playing the tree, by bowing the twigs, shaking the leaves, playing rhythms on the cortex and so on.

At this link you can see some pictures with more detailed descriptions: behance.net/Gallery/Music-from-a-Tree/26­3872
I hope you'll like it.

The track is also available as an high-quality download on my Bandcamp page: diegostocco.bandcamp.com/track/music-fro­m-a-tree

• Category

  Music

[lpdude72]

how did you get the bowing sound out of the branches? Did you dampen the branch or bow? I'm trying to get the same result, but all i get is rubbing, not the screeching noise you make.

[Diego Stocco]

First you have to find a tree with dry and long twigs (like the one you see in the video), if they're still green and soft they won't sound much. Then you have to make sure to have plenty of rosin on the bow. Finally, the angle, pressure and position of the bow on the twig makes a huge difference.

[CyclopsSpectreVideos]

Do you ever shift the pitch of some sounds after recording?

[Diego Stocco]

Not for this piece, the idea is to play only the notes that I can get out of the tree. There's no sampling involved here.

[einsamaberfrei]

Amazing! How do you turn a stethoscope into microphone?

[Diego Stocco]

Thanks, I modified a stethoscope by using some hose accessories, if you google: Music from a Tree Behance you'll find pics with more details.

[Debbie S]

Oh my, so amazing, ingenious and graceful! Thank you!

[Pikinos]

Amazing performance. Creativity knows no boundaries after all. 

[Shaharazaad Carter]

Hello,

Your video was just showed in my Audio class this morning. You are so very talented and I hope you continue to make amazing videos such as these(:

[Soundproject123]

There is a fine line between genius and crazy....this is probably a bit of both. We done!  p.s. How did you mod the stethoscope?

[Daniel Gonzalez Lopez]

Amazing :)

[drvinnyboombeats]

This gives a whole new meaning to "Ambient Music".

[Eider Vasconcelos]

Sharing this in the office this morning for a little creative inspiration, or I should say a whole lot of it. Thanks for your art man. Really inspiring.

[elias tacheron]

real



[Jax1108]

Brilliant! A true artist sees his art in everything, especially nature! :) Well done!!

[Zakaria Hysoka]

This video worth million views ! sorry but i meant billion.