The effects of music on plants

afrosam

Well-Known Member
What, if any are the effects of music on plant's?

seem's like a strange subject, i know but interesting non the less,a good few studies have shown positive effects on plants that music was played too,i remember a few yrs back that i saw an article in a newspaper about Prince Charles playing classical music in his "royal" greenhouse.


But does it really effect plant growth?

or is it just another old wife's tale/urban legend? have a read of this then you decide.....

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]In 1973, a woman named Dorothy Retallack published a small book called The Sound of Music and Plants. Her book detailed experiments that she had been conducting at the Colorado Woman’s College in Denver using the school’s three Biotronic Control Chambers. Mrs. Retallack placed plants in each chamber and speakers through which she played sounds and particular styles of music. She watched the plants and recorded their progress daily. She was astounded at what she discovered.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]Her first experiment was to simply play a constant tone. In the first of the three chambers, she played a steady tone continuously for eight hours. In the second, she played the tone for three hours intermittently, and in the third chamber, she played no tone at all. The plants in the first chamber, with the constant tone, died within fourteen days. The plants in the second chamber grew abundantly and were extremely healthy, even more so than the plants in the third chamber. This was a very interesting outcome, very similar to the results that were obtained from experiments performed by the Muzak Corporation in the early 1940s to determine the effect of "background music" on factory workers. When music was played continuously, the workers were more fatigued and less productive, when played for several hours only, several times a day, the workers were more productive, and more alert and attentive than when no music was played.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]Dorothy Retallack and Professor Broman working with the plants used in music experiments.[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]For her next experiment, Mrs. Retallack used two chambers (and fresh plants). She placed radios in each chamber. In one chamber, the radio was tuned to a local rock station, and in the other the radio played a station that featured soothing "middle-of-the-road" music. Only three hours of music was played in each chamber. On the fifth day, she began noticing drastic changes. In the chamber with the soothing music, the plants were growing healthily and their stems were starting to bend towards the radio! In the rock chamber, half the plants had small leaves and had grown gangly, while the others were stunted. After two weeks, the plants in the soothing-music chamber were uniform in size, lush and green, and were leaning between 15 and 20 degrees toward the radio.:shock: The plants in the rock chamber had grown extremely tall and were drooping, the blooms had faded and the stems were bending away from the radio. On the sixteenth day, all but a few plants in the rock chamber were in the last stages of dying. In the other chamber, the plants were alive, beautiful, and growing abundantly.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]"Chaos, pure chaos": plants subjected to Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix didn't survive[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]Mrs. Retallack’s next experiment was to create a tape of rock music by Jimi Hendrix, Vanilla Fudge, and Led Zeppelin. Again, the plants turned away from the music. Thinking maybe it was the percussion in the rock music that was causing the plants to lean away from the speakers, she performed an experiment playing a song that was performed on steel drums. The plants in this experiment leaned just slightly away from the speaker; however not as extremely as did the plants in the rock chambers. When she performed the experiment again, this time with the same song played by strings, the plants bent towards the speaker.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]Next Mrs. Retallack tried another experiment again using the three chambers. In one chamber she played North Indian classical music performed by sitar and tabla, in another she played Bach organ music, and in the third, no music was played. The plants "liked" the North Indian classical music the best. In both the Bach and sitar chambers, the plants leaned toward the speakers, but he plants in the Indian music chamber leaned toward the speakers the most. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]She went on to experiment with other types of music. The plants showed no reaction at all to country and western music, similarly to those in silent chambers. However, the plants "liked" the jazz that she played them. She tried an experiment using rock in one chamber, and "modern" (dischordant) classical music of negative composers Arnold Schönberg and Anton Webern in another. The plants in the rock chamber leaned 30 to 70 degrees away from the speakers and the plants in the modern classical chamber leaned 10 to 15 degrees away.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]I spoke with Mrs. Retallack about her experiments a few years after her book was published, and at that time I began performing my own experiments with plants using a wood-frame and clear-plastic-covered structure that I had built in my back yard. For one month, I played three-hours-a-day of music from Arnold Schönberg’s negative opera Moses and Aaron, and for another month I played three-hours-a-day of the positive music of Palestrina. The effects were clear. The plants subjected to Schönberg died. The plants that listened to Palestrina flourished.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]In these experiments, albeit basic and not fully scientific, we have the genesis of a theory of positive and negative music. What is it that causes the plants to thrive or die, to grow bending toward a source of sound or away from it?:clap::clap::clap:[/FONT]
 

Cannabox

Well-Known Member
that's pretty cool, and i think it's even cooler that.. "but he plants in the Indian music chamber leaned toward the speakers the most" .. go figure they have been around a long time..
 

GlassFreak

Well-Known Member
its an interesting subject alright! i love stuff like that. the fact that plants respond to human emotion in positive ways is crazy! thats why you have to show your plants love and theyll show it back! throw some good music in the mix and you got one big happy... smelly... sticky... delicious family... mmmmmmm
 

Cannabox

Well-Known Member
its an interesting subject alright! i love stuff like that. the fact that plants respond to human emotion in positive ways is crazy! thats why you have to show your plants love and theyll show it back! throw some good music in the mix and you got one big happy... smelly... sticky... delicious family... mmmmmmm
hehe ya, the REAL question is though, did they play the plant some Grateful Dead? or some good old roots music? hehe
 

Immature587

Well-Known Member
this stuff is all bullshit.

the truth of the matter is that there's no way to have good enough contrrol over these experiments for them to have any validity whatsoever. every single test would have to be under the EXACT same conditions which isn't possible because the subjects of the test, the plants, are all different. at some level there may be a frequency that if emitted might benefit the plants on a cellular level similar to a cat's purring. but that is comparing a cat to a plant. not exactly a vary good comparison.

lets go out on a limb here and theorize that music did help growth a bit. problem is, is that the electricty used to power the speakers costs you more than any added value you would get from playing to them. but hey whatever helps you sleep at night.

this is a fun experiment to keep highschoolers interested in science. that is all
 

MuppetMan1989

Active Member
this stuff is all bullshit.

the truth of the matter is that there's no way to have good enough contrrol over these experiments for them to have any validity whatsoever. every single test would have to be under the EXACT same conditions which isn't possible because the subjects of the test, the plants, are all different. at some level there may be a frequency that if emitted might benefit the plants on a cellular level similar to a cat's purring. but that is comparing a cat to a plant. not exactly a vary good comparison.

lets go out on a limb here and theorize that music did help growth a bit. problem is, is that the electricty used to power the speakers costs you more than any added value you would get from playing to them. but hey whatever helps you sleep at night.

this is a fun experiment to keep highschoolers interested in science. that is all

I couldn't say it better myself. but at the same time, you yourself never know what reality really holds.
 

Vento

Well-Known Member
this stuff is all bullshit.

the truth of the matter is that there's no way to have good enough contrrol over these experiments for them to have any validity whatsoever. every single test would have to be under the EXACT same conditions which isn't possible because the subjects of the test, the plants, are all different. at some level there may be a frequency that if emitted might benefit the plants on a cellular level similar to a cat's purring. but that is comparing a cat to a plant. not exactly a vary good comparison.

lets go out on a limb here and theorize that music did help growth a bit. problem is, is that the electricty used to power the speakers costs you more than any added value you would get from playing to them. but hey whatever helps you sleep at night.

this is a fun experiment to keep highschoolers interested in science. that is all
Have a look for a TV show called " Plantzilla " On Nat-Geo ( Here is a preview ... http://natgeotv.com/uk/plantzilla/videos/preview )

Watch the experiments they do ...and then decide if its bullshit or just your uninformed opinion due to lack of willingness to accept that maybe plants react to stimulation beyond what we think we know about them :)

You may have a valid point about a frequency range that stimulate the plants though .... maybe we should explore that a bit more ... Any Audio buffs here ?

Grape farmers around the world ar e now setting up PA systems ( at great expence ) to play music to the crops ...Give that some thought to :)

On a sidenote .... Since watching the program and doing some reading .... i now play music to my plants ( Classical ).... and my findings are ...I have no idea if its helping .... i like to think that if i was stuck in a room all day under a hot light ...i would enjoy a bit of music :)... if it would make me happy ... whos to say it dont make the plant happy ...and as we all know ...a happy plant is a healthy plant and a plant that will produce nice flowers :)
 

J.cun.Shallow

Active Member
you ppl are to nice to your bitches one thinks, twist them bend them stress them and if I was goin to play music at at them it would have to be cradle of filth
 

Anonymouse

Active Member
Plants do react to the vibrations caused by music, I've never doubted that theory but I don't play music in my grow room. It'd have to be hella loud with all my can fans/oscillating fans going :)
 

JustinWafroGuy

Active Member
Very interesting. I wonder how plants would respond to Dubstep lol. I think i'll give this a go, it can't hurt can it? And the costs of purchasing and running a little farty radio for 3 hours a day would be insignificent when you consider the amount of equipment you have going in a grow room and the amount of leccy that all would be using. The question is though; when do you play the tunage? AM or PM
 
plants dont have ears or auditory receptors so the music is only good for vibrations. plants have stomata on the bottom of leaves responsible for gas exchange like bringing in CO2 and getting rid of O2 so in an CO2 enriched area music can be somewhat helpful in that respect. also it has to be smooth jazz or classical the vibrations of other kinds of music are too much for the plant.
 
its not so much the style of music as it is the tone that happens to be in certain styles of music. The tone is 528hz it gives off a pleasant heartfelt and healing feeling on humans and animals alike.....read all about it at Love528.com
 

d7b

Well-Known Member
The only reason music has an effect on humans, is due to the fact we cant interpret a set of rules from a construct we have created.

I agree with one of the above posts that states due to the plant being unable to interpret a set of audio frequencies makes me a firm believer that any difference would be absolutely by coincidence. In fact, the only animal other than humans I have encountered that were seemingly in tune with music were birds. Any frequencies produced music would have no physical effect on the plant either, but maybe some heavy bass, low mid that rattled the plants around when highly amplified might a little. But I am also doubting this to do anything other than get the cops over to make a noise complaint at walk into your grow op :)

I would love to think they are soaking up my drumnbass / dubstep / reggae etc but after growing for quite a while now I have noticed that the real things making a difference are co2 , clean water and light :)
 

LordWinter

New Member
Actually, if you look into cymatics (The short-short-short version of cymatics is that sound produces geometric patterns that vary according to frequency, for those who don't want to have to look it up.) , and then compare that to the basic pretense that the greater part of the universe (if not all of it at some level) has some sort of geometric structure, then it is entirely possible that the positive music creating some sort of sympathetic resonance within the plant's structure while the negative music produces a dissonance that disrupts the plant's normal functions. Then you have the fact that various molecules vibrate at different frequencies, not that much of a leap to believe that certain tonal progressions can produce resonance within a plant when you add that in. You don't have to transpose a consciousness, or even tonal interpretation abilities.

Besides, there's a sonic weapon available now that induces pain, nausea, and vomiting, and they're even using harmonics in SOME anti-gravity experiments.

As much fun as it is to contemplate wild tech like that, you don't even have to stretch the imagination THAT far. How many times have you been sitting in the backseat of a car that had 12" subs or larger and a long, low bass note played. I have, made me nauseous as hell. We may not share much in the way of DNA, but plants, animals, and humans are highly complex organisms and I can't imagine a sound that could disrupt my digestive processes not having a similar effect on the plant.

Just my thoughts.

For those interested in the sonic weaps that I was talking about, here are some links to articles: http://www.techchee.com/2008/03/13/sonic-handgun-future-gun-fires-super-high-pitch-sound/, and http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4857417. Some of that stuff has been around for a while.
 
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