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 Womans College in Denver using the schools 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]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]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]
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[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 Schönbergs 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?
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