Artist Bartholomaus Traubeck has created musical masterpieces, by playing trees.

He created a record player that translates the different colors and textures of tree rings into music. Rather than use a needle like a record, sensors gather information about the wood and turn them into piano notes.

Every tree sounds vastly unique due to varying characteristics of the rings, such as strength, thickness and rate of growth.

Keep in mind that the tree rings are being translated into the language of music, rather than sounding musical in and of themselves. Traubeck’s one-of-a-kind record player uses a PlayStation Eye Camera and a stepper motor attached to its control arm. It relays the data to a computer with a program called Ableton Live. What you end up with is an incredible piano track, and in the case of the Ash, a very eerie one.

Hats off to Traubeck for coming up with the ingenious method to turn a simple slice of wood into a beautiful unique arrangement. It makes you wonder what types of music other parts of nature would play.

Kasim Khan – Team Spirit

Source/credits: Bartholomäus Traubeck,