Orchard Chorus: PlantWave in Dalarna

I’m so pleased with the reception of the Hogsback Symphony that I’ve decided to use my very first set of PlantWave recordings for another. I recorded the fruit trees in and around two of Dalarna’s beautiful baroque orchards: at Gamla Staberg and Källslätten. They were all burgeoning with fruit in the glorious autumn weather: mostly apples, plums and pears. Many of the trees are very old – 250 years or more – and the gardener at Gamla Staberg told us that the old orchards around Falun are more or less at the northerly limit of where they can be successfully grown. He was quite fascinated by the PlantWave and the sounds of the trees he was lovingly tending. I hope that this post somehow finds its way to him.

The PlantWave makes audio recordings using a whole range of presets allocating instruments and sounds to the shapes of the audio waves. Those are what I used to make the Hogsback Symphony. But you can take this a step further and relate the notes and sequences in the midi file (that PlantWave also records) to instruments and styles of your own. I’ve done that here with one of the young plum trees at Gamla Staberg.

There’s an audio file and a midi file for each tree in the Orchard Chorus: with two apple trees and one plum tree that’s six streams of fruit consciousness. The tracks are introduced at 30 second intervals so after three minutes you are hearing all six of them: you may want to turn down the volume at that point! If you’d like to see the images full size then the best of them (and plenty of others) are over in my Sweden gallery. Comments are welcome!