Music from Nature / Burt's Bees Earth Day 2012

•

To celebrate Earth Day 2012 Burt's Bees asked me to create a video performance in the style of my Music from a Tree.

We thought to include as "instruments" also some of the ingredients used in their products, like honey, almonds, rice, and coconuts; also bees had a musical role in this piece.

I performed the whole composition by playing these natural elements, no synthesizers, samplers or additional sounds have been used.

Here's the video and some pictures with details about the recording process.
Enjoy it and have a Happy Earth Day!

Diego

Here's my customized double bass bow, I attached a tiny microphone to it, so I could capture every possible sound in detail. I played the bass, melody and other tonal elements on a small orange tree, by pinching the twigs in different positions.

This a contact transducer I built, it's extremely sensitive and it allowed me to capture very quiet sounds at a much louder volume. I attached few of these on different twigs.

I was able to create a deep bass drum sound by placing a contact microphone on a slice of orange peel.

This is a recording technique I created when I first started making music form trees. Music from a TreeIt's a customized stethoscope with a microphone attached to it, it allows me turn tiny sounds into larger ones.

Coconuts are great for tonal percussive sounds, I drilled two holes in it to control the tuning of it, in combination with the level of water I left in it. In this picture you can also see my finger mounted microphone.