What does it sound like to be inside a plant? Can plants teach us new ways to make music?
These were the questions explored during my workshop at the Positive Trace Festival.
- Listening Phase: We began by diving straight into recordings of the inner sounds—the “vibrosphere”—of local plants and herbs gathered for the occasion. Participants lay down, sat, or stood, listening in an almost meditative state to these unfamiliar, hidden soundscapes.
- Improvisation: Next, I invited the group to join a collective musical improvisation. After choosing which specific plants they wanted to “jam” with, I played loops from those recordings while the participants improvised in trios, using their bodies, voices, and whatever objects were at hand as instruments.
- Layering & Completion: I recorded this collective plant jam on-site and later added my own clarinet improvisation. This process challenged me to find entirely new ways of playing, guided directly by the unique character and outcome of our session together.
The collaboration at the Positive Trace Festival ultimately blossomed into a finished release, which you can listen to here:
These are the specific plant sounds that featured in the workshop: