What is positive music?

March 3, 2006 2:28 PM

If you play a plant constant rock music, it will die. In the 1970s, Dorothy Retallack conducted a series of experiments to discover the effect certain types of music had on plants. The results might surprise you.
posted by 6am (58 comments total)

In the room they played rap music, the plants killed each other
posted by qvantamon at 2:34 PM on March 3, 2006 [1 favorite]

It fostered plant on plant crime?
posted by billysumday at 2:45 PM on March 3, 2006

That's only because they were dreaming of getting jobs somewhere in the south as police officers.

It was too much to bear.
posted by fusinski at 2:45 PM on March 3, 2006

The Straight Dope casts doubt on Dorothey Retallack's so called experiments.

A much pimplier furtive conducted similar experiements for his grade 8 science fair.
posted by furtive at 2:49 PM on March 3, 2006

A much pimplier furtive conducted similar experiements for his grade 8 science fair.

and earned a C+
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 2:51 PM on March 3, 2006

From the Straight Dope article -

"Well, some people say plants will thrive if they hear dentist's office music, but they'll die if they hear rock 'n' roll. Which to me says that plants may have feelings, but they don't have any taste."

I was pretty much thinking the same thing.
posted by borkus at 3:01 PM on March 3, 2006

In related news: No type of music was able to keep plants alive without water.
posted by blue_beetle at 3:08 PM on March 3, 2006

reminds me of Masaru Emoto. seems tough to get exact results on something like that.
posted by mrgrimm at 3:09 PM on March 3, 2006

What kind of plants are we talking. Not weed plants, they love Led Zeppelin.
posted by Liquidwolf at 3:11 PM on March 3, 2006

6am, fascinating FPP, worth thinking about. Nicola Tesla talked about resonance and I can't help thinking there is musical resonance that is healthier to be around.

"Nikola Tesla ...found ways to transfer energy through Space using resonance, based upon his belief that Space existed and propagated waves."
posted by nickyskye at 3:25 PM on March 3, 2006

I'll have you know that in fourth grade, I won the gold medal for demonstrating that bean plants grown in egg cartons preferred Bach to top 40 and to silence. I think I remember that the top-40-listeners -- and the top 40 would have included rock -- came in above the plants who didn't get to rock out with their leaves out.
posted by booksandlibretti at 3:27 PM on March 3, 2006

In the room they played Barry White there was some hot plant-on-plant action.
posted by arcticwoman at 3:34 PM on March 3, 2006

This just in: if you feed humans a constant diet of cow poop and potting soil, they will die.
posted by mondo dentro at 3:44 PM on March 3, 2006

"I wanna pollinate you all night long, baby."
posted by trondant at 3:44 PM on March 3, 2006

Bunch of geezers.
posted by Laugh_track at 3:53 PM on March 3, 2006

Uh, I thought I saw this on mythbusters? They played all sorts of music for plants and the only conclusion they came to was that any type of music, talking, etc is beneficial (vs no sound).
posted by SirOmega at 3:54 PM on March 3, 2006

Okay, but if you SMOKE the plants, while listening to the rock, you'll have an awesome time.
posted by stenseng at 3:55 PM on March 3, 2006

If I listened to constant rock music from the 70s over a few days, I'd probably die too. And so would you.
posted by psmealey at 3:55 PM on March 3, 2006

ROFL! Love this thread!
posted by nickyskye at 4:01 PM on March 3, 2006

85% of plants that listen to Fox News think we invaded Iraq because of Saddam Hussein's ties to Al -Qaeda.
posted by CCK at 4:09 PM on March 3, 2006 [1 favorite]

They're full of shit, but they do have some wonderful gospel music mp3s for download.
posted by Jatayu das at 4:26 PM on March 3, 2006

Oh man, you guys are totally ignoring the coolest part of the experimental results!

in the chamber with the soothing music, the plants were growing healthily and their stems were starting to bend towards the radio! In the rock chamber, half the plants had small leaves and had grown gangly, while the others were hanging out on streetcorners with hot chicks and dudes - making art that looked wierd and totally making up their words for stuff! Some were musicians, some were mathematicians, and some were Rolling Down the Stairs Too Drunk To Fuck!
posted by freebird at 4:38 PM on March 3, 2006

i don't know any plant that thinks Saddam had any ties to Al-Qaeda.
posted by obeygiant at 4:42 PM on March 3, 2006

I know of one. It's a shrub.
posted by davelog at 4:58 PM on March 3, 2006

davelog wins
posted by unrepentanthippie at 5:18 PM on March 3, 2006

The great thing is, this is the same argument that was made against rock music in the seminal Christian film Hell's Bells: The Dangers of Rock and Roll. I refuse to call that movie a documentary, but it is exhaustive in its approach.

They also argue that loud rock music will boil an egg, if the egg is put near the speaker!
posted by blackvectrex at 5:30 PM on March 3, 2006

I don't know much from plants, but I do know that playing a steady stream of Ozzy killed my comatose uncle Morty, so rock is definately bad for vegetables.
posted by Astro Zombie at 5:48 PM on March 3, 2006

My plant says your favorite band sucks.
posted by maryh at 5:59 PM on March 3, 2006

I don't know about plants but rock sure makes humans stupid.
posted by HTuttle at 6:56 PM on March 3, 2006

I hear Sinatra also was bad for plants. He stubbed his cigarettes out in them.
posted by Astro Zombie at 7:01 PM on March 3, 2006

If you play a plant constant rock music, it will die.

What if a Plant constantly plays rock music?
posted by hangashore at 7:10 PM on March 3, 2006

No Sleep 'Til Your Lawn's Dead
posted by stinkycheese at 7:14 PM on March 3, 2006

That's strange, I did almost the exact experiment for a science fair about 20 years ago on bean sprouts. My result was the opposite (AC/DC Back in Black resulted in the quickest growth while classical and no music were the shortest). My hypothesis was that the added vibrations may have had something to do with it (I'll never be convinced that plants have musical taste). The next year I built off of that with back massagers at different settings with the same results...go figure :P
posted by samsara at 7:19 PM on March 3, 2006

What happens when you play the Vines for plants?
posted by secret about box at 7:21 PM on March 3, 2006

Plants have no culture, therefore they don't have any preconceived notions of what sounds are dissonant or consonant, angry or sad, mellow or energetic...

i think samsara might be onto something above... it's got to either be the vibrations in the air, or the EM radiation from the loudspeakers, or maybe even the frequencies or waveforms in the music.

doing the same experiment with timbres might be fun. in one room, play a sine wave, in another a square, in another, white noise... better yet, make them snap peas and see if the peas taste different :)
posted by teletype1 at 7:34 PM on March 3, 2006

Other things that happened:

The plants that listened to rock and roll suffered from far more unwanted fertilizations. The plants that got the easy listening were capable of reproduction, but the fertilization was always planned and the stamen report being unsatisfied during the process.

also: what volumes did this crazy woman play the music at? I suspect there wasn't a whole lot of control going on, here. Did she even use any audio meters?

also: freebird FTW.
posted by shmegegge at 7:34 PM on March 3, 2006

Yeah, sure. "Back massagers".
posted by graventy at 7:36 PM on March 3, 2006

Well, yea I didn't win 1st prize or anything...
posted by samsara at 7:37 PM on March 3, 2006

Plants are fags.
posted by fleetmouse at 7:40 PM on March 3, 2006

Assuming it's at all true, and it actually is a consonance issue, it doesn't matter that they [the plants] don't know about the concept of consonance—all that matters is that the consonance exists.

We call it "consonance", but there is math that can describe it. Therefore, objects and organisms that don't understand the concept itself could still be affected.
posted by secret about box at 7:41 PM on March 3, 2006

"If I listened to constant rock music from the 70s over a few days, I'd probably die too. And so would you."


You're wrong. They call that "the weekend" where I come from. And I've never died from it. (though I have been hungover on Monday once or twice)
posted by stenseng at 7:50 PM on March 3, 2006

Playing music to plants is one of the recurring topics at science fairs. I've judged 3 or 4, and always someone does the music and plants thing.
posted by easternblot at 8:02 PM on March 3, 2006

You know what else you always see at science fairs?

Failure.
posted by secret about box at 8:09 PM on March 3, 2006

"If I listened to constant rock music from the 70s over a few days, I'd probably die too. And so would you."

You're wrong. They call that "the weekend" where I come from.

Damn. And there I thought I had the perfect explanation for the 80s.
posted by Sparx at 8:23 PM on March 3, 2006

what happens when you play them "call any vegetable"?
posted by pyramid termite at 8:26 PM on March 3, 2006

I just spent fifteen minutes looking for a still from Roger Corman's Rock and Roll High School (which wasn't really supposed to be a "Ramones movie" at all, at least up until Cheap Trick turned him down and he had to go get the Ramones instead) - you know the scene, it's the one where Miss Togar subjects laboratory mice to increasing "levels" of rock-and-roll music until they explode - but I couldn't find it.

You'll just have to picture it here, then.
posted by yhbc at 8:40 PM on March 3, 2006

A mouse shows up at their concert later, and is refused, until he shows that he's brought earplugs. I believe he also blows up.
posted by Astro Zombie at 8:47 PM on March 3, 2006

Not weed plants, they love Led Zeppelin.

Especially plants named Robert.
posted by euphorb at 9:46 PM on March 3, 2006

Don't take the concept too lightly. As noted in The Nation and elsewhere, R&R music has been (and still is?) used as an instrument of torture in the GWOT:

In Afghanistan, Zakim Shah, a 20-year-old Afghan farmer, was forced to stay awake while in American custody by soldiers blasting music and shouting at him. Shah told the New York Times that after enduring the pain of music, "he grew so exhausted...that he vomited." In Guantánamo Bay, Eminem, Britney Spears, Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine, Metallica (again) and Bruce Springsteen ("Born in the USA") have been played at mind-numbing volumes, sometimes for stretches of up to fourteen hours, at detainees. And at Abu Ghraib, Saddam Salah al-Rawi, a 29-year-old Iraqi, told a similar story. For no reason, over a period of four months, he was hooded, beaten, stripped, urinated on and lashed to his cell door by his hands and feet. He also talked about music becoming a weapon. "There was a stereo inside the cell," he said, "with a sound so loud I couldn't sleep. I stayed like that for twenty-three hours."
...
The mind is another story, and blasting loud music at captives has become part of what has now entered our lexicon as "torture lite." Torture lite is a calculated combination of psychological and physical means of coercion that stop short of causing death and pose little risk that telltale physical marks will be left behind, but that nonetheless can cause extreme psychological trauma. It's designed to deprive the victim of sleep and to cause massive sensory overstimulation, and it has been shown in different situations to be psychologically unbearable.
...
In a gripping Vanity Fair article, Donovan Webster searched for and found "the man in the hood" from the macabre Abu Ghraib photos. Haj Ali told Webster of being hooded, stripped, handcuffed to his cell and bombarded with a looped sample of David Gray's "Babylon." It was so loud, he said, "I thought my head would burst." Webster then cued up "Babylon" on his iPod and played it for Haj Ali to confirm the song. Ali ripped the earphones off his head, and started crying. "He didn't just well up with tears," Webster later told me. "He broke down sobbing."

It's not funny if you can't turn it off.
posted by cenoxo at 12:13 AM on March 4, 2006

Plants are fags.

Not in England. There, fags are plants.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 1:13 AM on March 4, 2006

In one episode of Mythbusters (I know, I know...) they tried the playing-music-to-plants thing. Their experiment was less than totally rigorous, as usual, but the plants listening to raucous metal were the ones that grew best.

They were playing the metal loudest, so if the plants were just responding to the vibrations somehow, it's unsurprising that those plants were the winners.

This isn't necessarily hippie-trippie nonsense; most plants naturally grow in the open air and get shaken around by the wind, so it's not outrageous to suppose that they've evolved to grow best when that's what's happening.

The fact that nobody else has ever managed to discover this, though, when people have been maniacally trying to find ways to make plants grow faster for centuries, suggests that the Mythbusters results were, indeed, spurious.

Any (cough) indoor cultivators out there, however, could try sticking a subwoofer in the airing cupboard along with the (cough) tomatoes and seeing what happens.
posted by dansdata at 3:30 AM on March 4, 2006

Great. Another good reason to love rock music. Plants bore the arse off me. Just like Jazz.
posted by Decani at 5:05 AM on March 4, 2006

being hooded, stripped, handcuffed to his cell and bombarded with a looped sample of David Gray's "Babylon."

holy shit, that's fucking evil. I would dearly, dearly love the opportunity to see how David Gray would react when told his that music has been used as an instrument of torture.
posted by 6am at 7:52 AM on March 4, 2006

I think it depends on the plant. A Venus Flytrap likes funk, for instance.
posted by jonmc at 2:57 PM on March 4, 2006

"A Venus Flytrap Likes Funk" is the name of my band's next album.
posted by Decani at 7:04 PM on March 4, 2006

When I was a freshman in college (75-76), a dweeb down the hall was brandishing this study, especially at me and my roommate. See, in our dorm room, if there wasn't Zeppelin being played at high volume after class, they'd check to see if something was wrong. Anyway, my roomie got a plant from his aunt and perched it on one of my old Marantz speakers. We named the plant Robert (of course). And damned if it didn't thrive for three quarters. Which drove the dweeb down the hall nuts.
posted by Ber at 9:09 PM on March 4, 2006

what happens when you play them "call any vegetable"?

The chances are good that the vegetable will respond to you.
posted by davelog at 10:00 PM on March 4, 2006

When I did this for my science fair experiment, my Bob Marley plants came out on top, followed by Mozart, Madonna, and the Dead Kennedys. I had to check the Madonna LP out from the library, but the others were all in my father's record collection.
posted by Hal Mumkin at 12:05 AM on March 5, 2006