Diego Stocco Creates Natural Music Using Bees, Trees, And Nuts

There are all kinds of ways you can make music, from the complicated to the simple, the acoustic to the electronic, the choice is yours. You can even take to the kitchen to tap out a melody should you feel inspired while waiting for the potatoes to boil. So how about going out to utilize Mother Nature to make some sweet sounds? This is what Diego Stocco did to celebrate Earth Day 2012.

Using ingredients usually associated with cookery, like honey, almonds, rice, orange peel, and coconuts, Stocco creates a symphony of nature that isn’t unlike the makeshift sounds of the kitchen musicians. Even bees get to join in on the jam. By using his custom equipment, like a double bass bow with a microphone attached, a contact transducer, and a customized stethoscope, he teases out the sounds and creates a melody.

Below are some earlier projects from him that use similar techniques to create music from both a normal tree and a bonsai tree. The technique of using nature to provide sounds is reminiscent of Coldcut and Hexstatic’s Natural Rhythms trilogy which used dripping water, frogs, insects, birds, and other animals in the first two parts Frog Jam and Natural Rhythm.