Gardener aims to bring plant music to new audiences

Martin Noble-James built an analogue synthesiser during lockdown using YouTube videos

A gardener who built a synthesiser to experiment with making music out of plants is due to take his work to new live audiences.

Martin Noble-James, a gardener at Felbrigg Hall, near Cromer, Norfolk, will be performing with plants in a new music form of bio-sonification.

Making music in this way will involve attaching electrodes to plants to pick up electrical impulses which can be transformed into sound.

He said: "I’m interested in making music where I don’t have control, in collaborating with something unaware of its artistic role and sharing it with a live audience."

Mr Noble-James, who has been a gardener at Felbrigg Hall for the past 20 years, got into the music form during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Bio-sonification involves attaching electrodes to plants which pick up electrical impulses which goes into the synthesiser.

"I really wanted to do it live, just get out there plug a plant in and see what happens," he said.

Mr Noble-James said making changes to plants, like watering them or tearing off a leaf, can change the processes and electrical impulses to alter the sound

He said making changes to the plant, like tearing off a leaf or watering it, can change the sound it makes as the chemical processes inside are altered.

"The plants are just producing voltage and you can do all sorts of things with that voltage," he said.

He is due to travel around Norfolk this summer, bringing bio-sonification to audiences at Felbrigg Hall and the Blickling Estate.