[B. Friendly]

https://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_t...usic_on_plants
There are many different viewpoints on this. A selection of contributors' thoughts are included below.
Answer 1: DOROTHY RETALLACK STUDY

Many scientific studies have been done regarding the effects of music on plants. The simple answer is that past studies have suggested hard rock or heavy metal music seems to have a detrimental effect on plant growth.

There is a well-known study from the early 1970s, conducted by Dorothy Retallack at the Colorado Woman's College in Denver using the college's three Biotronic Control Chambers. In one series of studies, the tone of F sound was played daily for three hours a day, intermittently in one laboratory, it was played for eight hours a day, constantly, and the control group had no sound introduced. Those plants where the F tone was played intermittingly for 3 hours a day grew twice as large and were twice as healthy as those in a sound-free environment. However, plants in the laboratory where the tone of Fconstantly for 8 hours daily died within two weeks of the experiment's beginning. Dorothy used a growing chamber, a variety of plant species (but the same in each chamber) and made sure the volume was consistent for all forms of music.

Different types of music were then utilized in her following experiments. She tried acid rock music by Led Zeppelin, Vanilla Fudge, and Hendrix. It was played to one group of plants and semi-pop music (of the 1970's) to another. The "acid rock music" plants were sickly and small compared to the control group of "semi popular" music (now termed soft rock).

The other genres of music she experimented with: were classical music (Debussy), jazz (she use Louis Armstrong among others), and Indian (Ravi Shankar). The plants grew large and healthy, with the plants actually growing towards the radio for each of these three forms of music, just like they bend towards sunlight. Dorothy also experimented with country music (such as Jonny Cash) and found they neither grew toward or away from the speakers and seemed neutral. While Dorothy did have a personal bias and by the end of her research she believed plants could feel and were capable of ESP. She felt perhaps it was the lyrics that the plants didn't like with the acid rock music.

It seems the plants like all types of music, except hard, pounding rhythms, but prefer stringed instruments the most. They also didn't like a constant tone played for 8 hours per day, but how many of us do!

Effective experiments need to involve the following factors, which Dorothy tried to maintain, but failed to measure the water and soil moisture with an accurate device:

• the same plant types across the different conditions
• a variety of species across the different conditions
• music volume would need to be maintained at a consistent level
• strict controls on all other external factors, e.g. light, warmth, etc
• consistency of human interaction across the different conditions

Answer 2: MYTHBUSTERS

Mythbusters have come up with a different result. Their experiments suggested that heavy metal seems to stimulate growth more than other types of music. The culprit is likely the rapid vibration that encourages activity. Perhaps these results could be pursued by searching the Mythbusters website on Discoverychannel. Answer 3: SMALL SCALE EXPERIMENTS

The effect is the same as random noise, i.e. just the physical stress of sound. Music as such has no effect because:

1) Plants are not intelligent. In fact, they don't have a central nervous system. Music can only affect you if you understand it, and plants can't understand anything.

2) Plants have no auditory organs. They can't hear any more than you could hear through your skin if you had no ears.

If you look this up on the net, you'll see plenty of small scale experiments with positive results. Unfortunately, these experiments are fatally flawed in several ways. First, they are typically done with just 3 or 4 plants, and with such a small sample size any difference is likely to be from random chance. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the control is silent when it should be random noise with the same frequency spectrum and periodicity as the music. This is the only way to test the effects of music as such, not just the effects of sound. When the experiment is done with a good sample size (thousands of plants) and controlled properly, the results may well be negative.
Answer 4: TRY EXPERIMENTS YOURSELF

I tried experimenting myself. After 4 week of experimenting, the following were the results. I observed that the one that was in the best condition was the plant that was in the room with classical music. It grew in the range of 9-16 degrees away from the CD Player. The second best plant was the one in the room with no music. It grew from the range of 11-15 degrees away from the CD Player. The one that didn't do so well was the one in the room with rock music. It grew from the range of 33-85 degrees away from the CD Player.
Answer 5: CLASSICAL MUSIC

Many people swear by Classical music, which is used in some professional greenhouses to stimulate plant growth. In the book, "The Secret Life of Plants," the results of exposure to various types of music on houseplants is explored, among other fascinating plant experiments.
Answer 6: HUMAN VS PLANTS

The effect of music on plants is drastic. It is found that music stimulates the brain, but it depends what kind of music. For example the high frequency of mechanical waves that run hand in hand with rap and acid rock are damaging to the plant.

Some studies have indicated that they do indeed germinate and grow faster and healthier when exposed to Classical music.

Soft classic music or sounds of nature, water or birds Answer Myth Busters actually did an experiment to see if it is true that music has an affect on plant growth. They set up several experiments using different types of music and no music. All plants were growing in the same conditions expect for different types of music. Believe it or not, the ones in the greenhouse with heavy metal grew the best.

My personal opinion is that plants evolved and thrived for years without any form of music (pop, rock, rap or classical), why would it make a difference now. If there is anything to the theories that abound it would have to to with vibrations not not specific music types.


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[Cannabologist]

- Isn't this supposed to be a science forum, not pseudoscience forum

[Cannawinner]

I have been playing Mozart to my plants for years.
I have excellent grows. I am sure that the Mozart helps.

[Ins&Outs]

does any o ne play dub for theres or maybe some roots reggae

[Ins&Outs]

the vibes should def get the ganja growin mon

[B. Friendly]

call it a coinceidence but my girls from seed that had haze mixed in are long stemed but with a night of soft music they straightened up.

I know of a blue berry farmer that uses classical music as a pest retardant. and he finds that the fruit closest to the speakers is the largest... go figure...

but vibrations are vibrations not identical to light but still do plants respond??????

What, if any are the effects of music on plant's?

seem's like a strange subject, i know but interesting non the less,a good few studies have shown positive effects on plants that music was played too,i remember a few yrs back that i saw an article in a newspaper about Prince Charles playing classical music in his "royal" greenhouse.


But does it really effect plant growth?

or is it just another old wife's tale/urban legend? have a read of this then you decide.....


In 1973, a woman named Dorothy Retallack published a small book called The Sound of Music and Plants. Her book detailed experiments that she had been conducting at the Colorado Woman’s College in Denver using the school’s three Biotronic Control Chambers. Mrs. Retallack placed plants in each chamber and speakers through which she played sounds and particular styles of music. She watched the plants and recorded their progress daily. She was astounded at what she discovered.
Her first experiment was to simply play a constant tone. In the first of the three chambers, she played a steady tone continuously for eight hours. In the second, she played the tone for three hours intermittently, and in the third chamber, she played no tone at all. The plants in the first chamber, with the constant tone, died within fourteen days. The plants in the second chamber grew abundantly and were extremely healthy, even more so than the plants in the third chamber. This was a very interesting outcome, very similar to the results that were obtained from experiments performed by the Muzak Corporation in the early 1940s to determine the effect of "background music" on factory workers. When music was played continuously, the workers were more fatigued and less productive, when played for several hours only, several times a day, the workers were more productive, and more alert and attentive than when no music was played.


Dorothy Retallack and Professor Broman working with the plants used in music experiments. For her next experiment, Mrs. Retallack used two chambers (and fresh plants). She placed radios in each chamber. In one chamber, the radio was tuned to a local rock station, and in the other the radio played a station that featured soothing "middle-of-the-road" music. Only three hours of music was played in each chamber. On the fifth day, she began noticing drastic changes. 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 stunted. After two weeks, the plants in the soothing-music chamber were uniform in size, lush and green, and were leaning between 15 and 20 degrees toward the radio. The plants in the rock chamber had grown extremely tall and were drooping, the blooms had faded and the stems were bending away from the radio. On the sixteenth day, all but a few plants in the rock chamber were in the last stages of dying. In the other chamber, the plants were alive, beautiful, and growing abundantly.


"Chaos, pure chaos": plants subjected to Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix didn't survive Mrs. Retallack’s next experiment was to create a tape of rock music by Jimi Hendrix, Vanilla Fudge, and Led Zeppelin. Again, the plants turned away from the music. Thinking maybe it was the percussion in the rock music that was causing the plants to lean away from the speakers, she performed an experiment playing a song that was performed on steel drums. The plants in this experiment leaned just slightly away from the speaker; however not as extremely as did the plants in the rock chambers. When she performed the experiment again, this time with the same song played by strings, the plants bent towards the speaker.
Next Mrs. Retallack tried another experiment again using the three chambers. In one chamber she played North Indian classical music performed by sitar and tabla, in another she played Bach organ music, and in the third, no music was played. The plants "liked" the North Indian classical music the best. In both the Bach and sitar chambers, the plants leaned toward the speakers, but he plants in the Indian music chamber leaned toward the speakers the most.
She went on to experiment with other types of music. The plants showed no reaction at all to country and western music, similarly to those in silent chambers. However, the plants "liked" the jazz that she played them. She tried an experiment using rock in one chamber, and "modern" (dischordant) classical music of negative composers Arnold Schönberg and Anton Webern in another. The plants in the rock chamber leaned 30 to 70 degrees away from the speakers and the plants in the modern classical chamber leaned 10 to 15 degrees away.
I spoke with Mrs. Retallack about her experiments a few years after her book was published, and at that time I began performing my own experiments with plants using a wood-frame and clear-plastic-covered structure that I had built in my back yard. For one month, I played three-hours-a-day of music from Arnold Schönberg’s negative opera Moses and Aaron, and for another month I played three-hours-a-day of the positive music of Palestrina. The effects were clear. The plants subjected to Schönberg died. The plants that listened to Palestrina flourished.
In these experiments, albeit basic and not fully scientific, we have the genesis of a theory of positive and negative music. What is it that causes the plants to thrive or die, to grow bending toward a source of sound or away from it?

[Cannawinner]

Originally Posted by Ins&Outs

does any o ne play dub for theres or maybe some roots reggae

Zeplindude says that he plays Led zeplin 24/0 to his plants.

[TheGreenBastard]

I have doubts that music has any significant effect on plants, most probably it is the sound waves themselves which would have any substantial influence. Before any inference can be made with any degree of accuracy a properly designed experiment must be carried out; this would have to be on a massive scale with genetically identical specimen under precise and uniform conditions (this is no easy task).

Originally Posted by Cannawinner

Zeplindude says that he plays Led zeplin 24/0 to his plants.

I remember reading something a few years back where they played hard rock in a barn with milk cows and they produced less and when they were outside the barn with music playing inside they had a hard time getting them in.

Read something recently about subsonic frequencies helping open stomata, probably akin to the Sonic Bloom peeps which are still around, and if anything might be good to help support foliar applications.

Totally off the cuff and can't cite anything.

[TheGreenBastard]

Originally Posted by Mountain

I remember reading something a few years back where they played hard rock in a barn with milk cows and they produced less and when they were outside the barn with music playing inside they had a hard time getting them in.

Read something recently about subsonic frequencies helping open stomata, probably akin to the Sonic Bloom peeps which are still around, and if anything might be good to help support foliar applications.

Totally off the cuff and can't cite anything.

Well, cows have sensory organs capable of auditory input, not really the same thing as plants.Though, I am interested in the possibility of specific frequencies assisting stomata function.