Apparently this thread got deleted in the process of the move. My original objection to the myth was that the water mechanism did not work forcing many of the plants to die. Because of this time in the sun could have been a huge variable that would have killed some plants faster than others. Another thing was that the team should have used Mozart instead of whatever they had. It has been done in several scientific experiments that Mozart aids plant growth. That would be cool to see as well.

by Don Campbell
Avon, 1997
Review by Anne Philbrow
Mar 26th 2002


The basic message of this book is that music is a Good Thing, or as Don Campbell more poetically puts it: 'Music helps plants grow, drives our neighbors to distraction, lulls children to sleep and marches men to war.' He also describes it fittingly as 'the speech of angels and atoms'.

He is preaching to an already converted reader in my case. Having spent many hours playing the piano during a lengthy period of reactive depression, I am well convinced of the therapeutic aspects of music.

Unfortunately, the importance of music is not universally understood as vital for one's mental (and indeed, physical) well-being. It is often relegated to the 'hobby' category; amusing, but not significant. Here in the UK, many schools fail to recognize it as a serious subject, where it is regarded as an 'extra', a frippery. Not a serious core subject alongside English, Math or a science.

Campbell illustrates his thesis with wide ranging documentation of examples where music has apparently helped to heal people on a physical and mental level, raise their IQ and emotional well-being.

His illustrations run from scientific evidence through to anecdotal. Mostly he cites experiments that have been academically written up both in mainstream medical journals and alternative therapy literature. All sources are given.

Some of the stories – and that is what much of it is, stories about how music has dramatically changed someone's life – are less rigorous, especially where music is used in conjunction with other therapies. There is also a New Age feel to some of the writing, which is not to my taste.

It is difficult to know where to start with this book, as its good qualities are also its deficiencies, being a vast collection of observations and anecdotes. It is almost like reading a mini-encyclopedia.

Campbell sets the scene by describing the physiological effects of sound, and distinguishes between hearing and listening. The alarming effects of sound pollution are well documented. For example, (pp 36/7) 'A study at a public elementary school found that, in the course of four years, students whose class faced the elevated subway were eleven months behind students not directly exposed to the noise of passing trains. When the students were moved, their achievement levels returned to normal.'

Common sense, really. If we are busy filtering out or being distracted by excessive sound, we are inevitably going to find it difficult to concentrate. Yet such considerations are routinely ignored in schools and workplaces.

A third of the 60 million Americans identified as having hearing loss, have lost it through exposure to loud sounds. According to Dr Samuel Rosen, the average 60 year old in traditional African society hears as well, or better, than the average 25 year old North American.

Campbell writes a lot about the work of the Tomatis Centre, Paris. The French doctor, Alfred Tomatis has tested more than 100,000 clients in his listening centers for aural, psychological, learning and vocal disabilities. In the early 1950's, Tomatis discovered that the fetus is capable of hearing while in the womb, despite the skepticism of his peers.

Later he developed the idea of Sonic Birth. He had been approached by a medical colleague who thought he could help a 12-year-old autistic child whom the colleague thought was 'psychologically not yet born.' Tomatis simulated aural womb conditions by playing filtered high frequency sounds of the mother's voice which resulted in the boy instantly switching off the room light and getting physically very close to his mother in – according to Tomatis' interpretation – an effort to re-create the conditions within the womb. Remarkably, 'It was the first time in ten years the boy had shown any signs of recognition for his mother, much less affection.'

Why 'The Mozart Effect'? Tomatis has experimented and continues to experiment with many different musical forms, but has the best consistent results with Mozart's music. Tomatis says 'Mozart is a very good mother...The powers of Mozart, especially the violin concertos, create the greatest healing effect on the human body'. Campbell devotes a short section describing the circumstances of Mozart's life as a child prodigy, himself surrounded by music in utero, which Campbell feels partly explains why Mozart's music is particularly helpful in healing.

Campbell makes many fascinating observations on how music can affect every aspect of everyday life, through the physical effects of the vibrations to the emotional effects. There is a lot of emphasis on healing. In particular, Campbell describes and recommends toning (i.e., 'making sound with an elongated vowel for an extended period'), the practice of which dates back at least to the fourteenth century. He describes people who have eased physical pain, eliminated migraines, lowered blood pressure and relieved insomnia through toning. I tried toning through my last migraine, but got bored quickly and reached for the pills, so I can't attest to its effectiveness or otherwise.

One of the endearing aspects of the book is that it is dotted with simple exercises and suggestions how you can use music to improve your own life, or just have fun with it. For instance, you are shown how to sing a simple Gregorian chant, and at the other extreme, encouraged to make up your own rap. I tried (and enjoyed) both.

This book is packed with fascinating insights on the psychology of music, and Campbell combines a readerly approach with solid research. It is a joy to read a book by someone whose own love of music and desire to share it is apparent on every page.

A copy should be given to every hard-bitten educationalist who has a hand in concocting school curricula, politicians and planners. Campbell describes a business executive who learnt shamanic drumming; perhaps it should be a staple of every business course, to remind students not to lose their souls in the cynical world of commerce.

Fundamentally, I do not think that appreciation and performance of music needs further justification. It sings for itself.

Music and the Brain
Laurence O'Donnell

"Music is so naturally united with us that we cannot be free from it even if we so desired" (Boethius cited by Storr).


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Music's interconnection with society can be seen throughout history. Every known culture on the earth has music. Music seems to be one of the basic actions of humans. However, early music was not handed down from generation to generation or recorded. Hence, there is no official record of "prehistoric" music. Even so, there is evidence of prehistoric music from the findings of flutes carved from bones.

The influence of music on society can be clearly seen from modern history. Music helped Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence. When he could not figure out the right wording for a certain part, he would play his violin to help him. The music helped him get the words from his brain onto the paper.

Albert Einstein is recognized as one of the smartest men who has ever lived. A little known fact about Einstein is that when he was young he did extremely poor in school. His grade school teachers told his parents to take him out of school because he was "too stupid to learn" and it would be a waste of resources for the school to invest time and energy in his education. The school suggested that his parents get Albert an easy, manual labor job as soon as they could. His mother did not think that Albert was "stupid". Instead of following the school's advice, Albert's parents bought him a violin. Albert became good at the violin. Music was the key that helped Albert Einstein become one of the smartest men who has ever lived. Einstein himself says that the reason he was so smart is because he played the violin. He loved the music of Mozart and Bach the most. A friend of Einstein, G.J. Withrow, said that the way Einstein figured out his problems and equations was by improvising on the violin.

Bodily Responses to Music
In general, responses to music are able to be observed. It has been proven that music influences humans both in good and bad ways. These effects are instant and long lasting. Music is thought to link all of the emotional, spiritual, and physical elements of the universe. Music can also be used to change a person's mood, and has been found to cause like physical responses in many people simultaneously. Music also has the ability to strengthen or weaken emotions from a particular event such as a funeral.
People perceive and respond to music in different ways. The level of musicianship of the performer and the listener as well as the manner in which a piece is performed affects the "experience" of music. An experienced and accomplished musician might hear and feel a piece of music in a totally different way than a non-musician or beginner. This is why two accounts of the same piece of music can contradict themselves.

Rhythm is also an important aspect of music to study when looking at responses to music. There are two responses to rhythm. These responses are hard to separate because they are related, and one of these responses cannot exist without the other. These responses are (1) the actual hearing of the rhythm and (2) the physical response to the rhythm. Rhythm organizes physical movements and is very much related to the human body. For example, the body contains rhythms in the heartbeat, while walking, during breathing, etc. Another example of how rhythm orders movement is an autistic boy who could not tie his shoes. He learned how on the second try when the task of tying his shoes was put to a song. The rhythm helped organize his physical movements in time.

It cannot be proven that two people can feel the exact same thing from hearing a piece of music. For example, early missionaries to Africa thought that the nationals had bad rhythm. The missionaries said that when the nationals played on their drums it sounded like they were not beating in time. However, it was later discovered that the nationals were beating out complex polyrhythmic beats such as 2 against 3, 3 against 4, and 2 against 3 and 5, etc. These beats were too advanced for the missionaries to follow.

Responses to music are easy to be detected in the human body. Classical music from the baroque period causes the heart beat and pulse rate to relax to the beat of the music. As the body becomes relaxed and alert, the mind is able to concentrate more easily. Furthermore, baroque music decreases blood pressure and enhances the ability to learn. Music affects the amplitude and frequency of brain waves, which can be measured by an electro-encephalogram. Music also affects breathing rate and electrical resistance of the skin. It has been observed to cause the pupils to dilate, increase blood pressure, and increase the heart rate.

The Power of Music on Memory and Learning
The power of music to affect memory is quite intriguing. Mozart's music and baroque music, with a 60 beats per minute beat pattern, activate the left and right brain. The simultaneous left and right brain action maximizes learning and retention of information. The information being studied activates the left brain while the music activates the right brain. Also, activities which engage both sides of the brain at the same time, such as playing an instrument or singing, causes the brain to be more capable of processing information.
According to The Center for New Discoveries in Learning, learning potential can be increased a minimum of five times by using this 60 beats per minute music. For example, the ancient Greeks sang their dramas because they understood how music could help them remember more easily ). A renowned Bulgarian psychologist, Dr. George Lozanov, designed a way to teach foreign languages in a fraction of the normal learning time. Using his system, students could learn up to one half of the vocabulary and phrases for the whole school term (which amounts to almost 1,000 words or phrases) in one day. Along with this, the average retention rate of his students was 92%. Dr. Lozanov's system involved using certain classical music pieces from the baroque period which have around a 60 beats per minute pattern. He has proven that foreign languages can be learned with 85-100% efficiency in only thirty days by using these baroque pieces. His students had a recall accuracy rate of almost 100% even after not reviewing the material for four years.




Johann Sebastian Bach
Georg Frederic Handel
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

In 1982, researchers from the University of North Texas performed a three-way test on postgraduate students to see if music could help in memorizing vocabulary words. The students were divided into three groups. Each group was given three tests - a pretest, a posttest, and a test a week after the first two tests. All of the tests were identical. Group 1 was read the words with Handel's Water Music in the background. They were also asked to imagine the words. Group 2 was read the same words also with Handel's Water Music in the background. Group 2 was not asked to imagine the words. Group 3 was only read the words, was not given any background music, and was also not asked to imagine the words. The results from the first two tests showed that groups 1 and 2 had much better scores than group 3. The results from the third test, a week later, showed that group 1 performed much better than groups 2 or 3. However, simply using music while learning does not absolutely guarantee recall but can possibly improve it. Background music in itself is not a part of the learning process, but it does enter into memory along with the information learned. Recall is better when the same music used for learning is used during recall. Also, tempo appears to be a key of music's effect on memory.
Play Handel's Water Music (Morning Has Broken)


One simple way students can improve test scores is by listening to certain types of music such as Mozart's Sonata for Two Piano's in D Major before taking a test. This type of music releases neurons in the brain which help the body to relax. The effectiveness of Mozart's sonatas can be seen by the results from an IQ test performed on three groups of college students. The first group listened to a Mozart sonata before taking the test. The second group listened to a relaxation tape before their test. The third group did not listen to anything before the test. The first group had the highest score with an average of 119. The second group ended up with an average of 111, and the third group had the lowest score with an average of 110.

William Balach, Kelly Bowman, and Lauri Mohler, all from Pennsylvania State University, studied the effects of music genre and tempo on memory retention. They had four groups learn vocabulary words using one of four instrumental pieces - slow classical, slow jazz, fast classical, and fast jazz. Each of the four groups was divided into smaller groups for the recall test. These sub groups used either the same (i.e. slow classical, slow classical) or different (i.e. slow jazz, fast classical) pieces when taking the recall test. The results did show a dependency on the music. Recall was better when the music was the same during learning and testing. These same researchers did another test which restricted the changes in the music to just tempo (i.e. slow to fast jazz) or just genre (i.e. slow jazz to slow classical). Surprisingly, the results showed that changing the genre had no effect on recall but changing the tempo decreased recall.

Healthy and Not So Healthy Effects
Many revealing scientific experiments, studies, and research projects have been performed to try and discover the extent of the power of music. Up until 1970, most of the research done on music had to do with studying the effects of the beat of the music. It was found that slow music could slow the heartbeat and the breathing rate as well as bring down blood pressure. Faster music was found to speed up these same body measurements.
The key component of music that makes it beneficial is order. The order of the music from the baroque and classical periods causes the brain to respond in special ways. This order includes repetition and changes, certain patterns of rhythm, and pitch and mood contrasts. One key ingredient to the order of music from the baroque and classical periods is math. This is realized by the body and the human mind performs better when listening to this ordered music.

One shining example of the power of order in music is King George I of England. King George had problems with memory loss and stress management. He read from the Bible the story of King Saul and recognized that Saul had experienced the same type of problems that he was experiencing. George recognized that Saul overcame his problems by using special music. With this story in mind King George asked George Frederick Handel to write some special music for him that would help him in the same way that music helped Saul. Handel wrote his Water Music for this purpose.

Another key to the order in music is the music being the same and different. The brain works by looking at different pieces of information and deciding if they are different or the same. This is done in music of the baroque and classical periods by playing a theme and then repeating or changing the theme. The repetition is only done once. More than one repetition causes the music to become displeasing, and also causes a person to either enter a state of sub-conscious thinking or a state of anger. Dr. Ballam goes on to say that, "The human mind shuts down after three or four repetitions of a rhythm, or a melody, or a harmonic progression." Furthermore, excessive repetition causes people to release control of their thoughts. Rhythmic repetition is used by people who are trying to push certain ethics in their music.

An Australian physician and psychiatrist, Dr. John Diamond, found a direct link between muscle strength/weakness and music. He discovered that all of the muscles in the entire body go weak when subjected to the "stopped anapestic beat" of music from hard rock musicians, including Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, Queen, The Doors, Janis Joplin, Bachman - Turner Overdrive, and The Band. Dr. Diamond found another effect of the anapestic beat. He called it a "switching" of the brain. Dr. Diamond said this switching occurs when the actual symmetry between both of the cerebral hemispheres is destroyed causing alarm in the body along with lessened work performance, learning and behavior problems in children, and a "general malaise in adults." In addition to harmful, irregular beats in rock music, shrill frequencies prove to also be harmful to the body. Bob Larson, a Christian minister and former rock musician, remembers that in the 70's teens would bring raw eggs to a rock concert and put them on the front of the stage. The eggs would be hard boiled by the music before the end of the concert and could be eaten. Dr. Earl W. Flosdorf and Dr. Leslie A. Chambers showed that proteins in a liquid medium were coagulated when subjected to piercing high-pitched sounds

On Animals and Plants, Too!
Tests on the effects of music on living organisms besides humans have shown that special pieces of music (including The Blue Danube) aid hens in laying more eggs. Music can also help cows to yield more milk. Researchers from Canada and the former Soviet Union found that wheat will grow faster when exposed to special ultrasonic and musical sounds. Rats were tested by psychologists to see how they would react to Bach's music and rock music. The rats were placed into two different boxes. Rock music was played in one of the boxes while Bach's music was played in the other box. The rats could choose to switch boxes through a tunnel that connected both boxes. Almost all of the rats chose to go into the box with the Bach music even after the type of music was switched from one box to the other.
Play Bach's Air on The G String
Play Strauss' The Blue Danube

Research took a new avenue when in 1968 a college student, Dorthy Retallack, started researching the effects of music on plants. She took her focus off of studying the beat and put in on studying the different sounds of music. Retallack tested the effects of music on plant growth by using music styles including classical, jazz, pop, rock, acid rock, East Indian, and country. She found that the plants grew well for almost every type of music except rock and acid rock. Jazz, classical, and Ravi Shankar turned out to be the most helpful to the plants. However, the plants tested with the rock music withered and died. The acid rock music also had negative effects on the plant growth.

Conclusions
One cannot deny the power of music. High school students who study music have higher grade point averages that those who don't. These students also develop faster physically. Student listening skills are also improved through music education. The top three schools in America all place a great emphasis on music and the arts. Hungary, Japan, and the Netherlands, the top three academic countries in the world, all place a great emphasis on music education and participation in music. The top engineers from Silicon Valley are all musicians. Napoleon understood the enormous power of music. He summed it up by saying, "Give me control over he who shapes the music of a nation, and I care not who makes the laws" .

From Dr. Gordon Shaw’s Mind Institute web site :
“The Mozart effect is an inclusive term signifying the transformational powers of music in health, education, and well-being. It represents the general use of music to reduce stress, depression, or anxiety; induce relaxation or sleep; activate the body; and improve memory or awareness. The term Mozart effect was coined by the media after the initial groundbreaking Nature publication (1993) which showed that college students who listened to the Mozart Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K. 448 had short-term subsequent enhancement of their spatial-temporal (ST) reasoning (making a mental image and thinking ahead in space and time, as in chess, music or math).”

Music and its effects on plant growth
Plants have been shown to significantly increase their rate of growth when stimulated by specific sound frequencies. In the 1950's, Indian botanist T.C. Singh observed under a microscope the protoplasm streaming in an Asian aquatic plant, which normally increases at sunrise, and discovered that such streaming could be induced at other times of the day by activating an electrically driven tuning fork. He then experimented with recorded South Indian violin music played to a wide variety of plants, with frequencies of the fundamental tones in the 100 to 600 Hz range; significantly increased growth rates resulted. [7] About the same time, a Canadian named Eugene Canby began subjecting test plots of wheat to recordings of violin sonatas by J.S. Bach, and found that yields increased by 66%. Other tests in Russia, the U.S., and Canada with ultrasonic frequencies yielded similar increases in the growth rates of other plant species.

Various researchers then determined that the range of frequencies around 5000 Hz were especially potent in stimulating plant growth. During the 1960's, researcher Dorothy Retallack determined that these frequencies were best administered in the form of classical music (compositions of J.S. Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, and other European 18th and 19th century composers; traditional North Indian music performed on sitar and tabla), played intermittently for several hours per day. [8a, 8b] A Minnesota plant breeder named Dan Carlson collaborated with a music teacher named Michael Holtz to create an audio tape with a combination of frequencies centered about the 5000 Hz range, which Holtz immediately recognized as being very similar to the sound of a bird chorus at dawn. Carlson then used this music to induce record-breaking growth rates in Purple Passion vine plants. [7]

Retallack also experimented with various types of rock music to see what effects they would have on plant growth. Plants "listening" to selections from Led Zeppelin, Vanilla Fudge, and Jimi Hendrix became stunted or gangly, with long stems and sparse leaf growth, some bending away from the sound source; after 16 days, most of these plants died.

Retallack also found that the discordant music of 20th century composers Arnold Schönberg and Anton von Webern also caused plants to atrophy, but not to the degree of the rock music. Schönberg is considered to be the father of 12-tone music, characterized by a total "freedom" from harmonic contraints, wherein all 12 tones of the western musical scale are ideally considered to be of equal weight and value. Twelve-tone principles of composition were eagerly embraced by avant garde faculty at music schools during the early 20th century, and over the following decades began to appear in popular music, and in background music for television and radio programs. The 12-tone style is what gives music for horror and suspense films its particular capacity to shock and terrorize.

Pity the other thread was deleted. I had a ton more scientific tests on that one.

Sometime in not-so-distant past, a university conducted an interesting experiment. The researchers covered two plants in separate bell-jars. They piped soothing classical music into one jar and acid rock in the other while holding everything else like atmosphere, humidity, soil content, etc. constant. After few days, the plant getting the classical music flourished and was doing better than before whereas the one getting the rock treatment wilted and died. I bet those researchers had more than their share of parents of teenagers as they carried a seemingly valuable lesson home. The dinner conversation surely must have been interesting. While not knowing the veracity of this experiment, an urban legend was soon born that listening to classical music enhanced your concentration and made your mind sharper hence creating a conducive environment for academic pursuits.

About a year back as I was approaching an important exam, I decided to conduct this experiment on myself. Silence makes me go mad and I need a little hustle-bustle around me to focus better. Usually I have my ears covered with earphones piping a varied assortment of music into my brain to drown out the distracting background noise (visual distractions are easier to avoid). I bought a 3-CD pack of Sunday Morning Classics featuring pieces by almost all notable masters – Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart, Strauss, and the entire gang. Unfortunately, the experiment didn’t work and I found myself falling asleep instead of focusing better. Of course, the experiment was unscientific by any standards. But it proved the urban legend-esque quality of pitting classical music against rock. One of my classmates just couldn’t get his work done without the accompaniment of Led Zeppelin’s hard metal and his end product was always good although a woefully late.

Classical music aficionados have always differed from rock enthusiasts and have been different as chalk and cheese. Recently people who have understood this distinct separation put it to good use. Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly mentions an innovative strategy employed by Co-op, a chain of grocery stores.

Co-op, a chain of grocery stores, is experimenting with playing classical music outside its shops, to stop youths from hanging around and intimidating customers. It seems to work well. Staff have a remote control and “can turn the music on if there’s a situation developing and they need to disperse people”, says Steve Broughton of Co-op.

Teenagers make it a point to run away from classical music and even if they like it, not one would be caught listening to Bach. Over the years, some of them develop a “fine taste” for music and start appreciating the nuances of classical music. But like Kevin, I too believe that this remedy is short-lived and teenagers will develop same kind of immunity as mosquitoes develop for Baygon. Foreign Dispatches also scoffs at the “miraculous powers that the music of Mozart and Beethoven might possess”. But as a temporary respite, driving away rowdy teenagers is a classic idea; no pun intended. Now I understand why Atlanta Bread Company plays those dull pieces on Friday evenings when school kids hang out at the local theater plaza.

Did you know that your plants respond to music the same as human beings do? It has been proven scientifically through many experiments that plants thrive on music, though there are some who do not agree with the theory. Gardeners, however, have no doubt that fading flowers get a new lease of life by music and flowers blossom in their fullest glory listening to music. In 1973, Dorothy Retallack's book The Sound of Music and Plants based on scientific experiments created ripples.

Retallack began her experiment at the Colorado Women's College in Denver. Using three separate laboratories containing the same species of plants, Retallack began her experiment. Piping in different types of music to each facility, she recorded the daily growth of each plant. The results were quite surprising. The plants in the laboratory where music was played daily for three hours a day grew twice as large and became twice as healthy as those in a music-free environment. On the other extreme, plants in the laboratory where music was played for eight hours a day died within two weeks of the start of the experiment.

Dorothy Retallack tried experimenting with different types of music. She played rock to one group of plants and, soothing music to another. The group that heard rock turned out to be sickly and small whereas the other group grew large and healthy. What's more surprising is that the group of plants listening to the soothing music grew bending towards the radio just as they bend towards the sunlight.

This experiment encouraged many individuals and organizations to exercise the act of playing music to plants. These connoisseurs of music warn you about the sort of music that you play. The plants will grow better if you play soft soothing music of old era instead of loud rock music of Gen X.

The noisy rock music will only make the plants grow feeble and sick. Preferably, play Mozart, Bach, or Beethoven to make your plant grow better. Another important point that we can pick up from Retallack's experiments is the duration of music. If you are keen on playing music to your plants, keep the time limit to be about three hour. This will make the plants grow healthy and properly. An overdose of music can seriously destroy the plants.

Although music is not an absolutely proven factor in plant development, several studies, along with Dorothy Retallack's groundbreaking series of experiments, have aided the musical development theory. If you are interested in exploring this option with your own garden, consult The Sound of Music and Plants or other resources to ensure you expose your plants to the optimal type of music for the appropriate amount of time.

Do you want to use this article on your website? ukpianos.co.uk gives you permission to copy this article and use it, providing you include this author's biog box.

Grape Expectations: Vines May Love Vivaldi
Nicole Martinelli 06.28.07 | 2:00 AM


Estate owner Carlo Cignozzi enjoys the Il Paradiso di Frassina house red next to an outdoor speaker used to pump music into the vineyards.
Photo: Courtesy of Il Paradiso di Frassina Just in through the grapevine: Music helps grow healthier plants.

That's the preliminary result of research by Italian scientists who have been examining vineyards exposed to classical music to see if sound makes the plants grow larger and more quickly.

While sound has long been thought to influence plant growth, this is the first time anyone has investigated the effects of music outdoors on Sangiovese vines, which are best known for producing grapes that go into Tuscany's famous Chiantis.

The effect of sound on plants apparently depends on frequency, intensity and exposure time. In 2001, Chinese researchers found that low-frequency sound does not damage cell structure but instead activates enzymes, increases cell-membrane fluidity and promotes DNA replication and cell cycling.

The testing ground for the Italian experiment is a postcard-worthy, 24-acre Tuscan winery called Il Paradiso di Frassina.

In 2006, the researchers set up speakers in front of young plants in wooden tubs and older plants in a small vineyard on an isolated area of the estate. Shoots and tendrils exposed to this sonic fertilizer were tested once a week from May until December, when the plants go dormant.

They examined, among other variables, chlorophyll and nitrate content with a handheld Konica Minolta Spad-502 meter; photosynthetic and transpiration rates were checked with a Ciras-I infrared gas analyzer.

"Sound exposure has some positive effects on vine growth in the vineyard, especially shoot growth," says lead researcher Stefano Mancuso, a professor of agriculture at the University of Florence. "The results aren't conclusive yet, but total leaf area per vine was always higher in sound-treated vines, both in the vineyard and in the pots. The silent control pot-grown vines also showed delayed development."

The lush, rolling terrain that doubles as an outdoor lab for testing sound is, in reality, pretty quiet.

Visitors often strain to hear music outside the test area, and sometimes estate owner Carlo Cignozzi turns the tunes up a bit for effect.

"How loud it is matters more to people than to plants," says Cignozzi, a fit 64-year-old whose slightly gruff manner belies his former life as a big-city lawyer. "It doesn't have to boom to keep plants happy and animals away."

The estate was wired for sound in 2001 when Cignozzi needed an ecological way to keep pests from ruining grapes. A lover of music who once serenaded grape pickers on an accordion, he noticed that plants seemed to mature faster under the influence of gentle sounds. Mozart, Haydn, Vivaldi and Mahler were staples on the initial playlist running 24 hours a day.

Powered by a 20-GB iPod in a wooden shed, sound wafts over the rest of the sun-drenched countryside from 15 large speakers cradled in trees or crouched in steel shelters on the ground.

Before the current round of experiments started, Cignozzi added some blues, country and nature sounds into the mix, "entirely to benefit human ears," namely those of his wife, Diana, and daughter, Gea, who go about their daily lives to an experimental soundtrack.

The winery, which produces three thoroughbred reds, may also bear conclusive evidence about the role of music by 2008. This time around, Mancuso and team shifted the tests to an area with flatter, more uniform terrain. They also set up a silent control area with noise barriers.

While researchers are mirroring experiments using control plants and nonmusical sounds in the lab, Mancuso says there are advantages to conducting this kind of fieldwork.

"We can't toast to proving our theories yet," he says, "but one of the nice things about this project is that there is still occasion for a good glass of wine."

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So your basicly saying heavy metal is healthy.

It could well be (although I still stand by my previous assumtion that Mozart is the best), but that is exactly why I want the myth revisited.

Except for the fact that these so called studies are dubious at best. I've seen evidence where heavy metal music was better for plant growth. Who know's ....but a plant is a plant.

That's the thing. I personally can't be satisfied until the debate is settled.

Just a thought, but I was thinking that constant music caused constant vibrations. One of plants biggest enemies is not being airated enough. The louder and more violent(bass probably helps because of the low frequency) the music (death metal) the more vibrated the pots and/or soil are, the looser the soil is. It's the same reason why worms are awesome. Just a theory, but it seems a lot more scientific than plants like mozart. With some testing, you could prove this and with more testing you could see how much airation is good for certain plants and how much hurts it.
the end.

Sounds like an idea, so for that I would play something with a lot of bass (Rock, I don't know what) vs. Mozart (classical), and a control. Also a classical CD without Mozart to see if its the Mozart or just the classical music.

I tend to agree more with toxicwastemonster. Any sound wave causing a vibration might act as a stimulant for growth.

Not that I'm downplaying the benefits of music scienceguy288. I love all kinds of music and personally am teaching myself guitar. Can't play a darn thing but I find messing around and strumming just a few chords very therapeuric after a stressful day.

To give an example of the effects of stimulous on growth, just take a look at the hands of someone who works with them constantly. Or in my case, the fingertips of a guitar player. You'll find growth there in the form of calluses. Granted my fingers don't grow longer, but constant stimulation by the rubbing of the strings does cause a thickening on the fingers.
The same may be happening with the plants and why the Death metal showed the highest result.

It would be interesting to see a repeat with not only Mozart as you suggested, but also just a buzzing atonal sound. One that causes as much high frequency vibration in the plant as possible. Would also be interesting to see at what point, if any, that such vibrations become detrimental to plant growth.