Composer Alice Boyd listens to plant 'sounds' to make music

Alice Boyd listens to plants. She records electronic variations across their leaves and turns them into music. Those plant sounds have now been made into soundtracks for Alice’s debut album.

Alice 'listens' to plants by recording water movements within leaves and translates that to music. Pic: Mark Lomas

Alice is a London and Bristol-based composer and sound designer working across music, podcast, radio, film, and theatre. Her work has won her awards and growing recognition.

Her recent recordings have ranged from making underwater soundscapes for the Norfolk Ponds Project to capturing the sound of snow melting on an oak tree for best-selling author Lia Leendertz’s podcast As The Season Turns.

‘Much of my work explores our relationship with the natural world and the ecosystems we live in,’ says Alice who also uses voice, everyday sounds, and electronic textures to tell stories about the world around us.

‘I am interested in how sound can be used to explore our relationship with nature, ‘ says Alice, 26, who plans to travel through the UK during 2023 to collect field recordings for As The Season Turns podcast’s monthly meditation segment.

‘These meditative soundscapes will give a window into the auditory texture of each month. In January, I was lucky enough to capture the snowy sounds of Hampstead Heath during December‘s freeze,’ says Alice. ‘The act of deep listening can be a powerful way to heighten your awareness of the environment you live in.’

Alice studied geography at the University of Oxford and when invited to speak at the Royal Geographical Society told the audience: ‘It is always exciting to link my music and sound work to the subject I love.’

In 2020, she was selected for Sound and Music’s New Voices programme and was granted their Dimensions Award. As part of this, Alice carried out an artist residency and performance at the Eden Project in Cornwall - home to the world’s largest indoor rainforest.

In 2022, she received the PRS (Performing Rights Society) Foundation’s Women Make Music grant to produce her debut EP, inspired by the plants in the Eden Project’s Rainforest Biome.

The Eden Project is built on a reclaimed clay pit and, among its acres of plants and wildlife native to Cornwall and the UK, it houses transparent domes which replicate environments for thousands of plant species.

Alice spent a week in the Rainforest Biome with her hand-crafted digital device recording plant conductivity data, which fluctuates as water moves around the leaves. She ‘sonified’ this into music, using synthesisers to voice variations in the data.

‘Plants are essential for our survival - from the oxygen we breathe, to the food we eat, medicines we take and materials we use. I wanted to make music that deepens our understanding of the entanglement of life on Earth; that humans are a part of nature, not apart from it. What better way than by making music with and inspired by the plants at the Eden Project?’ she adds.

Alice’s residency culminated in her debut single and music video ‘Separation’ released in February 2023. ‘Separation brings the voices of plants to life, exploring our evolutionary journey and connection to the biosphere through an arrangement of vocals, electronics and analogue textures,’ says Alice.

Sir Tim Smit, co-founder of Eden Project, said: ‘The music beautifully reframes the urgent climate crisis into an opportunity for reconnection with nature.’

Other 'natural world' soundscapes captured by Alice include compositions for the Wellcome Collection's 'Root of the Matter' podcasts which explore 'what the plant world has to teach us about being human'.

Alice’s EP ‘From The Understory’ which also includes the track ‘Separation’ will be released digitally and on eco-mix vinyl records on 21st April, in time for Earth Day. It can be pre-ordered via Bandcamp from 24th February 2023.

Go to Alice's site to sign up for ‘Separation’ and ‘From The Understory’