Ebony or Rosewood? Guild D-40 or Guild D-50?

I've said over and over, that every aspect of our life is influenced by plants. Music is a great example of how plant anatomy influences our lives.

I've been the proud owner of a Guild D-50 acoustic guitar since 1983. Before I purchased this beauty, I spent days, together with my friend Mo, frequenting the music stores of mid-town Manhattan and trying every guitar possible. We kept coming back to two Guild models: the D-40 and the D-50.

The ebony fret-board on my guitar

One of the main differences between these two great guitars is the wood used to make the fret-board: The D-40 boasts a fret-board made from rosewood, while the D-50's is made from ebony. In the end we both opted for the latter.

Ebony cost roughly 10 times more than rosewood, so what characteristics does it have that made us forkout the extra funds for these guitars?

Ebony has a very has a fine grain and is much harder than rosewood. This difference in density is felt in the fingertips which feel as if they move faster between fingerings. Aside from the feel, ebony boards impart the guitar with a unique sound which the trained ear can pick up. It enables great sustain, and a crisp sound with percussive overtones. But I wouldn't recommend an ebony fret-board for a novice guitarist; rosewood is much more forgiving.

Rosewood boards also gives a richer, warm sound. This is partly because of the anatomy of the wood. Rosewood has larger pores than ebony, and these microscopic pores absorb overtones.

This is just one example of how wood, which basically old, dead and filled xylem tubes, the tubes that trees use to transport water, influences music.

What A Plant Hears?

An example form The Telegraph of research into plant hearing

While loads of research support the idea that plants see, smell, taste and feel, support for plant auditory prowess is indirectly proportional to the amount of anecdotal information we have about the ways in which music may influence how a plant grows. Many of us have heard stories about plants flourishing in rooms with classical music. Typically, though, much of the research on music and plants was carried out by investigators who were not necessarily adhering to the controls found in laboratories grounded in the scientific method. Not surprisingly, in most of these studies, the plants thrived in music that the experimenter also preferred. 

In retrospect perhaps, these musical experiments were doomed from the start. What relevance would human music, whether baroque or bebop, be to a plant? When studying plant vision we don’t show a plant an eye chart and ask it to read the bottom line, and in studying plant olfaction, we don’t ask it to differentiate between Chanel #5 and Old Spice. Rather we study the sense in an ecological and evolutionary relevant setting.

A very recent paper from the laboratory of Stefano Mancuso in Italy attempts to apply rigorous standards to determine what exactly plants hear and how this affects plant development. Their preliminary results show that not only do corn roots apparently grow towards specific frequencies of vibrations, but roots themselves may also be emitting sound waves! Hopefully, studies like these will move us away from the ridiculous question of what music plants prefer.

If this line of research pans out, I'll have to rewrite Chapter 4 of WHAT A PLANT KNOWS (which by the way goes on sale today)!