Northgate Software TreeSong product page
TreeSong user guide

From a tree photo to a playable mix.

This guide explains the everyday TreeSong workflow: choose a photo, check the analysis, shape the sound, and save or export your work. TreeSong is a creative listening tool; its ring estimates are editable interpretations of a photograph, not scientific dating results.

1. Start with a photo

Choose a clear tree cross-section.

TreeSong works from a photograph of the cut face of a tree. A front-facing image with the rings and centre reasonably visible is the easiest place to begin. Uneven lighting, cracks, bark, shadows, and an off-centre pith are all normal; they may simply need more correction.

Open a photo or sample

Select Open photo…, or choose one of the built-in examples from the Samples menu.

Review the first estimate

TreeSong draws a dashed wood boundary, a green pith marker, a yellow analysis ray, and orange ring-boundary markers.

Listen only after checking it

The initial estimate is a starting point. Correct it when the green marker, wood boundary, or selected ray does not match the photo.

2. Correct the analysis

Make the visible interpretation match the tree.

The image workspace is deliberately direct: you can zoom, pan, and adjust the parts of the analysis that create the music.

Wood region

Drag the dashed outline to move it. Drag its white edge handles to adjust its width or height so it follows the cross-section rather than the background.

Pith

Drag the green marker to the tree's centre. This is where the growth paths begin.

Growth ray

Drag the red endpoint marker to choose a ray, or click elsewhere on the photo to set the ray to the tree edge. The angle slider offers a precise alternative.

Ring boundaries

Orange points are detected boundaries along the selected ray. Right-click the ray to add or remove a boundary. TreeSong needs at least two boundaries before it can play or export a mix.

Use the mouse wheel to zoom. Drag the photo to pan when it is zoomed. If an experiment becomes confusing, Reset all settings restores the first estimate, default mix, and built-in sound choices for the current photo.

3. Build the sound

Choose one clear layer, then add detail.

Use the checkboxes to include layers in the full mix. The small play button beside a layer previews a short phrase for that layer without changing the mix. Choose a sound from the adjacent list, set its level, and use Advanced sound settings when you want to adjust its voice.

A good first mix: begin with Growth melody, then add Growth pulse or Growth drone quietly underneath. Add one whole-tree layer only after the ring-based structure is easy to hear.

Growth melody and Growth pulse

These use the spacing between boundaries on the selected ray. Melody makes notes; pulse makes a lower rhythmic pattern. Both give the clearest connection between visible rings and time.

Growth drone

This supplies sustained background tones whose overall length follows the analysed growth pattern. A soft green halo breathes around the wood boundary while it plays.

Circular texture

This follows the light and dark variation around detected rings to add quiet, crackle-like accents. Amber sparks flash where those accents are read during mix playback.

Compass growth

This blends eight radial readings from the pith, making uneven growth in different directions audible. Green spokes show directions that are active together.

Circular time loop and Ring spectrogram

These turn circular brightness patterns into short loops or an image-derived pitch grid. A turquoise dot follows the time loop; Ring spectrogram uses a rotating purple spoke with seven pitch-band points.

Shape a strategy's sound

Use Advanced sound settings for the selected strategy when you want to go beyond its level. Built-in synth sounds can be reshaped with voice, attack, release, brightness, decay, pitch offset, and gentle pitch variation. Use Preview sound, or turn on auto-preview, to hear a change before applying it.

You can name and save a custom sound preset for that strategy, then import or export a .treesong-sound.json preset to keep or share it. To use a WAV sound, place the WAV file in TreeSong's sounds folder and restart TreeSong; it will appear in each strategy's sound list. In Advanced sound settings, choose whether TreeSong pitches the sample to follow notes, set its original root note, and trim its start or maximum length.

Levels and timing

Each enabled strategy has its own level. Growth pulse, Circular texture, Circular time loop, and Ring spectrogram also have a length control: it changes how long each generated event rings, without changing the image positions or the overall tempo. Shorter values make events more distinct; longer values make them overlap and blend.

Using a WAV preset? The WAV recording's playback length takes precedence over a strategy's pulse, accent, step, or spectrogram-band length. Use the WAV trimming controls in Advanced sound settings when you want to shorten the sample response or skip part of its lead-in.

Use the overall Tempo control to change the pace of every enabled layer. Randomize creates a restrained starting combination of layers, levels, sounds, and timing; adjust any result to suit the photo.

4. Follow playback

Read the marker as a growth-path cue.

Click Play tree music to create and play the enabled mix; the button becomes Stop while it is playing. The progress bar below the playback controls shows elapsed and total mix time for every full mix.

The teal marker only travels along the yellow ray for Growth melody or Growth pulse. Those strategies have one event per interval on the selected growth ray, so the marker can show a real position in the image.

Circular time loop has its own turquoise dot. It begins on the right side of the active ring and moves clockwise as TreeSong reads the ring's sixteen circular samples, then moves to the next ring. Its notes can overlap, so the dot shows the scan phase rather than the only sound currently playing.

Circular texture flashes amber sparks at the high-contrast locations around a ring that trigger its accents. Growth drone breathes a soft green halo around the wood boundary. Compass growth lights green spokes for active directions, and Ring spectrogram rotates a purple spoke with seven pitch-band points. In a mix, the teal ray marker represents the Growth melody or Growth pulse layer only; it does not describe the other layers.

5. Save and export

Keep the editable work and share the result.

  • Save project… creates a named folder containing project.json, a copy of the source photo, and copies of selected WAV samples. Use it when you want to reopen the same editable setup.
  • Open project… restores a saved project.json and its associated source image and sound choices.
  • Export WAV… writes the current enabled mix as a standard audio file.
  • Export video… creates a video of the analysis view with the current mix. Video export requires FFmpeg to be available on your Windows PATH.

Save a project as well as exporting audio or video when someone else needs to continue editing the image analysis and sound choices.

Troubleshooting

Common next steps.

  • TreeSong will not play: add or correct boundaries until the status line reports at least two, then ensure at least one sound layer is selected.
  • The music does not seem related to the photo: first check the wood boundary, pith, selected ray, and orange boundary points. Those are the most important inputs to growth-path layers.
  • The audio is too busy: start with Growth melody alone, lower the levels of extra layers, and add them back one at a time.
  • Video export cannot start: install FFmpeg and make sure its executable is available from the Windows command line, then try exporting again.