(logo whooshing) (bright music) - It's hard to come up with anything novel in music.

(guitar music) There's only a limited number of notes, but within that what a tremendous amount of creativity people can give to each other.

There can be moments of discovery in music.

One that's really obvious is when we tried to teach elephants to play music.

These elephants, they used to work in the logging industry in Thailand.

Logging is actually illegal in Thailand now.

Richard Lair who's an American helped to start the tile in Conservation Center.

I went to Thailand.

He said, "Elephants like music like everybody who lives with elephants knows that."

But would they play music?

And I built a giant marimba and in about half an hour, an elephant learned to play it.

(orchestra music) The way that we conduct the elephant orchestra is, we just tell the elephants which instruments to play.

So I say, start and stop.

I'll do this and then some of the elephants know what that means stop, and they'll drop the stick.

And sometimes you go stop, stop, stop and they know you're telling them to stop and they keep playing.

(orchestra music) This will sound nuts, but they're playing a joke.

They think it's funny.

(orchestra music) Well, to me the elephant music sounds, like an elephant walking in the forest.

(orchestra music) A gentle thoughtful kind of sound, and they kind of seem to soak into every sound in the note.

(orchestra music) Sometimes it gets angry too, (orchestra music) and elephants can have a temper.

Some of them can have a very bad temper, I'm afraid.

They can also be very loving and very sweet.

(orchestra music) There's three elephant records now, pure elephant music.

It's exactly what they play in real time.

(harmonica instrument music) The reason I decided to do it was 'cause it was a chance to hang out with elephants.

They're about the most amazing creatures you can imagine.

They're 10,000 pounds.

They're really smart and unless you're out there and spend a little time with them.

You can't believe the skills they have.

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