An interesting article here about connecting music to counselling for the benefit of therapy:

I quote Dr Harry Henshaw: “If a therapist were to incorporate hypnotic work in his or her session the presence of therapeutic relaxation music would make the transition very smooth and very natural.”

Check it out here:
enhancedhealing.com.

Here’s some fun music games for anyone. The power of Flash!!

http://www.FlashMusicGames.com.

Here’s an interesting article by Michael David Crawford. Mike talks about the mp3 download industry and the issues around illegal downloading of music and the effects on musicians. Its a long read but its worth it and there is a great list of other legal download sites out there.

Go see it at:

Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads. Enjoy free music without getting in trouble by downloading the legal MP3s many musicians provide as a way to promote themselves.

Do you feel sleep deprived?

“Power naps supported by relaxing music may be your answer.”

Go check out this article at Daniel Kobialka’s blog

Go see:

This is an article kindly given to me by Errol Francis of Asoma Music who sells his music for download at Ambient Music Garden.

Thank you Errol.

Attune your Spirit & Putting Affirmative Words to Music

A Message from Errol and Lisa Francis

The Attune Your Spirit CD series is shared with you in the Spirit of Love.

We have been studying and experiencing how the universal laws, when applied (and also when they are not applied) affect the conditions of our lives. Throughout all this study and practice we looked for a way to really serve the higher Good.

Our personal family relationship is one of togetherness; we really enjoy being together. Our prayer has been to serve, together, while continuing to study and practice the Truth Principles. Our prayers were answered and we were inspired to share the power of praise, in word and in song. 

The materials are designed to make the listener/participant experience increased Joy, Health, Wealth and Happiness. A lifting up of the heart and mind occurs when both speaking and singing the same words of Truth, using both left and right brains. Daily practice is encouraged, in order to stay in tune with all the good that is everywhere equally present.

Our prayer now is that those who use this method, experience daily upliftment. That, with practice, becomes the new consciousness: a consciousness of joy, a grateful state of mind, and a song of praise in the heart.

Read on to learn more:

Let’s first take a look at the transformative qualities of music; then we’ll explore the innate power of the spoken word. We’ll learn why the combination of these is key to accelerating our ability to access the powers of the Universe.

After listening to a piece of music, just notice your feeling, and how does it make you feel? Usually music will make you feel more uplifted, more energetic, more alive and vibrant – and why is that? Let’s take a look at it.

What is music?
Music is sound vibration, wave, and frequency when played in concession or unison or harmony. These resonating frequencies impact the emotional centers into action or inaction.

As some of you already know, having learned from gurus and teachers, everything in our Universe is vibrational. We live in an ocean of motion. And we can also tell you that music transcends space and time, and is multidimensional. Not just sound, but the actual  movement of sound vibration in its  varying frequency, creating music, melody and harmony. That does something to people.

As music moves through our physical form, it is key to unlocking the emotional centers and also stimulating memory and nerve centers. One reason we know that music stimulates these emotional centers, especially for memory, is the effect of advertising jingles and sound bytes such as the Intel signature sound. Or what about when your favorite song pops into your head -  you are quite often  instantly transported back to a specific event. It’s not just an emotional attachment, it’s an actual memory attachment to that sound, to that piece of music.

Music strikes a chord within us. This is called resonance, when you’re vibrating at the same frequency or level as the music, it goes directly into our cellular memory structure, and then it’s easier to retrieve. Like tht song you just can’t get rid of.

An example of resonance: you could sing or hum a tone to a guitar or piano. You will find that when you sound that certain note, the corresponding piano or guitar string will start to vibrate to that frequency and will then re-sound it back to you.

We’re all like this. We find levels of frequency with each other, with things that we like and things we do not like. And this is how things are attracted or repelled according to the level of vibration. So music is very key in transforming  a lot of things within us. It can actually wash through us, and wash out our undesirable memory traits, and instill pleasurable and desirable memory traits.

Now that’s a very very encapsulated view of music as sound vibration.

Now when we attach the affirmative word, we add another component to this. We use words every day, some good, some not so good. When we use affirmative words in this process, we’re using a number of important laws. One is the Law of Mind Action, which is “Thought held in mind produce their kind.”  So what we want to do is keep a desirable thought in our mind action so that it produces the most desirable fruit.

The 2nd law is the power of the spoken word, which is “Ask and ye shall receive.” “In the beginning there was the word, and without the word, nothing was made.” So words are dynamic because they create. And speech is the very breath of God. So let’s see what actually happens when we speak. You take a breath and fill your lungs with air: which is light, the energy of life. The air goes through your larynx, which is the music box of the mind; it is a power centre or chakra: a very very powerful place. This is like a vibrational amplifier of thought. You are bringing that thought out of the unseen into the seen.

The other thing that happens when we say a word,  is our lips shape the words. Our lips shape this light vibration into word. We shape and mold the Universal Substance, which is the life force of our lungs through the larynx, or music box of the mind, and we shape it into words, and shape it into our world. So this is how we become co-creators, by shaping our own world, by speaking it into existence. So keep in mind, that even the not so good stuff that is sent out, must be transformed by denials or cancelled out because this also is going into our universal substance and is presented to us on a daily basis as our moment-by-moment experience. By combining your affirmations with the sound vibration of music, and by singing those affirmations, you add this powerful powerful tool to manifest your own desires, your own world, your own universe.

Since emotion is one of the keys to demonstrating our desire, we need to activate those feelings. This is where and why you can use singing.

I believe somewhere in the Bible, or somewhere in the mystic teachings, there’s a phrase that says, “Blessed are those that make a joyous sound.” Another phrase I seem to remember is “Those who sing pray twice.” So singing adds emotion to your thought.

If ever you find yourself in distress, simply hum. Simply find a melodic something to take up that space, and you’ll find yourself lifting out of that lower vibration instantly, just by singing, or humming. So singing adds emotions to your thoughts and words. And music opens up the emotional centers, and activates them into creating a link to memory. So we set up a triune vibrational energy field, which the Universal Substance responds to with yes, yes YES! So we have 3 elements coming together as one. We have thought, which is wave, we have emotion, which is pulse, and we have word, which is form. And when this all happens we call this coherency. Coherency is the action of stitching together, the harmonious connections of several parts, so the whole thing works together.

Example: We have a 100 watt light bulb. Now the light in the room if you have a 100 watt light bulb, will radiate that light all around the room. It’ll take that light and disperse it. But when you condense the light, say in a 100 watt laser, that laser can then cut steel. The difference between this is  in the light bulb, the light is diffused all over the place, it’s sporadic, whereas the laser gets all the light to work together in one stream.

So this is why series like Attune Your Spirit works so well, because it’s putting all that energy, all that light, into one area, so that the focus can be clearly defined. We can use the series for manifesting more Joy, more Health, more Wealth, more Happiness, for ourselves and for humanity.

In concluding, we have put together a series of affirmative phrases, and sung those affirmative phrases in a very joy-filled and uplifting musical sound scape. It is provided it for 4 main areas of life, which are Joy, Health, Wealth and Happiness.
I invite you to come to Attune Your Spirit and enjoy a sample of an Attune Your Spirit session.

Sign up for our newsletter, which features additional free MP3’s, articles and tips on living well.

Many Blessings to you now and always.

The Asoma Music Team

Check out Asoma Music here.

At 18 I was inspired to do get a synthesizer. I was into the latest bands and although I look back and cringe at the 80’s it was an interesting exploratory time.

As synths begun to enter more the mainstream pop there was a backlash by some of the guitar bands at the time. The poor dears were probably quite threatened by them since all the marketing speak was about them taking over ‘real’ instruments.

My band and I hired an EMU. It had floppy disks (long assigned to the museum of computing) with one sample set each. Each floppy took a few minutes to load so we all hung over the keyboard waiting for the whirling of the machine to stop. We would all then stab at the keyboard and then roll about laughing at the amazing sounds that would be forthcoming. Orchestral stabs the like we couldn’t create with our analogue and digital keyboards, they were amazing. And so, like all pop artists, we needed these sounds in our productions so that we were up with the rest and in with the times.

My first monophonic synth (plays one note at a time) was a Roland SH101. I loved Roland stuff; they were only a few miles up the road from me, so when the keyboard packed up I got one changed there. Whilst there I noticed a Roland Jupiter 4, looking old and dusty. I pressed a few presets and out came sounds I had heard from my latest album purchases. Presets have always been looked down on by artists trying to create some individuality for themselves, however they would regularly appear in pop, and still do to my surprise.

In the early 80’s the synths to have were the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 and the Roland Jupiter 8. No real keyboard artist, what ever their genre, would be seen without these (unless you were into big stacks of Mood modular kits (e.g. Tangerine Dream).

As much as I wanted at least one of these, I couldn’t afford them so when I started hearing about this new Yamaha DX7 and how revolutionary it was I was all stoked up ready to buy one. I got a loan and in 1983 I got one of the first ones to come in to the country.

So really, for me, the DX7 was my real introduction into synthesizers as it was a polyphonic synth. Not only that, it was digital. The future was here. We could create amazing sounds never before heard, as well as create very crisp real – like sounds.

Eventually I bought the Jupiter 8’s little brother, the Juno 106 that was the first midi keyboard from Roland. I could hook this up to the Yamaha and create gorgeous mixes of sounds from one keyboard.

I also bought a Yamaha CX5, which was a computer keyboard that you controlled from a TV. It had the ability to create some basic DX like sounds from presets plus sequence and control external keyboards via midi. Brilliant!! I was now in control of all my computers from a TV screen!

The outputs went to another piece of Yamaha kit now long disappeared that was a four track on a cassette player much like the Fostex and Tascams of the day.

I created full songs, arranged and composed from beginning to end automatically from that machine.

Had I been able to grasp the concept of Apple’s Logic or Steinberg’s Cubase or Abelton Live (no lets not get silly now!!) it would have blown my mind for sure.

We were being introduced to new concepts that were amazing at the time, such as digitally routed mixing desks that costs the same number of digits as my mum and dad’s phone number. Yet there were also progressions with home musicians such as the Atari.

Now you hear a lot of todays electronic artists talking about the Atari but I cant say I got involved in this, mores the pity really. Fans of the Atari have ridden the Digital Audio Workstation wave for over twenty years now. Who knows where it goes from where we are today.

After a long and regretful break from music composition, in 2001 I bought a computer specifically designed for music and also purchased cubase to run on Windows 98.

By this time, attitude to synthesizers had changed in a number of ways. Firstly, my old SH101 could be purchased second hand at the same price I purchased it at. Analogue synths were back, albeit rather unpredictable in their performance after so many years on the road and being stabbed in bedrooms.

Secondly, the synth, and sampling had met mainstream. The new generation wasn’t so pure about being a guitar band or a synth band. All the pouting synth bands had lost their hair and grown bear bellies, the guitar bands were the same, just a bit more gaunt through the amount of drugs they’d used over the years.

New musicians were happy to mix samples with synths with guitars; they were all creative resources as far as they were concerned. But now no one was interested in trying to sound like an orchestra from their keyboard.

That didn’t impress anyone now.

The new exciting areas were mixing and mashing samples of whatever could be captured on an audio recorder and mixed using innovative software such as Recycle which enabled the musician to make (almost) any rhythmical sound match any beat by stretching the sample in time.

After a few years I met up with one of my old band mates and he convinced me (very easily) to purchase a Mac and get Emagic’s Logic.

Since then I have stuck with Logic, not ever needing anything else since it is the basis for providing the platform for the new synths in my life, the soft synths.

From these synths within my apple computer I can emulate the DX7 and the Prophet 5 quite happily without worrying about the age related issues of electronics.

The guys that make these soft machines keep on innovating and it’s hard to know what will happen next for me.

One issue that is coming up is the length of time a soft synth is supported, and how long it can be used whilst operating systems continue to upgrade and morph into new operating systems.

Since I started with Logic I have had three different Macs, all more powerful than the last to keep up with my needs to create even more complex productions. It seems to me to be really important to make sure you bounce down each channel into a digital audio file so that, if the DAW, the operating system or the soft synth becomes un-useable in the future I have at least got my audio that I can mix elsewhere.

Soft synths get upgraded and presets and saved creations may not be able to play again. Native Instruments now ship the FM8 instead of the FM7. I’m not sure if the FM8 will play the FM7 patches as it is a different synth altogether by the looks of things.

Creating Successful Relaxation & Meditation Music; Sound And Composition

Recently I gave a positive critique to a talented musician who had submitted a piece for my comment with regards its suitability for therapeutic environments. The piece was lovely, however had a number of points about the piece that inspired me to consider what elelements in my opinion make a successfull relaxation and meditation music piece. Here’s my opinion.

I must say I am not trying to be an expert here. After all, the therapists themselves know what works for them specifically within their own therapeutic environment and discipline, and with each specific client of there’s. Not everyone is relaxed by the same type of music. However, generally, and in my experience the following does provide a good list of considerations. Please let me know if you have any additional thoughts on this list.

Key Point: Consider You Are Making Music To Communicate With The Unconscious.

Unlike popular music (and others) that aims to engage your mind, relaxation and meditation music aims to connect with your unconscious, so less is more. Less Instruments, less notes and less melody as well.

Beat & percussion

Percussion has to be subtle if it even exists within the composition at all. A beat provides a link to your heart beat so if you introduce a beat; you need to be careful what heart rate you may be inspiring. A beat is also engaging. A beat can wake up and stimulate rather than relax. Percussion can provide ambience but once it forms a beat it may raise the consciousness of a listener at the time when the therapist is trying to relax a client and move closer towards unconsciousness.

Its great for sitting at home chilling out but my opinion is that percussion can be just a little engaging of the mind, its like it puts you on a treadmill in some sort of way rather than keeps you in a timeless space that other sounds can create. When I think of soundtrack music, the percussion comes up when its time to move on within the storyline, get on your bike and peddle. So, without percussion, I think you are left in a timeless space where the sounds bounce around a room that reflects nature and so relaxes.

A subtle introduction of a percussive beat can help to wake a client up at the end of their session. So if timed for the ending of a piece of music, this could be useful to suggest subconsciously to a client that its wakeup time and their heart begins to pump slightly faster.

To engage a listener in therapy music is something I am quite passionate about. Read on to hear more.

Sudden noises or instrumental chords

Anything sudden is definitely not right for relaxation. Don’t even think about it. It’s not even useful for waking people up since it is too much of a sharp wakeup call.

Choose your tones well to blend

Much like any composition arrangement you need to think about the collection of sounds that your instruments will be making. Make sure you take some time to spread out your sounds in the audio spectrum and so avoid making everything muddy and unclear. Conversely, don’t try to cram so much into the dynamic range that it complicates what is going on and is too busy and not relaxing at all.

Consider the sound of each instrument and the contribution it makes to your piece. Avoid high sounds particularly as they are not felt by most tastes as relaxing but are more stimulating (hence the use of violins in horror movies!!)

Focus on warm flowing low sounds before you layer on more specific higher sounds such as bells and flutes.

Instruments

Look for a set of complimenting instruments that are played calmly and not with passion. For instance, a violin tends to focus on high frequency notes and is often used to represent high emotions. Conversely a tenor saxophone can be relaxing but also arousing, both best avoided in our therapeutic environment. A bass, particularly a double bass can have a woolly ‘rounded’ deep note that doesn’t ask for a lot of concentration nor forces its clarity onto your mind to interpret. Distant flowing strings (as long as they aren’t too high frequency) can lay a background for other more gentle sounds to sit on. Bells and flutes can risk creating a stereotype but if used sparingly and not flooding a piece of music can offer up some melting relaxing feelings for listeners.

Sounds

Generally, people find the sound of trickling water a calming sound. Too fast a trickle and you might be inspiring someone to go to the bathroom instead! Likewise the sound of waves against a sea shore can take someone away from there current environment to relax but more stormy waves will raise their consciousness that they might be listening to an oncoming storm

Birds twittering, trees rustling both connect us back to nature and anything that does that calmly, like the trickling water above, will provide as good a relaxing feeling as a shot in the arm with something less natural.

The sounds of voices can tend to relax, however the spoken word engages the mind with its lyric which isnt good for keeping someone in the unconscious, unless you are delivering a guided meditation piece in which the objective of the piece is to take someone on a guided imaginary journey and facilitating this journey from beginning to end.

Melody

As hard as I try, I continually fail on this one myself. I am always looking for an engaging melody in my compositions. Therein lies the fault; therapeutic music in my opinion should not be too engaging. Avoid strong melodic pieces that connect with the mood of the listener too much. Consider ballads for example. They aim to express love and passion; too strong an emotional connection for relaxation and therapy music.

One needs to look at a composition in a totally different way from the aim of most music, which is to engage the listener and draw them in more and more into the flow and storyline of a musical piece.

Almost (but not quite) the opposite is required for therapy and relaxation music. You need subtlety in everything. You are creating an ambience, and environment for therapy and relaxation, not a soundtrack to the latest blockbuster.

Arrangement

A relaxation and therapy piece of music needs to not differ too much as it flows from beginning, to middle and then to end. It shouldn’t have changes in tempo, nor changes in the subtle melody.

What is important, and very useful for therapists is to have a piece of music that begins slowly and forms a relax-down for 10 minutes. This helps the therapist relax the client for the therapy. So a slow build of instruments towards a plateau where the therapy takes place, and then at the ending, a slow removal of instruments leaving the lower noted instruments ending last.

Duration

A 40-minute piece with 10 minutes relax-down and 10-minute wake up gives a client a full 20 minutes of focused therapy. Add more to the middle to give therapists options of longer therapy sessions but no more than 50 minutes in total is the norm, unless a therapist specifically requests it. For example, A therapist might be interested in commissioning a piece that flows throughout a longer introduction session with a client where he gets to understand them before then moving into a therapeutic session. In this way, a piece could be continually playing from when a client enters the room to when they leave. This could enhance the therapeutic experience considerably.

Lastly, all I can say is, give it a go. Don’t be shy. If you are a musician looking for ways to sell your music then music within therapy is a real opportunity. Contact me and tell me all about your piece and send me a sample. I promise to respond as soon as I can.

Guy

Click Here AmbientMusicGarden.com. The ambient relaxation & meditation mp3 download music site.

Here’s some more thoughts on the subject of composing music for therapeutic practice. Located at Dr Harry Henshaw’s Blog titled “The Therapeutic Nature of Therapeutic Relaxation Music.” Thank you Dr Harry Henshaw for this article.

Copyright Kesseny ltd 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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