2.28.11 Tambouras and Headphones!

A few days ago I wrote about about my experience with headphones and how generally these days I tend to stay away from them, as well as an including a really interesting article from the New York Times. The same day I ended up having a really interesting experience.

My friend Rob Pieniak came over to the center that afternoon to record some stuff with me. I was playing the tamboura and had it tuned so that the dominant tone was a B instead of the usual C# which I tend to play it in. Rob recorded me playing the tamboura for about 7 minutes. Tuning the tamboura down just that much created a very deep rich resonance in the lowest string. After he had recorded it I put the headphones while he played it back and I chanted along with it. The resonance of the tamboura and the steady entrainment of the rhythm was so powerful- it was amazing listening to it through the headphones. I could feeling the tone moving down inside of me, especially in my chest, resonating deeply within my body. It brought me into a very blissful state!

2.24.11 Headphones- To Have or Have Not

People have often recommended using headphones or earbuds to me for use with the telephone, in favor of having one's hands free while talking. Years ago I would hold the phone in place with my shoulder while I did the dishes. My neck no longer allows that, besides the fact that phones have gotten so small it is practically impossible to hold them in place that way anymore. If I could have my way I would have a nice old-fashioned desk phone with a rotary dial and a curly cord but I'm afraid I will never have another such phone. I have also developed a tremendous distaste for "multi-tasking" and today I'd really prefer to just sit down with a cup of tea while I talk on the phone. I also have an extreme aversion to the idea of these frequencies going directly into my ear and have never been able to stand earbuds. In my teens and early twenties I loved listening to music with a really good set of headphones but once I had kids it was no longer an option as I needed to be able to hear them if they cried or needed something so I gave them up a long time ago.

Then when the Walkman craze hit I just found it rude- that someone would sit right next to you and put their little headphones on and go off into their own world. I actually had a boyfriend who would do that when we went for bike rides together. It was a very short relationship because he was more interested in listening to his music- without sharing it- than he was in being with me or listening to music together, or being able to have a conversation when we were riding our bikes.

For a while Henry kept trying to convince me to use earbuds when I was on the phone but I couldn't stand the way they felt and intuitively I just felt like the sound going directly into my ear was not a good thing. I have not researched this at all. I just know how it feels for me. Interestingly a few weeks ago this article came out in the New York Times. I have copied the article below in case the link doesn't work.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/magazine/09FOB-medium-t.html

Against Headphones

By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

One in five teenagers in America can’t hear rustles or whispers, according to a study published in August in The Journal of the American Medical Association. These teenagers exhibit what’s known as slight hearing loss, which means they often can’t make out consonants like T’s or K’s, or the plinking of raindrops. The word “talk” can sound like “aw.” The number of teenagers with hearing loss — from slight to severe — has jumped 33 percent since 1994.

Given the current ubiquity of personal media players — the iPod appeared almost a decade ago — many researchers attribute this widespread hearing loss to exposure to sound played loudly and regularly through headphones. (Earbuds, in particular, don’t cancel as much noise from outside as do headphones that rest on or around the ear, so earbud users typically listen at higher volume to drown out interference.) Indeed, the August report reinforces the findings of a 2008 European study of people who habitually blast MP3 players, including iPods and smartphones. According to that report, headphone users who listen to music at high volumes for more than an hour a day risk permanent hearing loss after five years.

Maybe the danger of digital culture to young people is not that they have hummingbird attention spans but that they are going deaf.

The history of headphones has always been one of unexpected uses and equally unexpected consequences. Headphones were invented a century ago — the brainchild of Nathaniel Baldwin, a tinkerer from Utah who grew frustrated when he couldn’t hear Mormon sermons over the noise of the crowds at the vast Salt Lake Tabernacle. Baldwin’s device, which was designed first as an amplifier, came to incorporate two sound receivers connected by an operator’s headband. Within each earphone was, according to legend, a mile of coiled copper wiring and a mica diaphragm to register the wire’s signals with vibrations. When the Navy put in an order for 100 such Baldy Phones in 1910, Baldwin abandoned his kitchen workbench, hastily opened a factory and built the prosperous Baldwin Radio Company. His innovations were the basis of “sound powered” telephones, or phones that required no electricity, which were used during World War II.

It’s not incidental that Baldwin imagined headphones first as a way to block out crowd noise and hear sermons. Workers and soldiers have long used them to mute the din of machinery or artillery while receiving one-way orders from someone with a microphone. From the beginning, it seems, headphones have been a technology of submission (to commands) and denial (of commotion).

When World War II ended, submission-and-denial was exactly what returning veterans craved when they found themselves surrounded by the clamor and demands of the open-plan family rooms of the postwar suburbs. By then, they knew what device provided it. In the ’50s, John C. Koss invented a set of stereo headphones designed explicitly for personal music consumption. In that decade, according to Keir Keightley, a professor of media studies at the University of Western Ontario, middle-class men began shutting out their families with giant headphones and hi-fi equipment. Further, they recalled the sonar systems they saw at war.

The Walkman appeared in 1979, the invention of Sony, and headphones became part of a walking outfit. Headphones and earbuds are now used with MP3 players, mobile phones, tablet computers and laptops.

Most discussions of the transformation of music by digital technology focus on the production end. But headphones transform sound for the consumer too. Headphones are packed with technology. When an audio current passes through the device’s voice coil, it creates an alternating magnetic field that moves a stiff, light diaphragm. This produces sound. If you think about all the recordings, production tricks, conversions and compressions required to turn human voices and acoustic instruments into MP3 signals, and then add the coil-magnet-diaphragm magic in our headphones, it’s amazing that the intensely engineered frankensounds that hit our eardrums when we listen to iPhones are still called music.

Whatever you call it, children are listening to something on all these headphones — though “listening” is too limited a concept for all that headphones allow them to do. Indeed, the device seems to solve a real problem by simultaneously letting them have private auditory experiences and keeping shared spaces quiet. But the downside is plain, too: it’s antisocial. As Llewellyn Hinkes Jones put it not long ago in The Atlantic: “The shared experience of listening with others is not unlike the cultural rituals of communal eating. Music may not have the primal necessity of food, but it is something people commonly ingest together.”

Headphones work best for people who need or want to hear one sound story and no other; who don’t want to have to choose which sounds to listen to and which to ignore; and who don’t want their sounds overheard. Under these circumstances, headphones are extremely useful — and necessary for sound professionals, like intelligence and radio workers — but it’s a strange fact of our times that this rarefied experience of sound has become so common and widespread. In the name of living a sensory life, it’s worth letting sounds exist in their audio habitat more often, even if that means contending with interruptions and background sound.

Make it a New Year’s resolution, then, to use headphones less. Allow kids and spouses periodically to play music, audiobooks, videos, movie, television and radio audibly. Listen to what they’re listening to, and make them listen to your stuff. Escapism is great, and submission and denial, too, have their places. But sound thrives amid other sounds. And protecting our kids’ hearing is not just as important as protecting their brains; it is protecting their brains.

2.20.11 Resonant Frequencies and Altered States

MRI two days ago. Entranced by the sound. Had one few years ago after a head injury and it took them 45 minutes to get me to actually relax enough to lie down in it due to the claustrophobia. They were going to give me a sedative but I didn't dare take it as I didn't know the extent of the injury yet and was afraid to take anything. When I had it this time (for cervical spine) I was totally fine. It was an open MRI so I had peripheral vision which was nice but all that is beside the point. What I really loved was the sound- I did use earplugs but it was still very loud. All these different rhythms that I became quickly entrained to- some took me out of my body and some brought me back. I was also fascinated by the sensation of the radio waves as they moved around my body and came from different angles.

Today, a Sunday, Henry and I were sitting outside in the courtyard at our home in St. Pete playing music together. I was playing guitar and he was playing flute. All of a sudden a huge flock of birds came in and started singing wildly. As long as we played they sang. Then he started playing a quena, a beautiful wooden flute with a very sweet sound that he got in Peru and I was playing the silver flute along with him. The birds seemed to love the harmonies, especially when we were playing intervals of thirds.

It reminded me of when I lived in Jamestown, RI many years ago and had a pottery studio in the barn on the property. It was quite dilapidated and the loft really had no windows left- they were just big openings in the wall! It was full of barn swallows but the first floor where I had my studio had been set up for an auto mechanic some years earlier so it was enclosed, had a huge heater, great shelving and 220 current so I could run an electric kiln in there. One day I was in there throwing pots and I put a Mark Isham tape on (it was the 80's- no CD's yet!). It was a very rhythmic piano piece and the birds in the loft suddenly started singing along right in time with the music. I was so amazed, they just loved that music and whenever I put it on that would happen- and they would not only sing, but they would keep the rhythm of the music.

It also brought back a great memory of Sunday mornings years before that when my exhusband Jonathan and I would get together with our neighbor Dave Nabozny in Newport and play music. It was a Sunday morning ritual for a while- coffee, pot, pastries... and Dave on the guitar, Jonathan on blues harp and me on the flute. My kids were little and they would sit on Jonathan's lap while he played the harp and all in all it was a pretty wonderful time. This time there was no pot (we no longer indulge!) and instead of little kids around there are just flocks of birds to enjoy it along with us, but it was equally as pleasant a morning and in fact I did dip into quite an altered state of consciousness for a while and ended up laughing hysterically.

2.14.11 Bowling for Valentine's.AVI

Today's blog is a video I made today of Tibetan singing bowls. A sound is worth a thousand words!

2.11.2011 Synchronicity

Ahhh... good morning sound explorers! I sat down to write at least an hour ago but got sidetracked by so many wonderful things showing up in front of me including this amazing video of Australian didgeridoo and guitar. And I haven't even had my coffee yet!

Thinking this morning about synchronicity... my thinking on this being that as we operate, vibrate, move at a particular frequency we attract people and events that sympathetically resonate with our vibration. As a sound therapist I tend to think about this generally in terms of sound typically as it relates to musical frequencies and healing but yesterday I began exploring it in a larger way as it was a day of interesting synchronicities.

The first thing that happened... a close friend (I will call her Tina) who had been in a life-threatening car accident in the end of July, 2010 stopped by the center to talk. She had to have extensive plastic surgery as a result of her accident- basically the left side of her face reconstructed including her jaw and her nose- and has healed phenomenally well. Nonetheless, she is having to come to terms with looking in the mirror and seeing a different face than what she identifies as "hers", so this was the gist of our discussion. Is my identity the face I see in the mirror? ie. is my face/my personality who I really am? Or can I move into a deeper place and connect with my "real" identity? A quote from A Course in Miracles came to me during the session which I shared with her before she left:
"Spirit am I, a holy [Child]* of God,
Free of all limits, safe and healed and whole,
Free to forgive and free to save the world." (Workbook, Lesson 97)
(*The Course uses the word "Son" here)

We had a good visit and before she left a client and friend came by for a session. (I will call her Cary) Tina was still at the center when she got there (Sound Body Wholistic Health Center, a sound healing center in St. Petersburg, FL). I was finishing up a couple of things so they had a few minutes to connect and basically chit chatted. Before Tina left I wrote the quote from A Course in Miracles down on a piece of paper for her. Meanwhile while the two of them were talking. Cary also happened to mention to Tina her connection to me through A Course in Miracles which I had totally forgotten about as it had been a year since I had last seen her.

After Tina left I gave Cary an energy balancing session with sound, and then we sat together and chatted for a bit. It wasn't long before the topic of A Course in Miracles came up and I shared with her a little bit about Tina's story and why I had shared the above quote with her. I told her a little bit about Tina's accident and surgery, and the whole topic about how we perceive ourselves and the challenge Tina was having moving through that. Cary exclaimed, "The exact same thing happened to me!" As it turns out, she too was in a terrible car accident 25 years ago and her face had to be totally reconstructed. But the change was so dramatic that literally no one recognized her. She said it took her ten years to get over it, to heal from it and then said, "So that's why we [she and Tina] connected! I wondered why we ran into each other here." We talked for a while longer and then she left, leaving her card so Tina could contact her.

After she left I felt a little tired from a pretty intense visit followed by the session and not eating enough. Another client was supposed to be coming in within minutes. She didn't show up so I called her and it turned out some stuff had come up and she had totally forgotten about her appointment. Under the circumstances it was fine. She is someone who has a lot of energy and consumes a lot of energy and I didn't really feel like I had much left. So I sat at my desk getting caught up on some work and suddenly the door opened and an old friend who I rarely see because she has been so busy with her own business walked in! I was so happy and surprised to see her. As it turned out she was coming in to pay for a workshop I am teaching in March. She has just closed her business so we had time to catch up and I was able to give her a short session on the sound table which I have been trying to do for her for years! The timing could not have been more perfect and it was a connection which boosted my energy rather than depleting it further.

So all of that being said, does this tie in with frequency, and if so, how? Personally I think it does. Tina has something she needs to heal. She drew to her, not by some magic or miracle, but simply by the vibration of her energy at this time, exactly the right person to help her through a piece of her journey. And if the day had gone as planned I would have missed my friend- AND been exhausted. But due to unforeseen circumstances, things shifted and my friend showed up at exactly the right moment rather than exactly the wrong moment!

I think part of this is also that I try to keep the energy at the center as clean and clear as possible. This allows whoever comes in to radiate- their energy is not muddied up by whatever else is going on, and that frequency draws in those with a sympathetic resonance. Thus Cary and Tina show up at the same time. Cheryl walks in at a time when I am most open to being available for her on every level.

Everything is vibration. Nada Brahma. The world is sound. Could you be the sound you want to hear in the world?

2.6.11 Writings of Dane Rudhyar

This morning I found a book by Don Conreaux, gongmaster, with excerpts from writings of Dane Rudhyar- Theosophist, philosopher, astrologer, musician. It is fascinating and wonderful little book, clarifying some concepts about sound and music as well as putting into words some stuff I "knew" but had no words for.

"When a sound is produced oscillations in the air occur. These airwaves are not sound, only the result of the passage of sonal energy (an etheric flow) through the air, just as thunder is not the lightning but the result of it. Sonal energy is in a way like an invisible lightning passing through any substance and shaking rhythmically the molecules thereof into so-called sound waves. But while certain substances like air are easily shaken into sound waves, when sonal energy passes through a big mass of metal, sound waves proper exist no longer, at least not in the same way as in the atmosphere.

It is a paradox that sound travels more quickly through a solid bar of iron miles long than through plastic air and modern acousticians have no logical explanation for it. They will not be able to do so until they recognize that sound is an etheric flow which passes through the molecules."

2.3.11

Thinking about sound, teaching about sound, talking about sound. Making sound- toning, chanting, reciting mantras, playing tamboura, Tibetan bowls, treating people on the sound table but I have not been writing about sound lately! Time to get back to it. What have been some recent powerful moments or openings I have seen?

Last week my kindergarten teacher came to visit me- the first time I had seen her in over 40 years! She had been a very special person in my life when I was young and we had reconnected in the last year but not actually seen each other. It turns out that music and dance have been very important healers in her life. She came to the sound healing center and at one point I played for her a crystal bowl. She had never heard them before. The first one I played was a frosted 8" G# bowl. She was sitting on the edge of the massage table and when she heard the sound her mouth dropped open and she said, "Oh Rosie..." in a voice of amazement and her eyes filled with tears. The beauty of the sound took her breath away. It was a very powerful moment.

This past weekend I taught a sound healing workshop. My sister Miranda was visiting, attending the workshop and helping me. On Saturday morning after showing a film on cymatics- the effect of sound on matter- featuring the work of Hans Jenny, I did a sound journey so the participants could feel how the sound of different instruments affected them. I used a variety of instruments- an A-minor Freenote (an instrument much like a xylophone), Tibetan bowls, 2 small clear crystal bowls, ocean drum, rainstick, aboriginal clapsticks, a 22" wind gong, a small wind gong, Native American drone flute, condor feather flute, and a didgeridoo. (maybe one or tow others that I don't remember!) I only played each instrument for 2-3 minutes in general because we were short on time. I did go around the room and play one of the gongs around each person as well as the didgeridoo. After the sound journey we all took a break and she and I went for lunch together. When we got in the car she said to me, "Okay, I just want to say one thing. If everybody were just to go home right now they would have already gotten their money's worth." I guess she liked the sound journey!