Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning meditation & music

Lawrence Ball wrote:

> Hallo Alison
>
> I share your interest in the relation between music and meditation and would
> like to hear what you've done in that field.
> Meditation does I think you're right require smooth and gradual sounds (in
> the way that gongs tambouras and bells have gradual timbral shifts).
> I have been involved in this area (one of many) since 1972 and feel that it
> still has a long way to develop.
> I played to Sufi meditation groups in London (1972-4 and 1975-7) and found
> the experience of playing (Turkish saz on those occasions) to folk who were
> focussing quite deeply very illuminating and self-forming.
> I developed a series of Sound Mandalas during the 1980s which have a lot in
> common with tamboura and harmonic overtone singing. See recent article on
> this list.
> What is your field/s of involvement in music, and your interest?
> Hoping to hear more about what you're doing.......
> best wishes
> Lawrence Ball
>

Dear Lawrence

I suppose that the Zen masters would say thet you don't really need anything to meditate (they'd
probably say there's no such thing as meditation) but there is a lot to be said for good music in
guided meditation. A lot of commercial stuff is of the synth-wash /jungle sound variety and
doesn't really take you anywhere. I was particularly taken with Indian music when I started
practising yoga and meditation and the sound of a tanpura with simple slowly evolving melody is
immensely relaxing. I spent a lot of time working with various drones and my exposure to Eastern
music led me to Western sacred music. I have played Renaissance choral music in my classes to
great effect. My compositional activities were initially based mainly on dronal, modal modulation
and contrapuntal choral musics. Arvo Part led me to look at purity in tuning and from there to
Just Intonation. Although some might disagree, I find great purity in justly intoned music and it
is this element that has ramifications for music therapy and meditation music. I'm sure you know
the effect of communal overtone singing and chanting. As a performing musician I play guitar and
lute and sing in choirs. And I teach yoga and meditation.

The upheaval of learning a new universe of scales, harmony and theory set me back a bit in
composition. I had a guitar refretted to 22-tet to keep me going and have some compositions ready
for performance soon. But like you it seems, I can't get away from tying together music and
meditation. The art is in placement, repetition without boredom and subtlety in timbral shift.
You're right about gongs and bells. I use Zen bells a lot (they are actually traditional in some
meditation schools) in composition and in meditation classes. I've just converted a double garage
into a workshop in the Scottish Borders where I've started making simple instruments and learning
the skills to make more elaborate ones. Very liberating. Several of the compositions I have in
mind will be introspective and meditative in nature. Having written and performed meditative
pieces to shaggy cramped audiences in performance venues I developed a feel for the power of
various forms and timbres to relax and uplift.

On the electronic front, as I said, I use an Doepfer analogue system, very powerful and capable of
beautiful timbres. With an analogue sequencer endlessly varying gamelan like sequences can be
generated. I'll try to get some stuff up on a website soon.
But I have to resist the urge to churn out bleepy ambient techno. One avenue I will be pursuing
shortly is the tuning of the Doepfer to some of the amazing Hexanies, Eikosanies and other
systems. Maybe an oscilloscope would help. And then with some Zen bells, dronal strings and justly
intoned choir......

I suppose it would be interesting to gather feedback on the effects of various scales, ratios,
harmonies, timbres and their variations on groups of meditators. Thanks for the opportunity to
share ideas about these topics. As you say there's a long way to go in the field but as they say
the journey of a thousand miles begins with just one step (or is that one just step?)

🔗Dave Keenan <D.KEENAN@UQ.NET.AU>

🔗Alison Monteith <alison.monteith3@which.net>

🔗ligonj@northstate.net

🔗Alison Monteith <alison.monteith3@which.net>

ligonj@northstate.net wrote:

> Alison,
>
> I'm wondering if you could kindly speak about your drones that you
> mentioned? What are the various kinds you use in your music, and how
> do you achieve this? Are you working with the harmonic series as a
> tuning for your drones?
>
> I use harmonic drones in my music, and I've found that - to my ears -
> harmonics 1-16 are very important in creating a drone which can
> function as a tamboura-like timbre.

Hi Jacky

thanks for the opportunity to drone on about a topic close to my heart. You might remember a
thread last autumn about drones that frizzled out a bit prematurely. As the Scottish Borders is
cut off from the rest of the world by snow I can take more time to share some of my thoughts and
experiences. A lot of my earlier ( what's the opposite of antediluvian?) 12 tet composition used
modal modulation and hence various dronal and pedal point techniques to pin down the modes. The
shift to just intonation and other equal temperaments was at first a matter of expanding melodic
and harmonic resources and so came quite naturally. So the interest in drones is still there. I
suppose you can split drones into acoustic or electronic with possibly a third category of
electronically modified acoustic drones. It wouldn't be too far off the mark to say that in
electronic synthesis and in future instrument design we are looking at the concept of the tuning
of drones.

My earliest experience of acoustic drones was of course the bagpipes which we all learn in
kindergarten here ; - ) What struck me about this instrument was its total self sufficiency (so
much so that a lot of people are quite happy to leave it well alone.). Secondly the drone isn't
uniform in timbre. There is a constant dynamism in the sound which I later discovered to be the
rise and fall of partials caused by the complexity of the movement of wind in the chanter bore. I
think it is the quality of this movement that makes a good drone. For example I would be reluctant
to use any of the four simple waves (sine, square, saw or triangle) as a drone for long without
running the risk of losing vitality in a composition. BTW one of the best wind produced drones
available is a sample of your vacuum cleaner in full voice. Zappa would have approved. The vacuum
is simply an electrically driven airbag with a simple cylindrical bore. Sampling is an art so you
have to find the optimum loop length which involves listening for cycles in the vacuum's sound.
Then it can be processed with FX, eq, wave manipulation, layering or whatever your sampler allows.
The other obvious wind choice is the didgeridoo. This sacred instrument is great as a drone to
improvise over as a good player can produce strong controllable harmonics in counterpoint to
another instrumental or vocal melody. Strangely I have found that very young babies love the didge
and can happily relax and sleep to its sound.

String drones are an obvious choice and my formative experiences in these were from Celtic and
Indian musics. I learned a lot from living in Ireland and accompanying traditional music. As well
as the guitar I had a 5 course flat back bouzouki made by a great Dublin luthier called Joe Foley.
They call the 5 course version a blarge which I think means bloody large. I got the tuning dadGD
from Donal Lunny, the bouzouki main man. This instrument has an incredible zing to it, very strong
in upper partials and if played rhythmically the open strings and good fifths of 12 tet can give
fairly just chords. As the style of music is often purely modal or uses tonic, dominant,
subdominant with the occasional minor substitution, there is no need for the tenseness of dominant
sevenths or complex chords. The guitar in drop D can have the same effect. If you want to hear
this style, listen to Matt Molloy's (flautist) "The Heathery Breeze." This is a landmark album in
Western acoustic music because of the combination of the accompanying bouzouki and guitar played
by Donal Lunny and Arty McGlynn. There is also an accompaniment by the latter on an album by
Uillean piper Paddy Keenan in which a complex polyrhythmic drone is set up and tones from the
harmonic series touched on to give a truly mesmerising effect of two or three instruments. Or
perhaps the very fact of hammering a guitar into a good valve microphone can increase the
intensity of the lower partials. The style is very much an emulation of the drones of a bagpipe. I
can supply a recommended discography by private email if you like this style.

Which all leads to the mighty tanpura. The beauty of this instrument lies in its simplicity.
Strings and a resonator. The fact that there is no fretting or great tension in the strings and
only unison, octave and fifth in the most common tuning allows the full richness of the vibrating
string to resonate. As it is normally plucked at the first harmonic node, I suppose that partial
is dampened so you get a strong second harmonic (the twelfth of the fundamental), then, it seems
to me, a good spread of prominent partials right up the lower part of the series ( just as you
pointed out Jacky) with the added complexity of combination tones. Hence the lush wall of sound.
I've never bothered sampling the tanpura. Even if you isolated one cycle the residue of that cycle
should linger on into the start of the next. Throw in the irregularity of the plucking hand and
you'd need several gigabytes of sampler to get a realistic sample. Be as well learning to play it.

A lot can be done in electronic music with complex waveforms. Modular analogue synths are the
business for drones because once you have the timbre patched in you can play the partials in a
very hands on fashion, a difficult task with digital synths even with controllers. And they are
analogue, so, in my view, better waves. Two modules that I experiment with a lot are an audio
divider which gives attenuators for the first to fourth sub octaves of a given input, in effect a
subset of the sub harmonic series. All waves output are square. The output can then be seriously
mashed with a voltage controlled waveform processor which has a clipping circuit and an
assymettrical amplifier. The signals are then added. As well as being manually controllable, the
resulting waveforms can be modulated by control voltages. It's the resulting complex and changing
waveforms which are ideal for drones though lethal on the speaker system. The next step is to try
to add an element of methodical control of the series number and intensity of the harmonics (your
particular interest I believe, Jacky) which is what I suppose synthesis was originally all about
in the beginning, ie emulating acoustic instruments. Just as I would challenge an electronic sound
designer to come up with a realistic tanpura or pipe drone so would I challenge an instrument
maker to create some of the timbres that can be had out of a Doepfer or a Moog. Each category has
its uniqueness. I found some of that uniqueness in David Beardsley's two pieces.

Lastly, the human voice. Composers like Arvo Part and John Tavener use choral drones to great
effect. Both have ascribed mystical significance to the use of the drone, explaining that it
represents the unchanging divine principle underpinning the changing world. Behind this concept
lies the substantial authority and beautiful musical culture of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Interesting that the basso profundo is normally associated with this tradition. Then there is
harmonic or overtone singing, again a self sufficent system with drone and melody possible at the
same time. I tried sampling some of this from a radio excerpt. I think it was an East European
folk ensemble with a solo male voice doing the overtoning. Again I found it impossible to isolate
a usable loop because the intensity and movement of the lower partials was so random. In fact the
vocal line was no longer a timbre within an ensemble but a composition in its own right.

I hope all this rambling helps to answer your question. I have found the more scientific threads
on spectral analysis to be most useful in my study and understanding of drones and look forward to
more fruitful discussion.

Best Wishes

🔗Seth Austen <klezmusic@earthlink.net>

🔗Mats �ljare <oljare@hotmail.com>

🔗Seth Austen <klezmusic@earthlink.net>

🔗ligonj@northstate.net

--- In tuning@y..., Alison Monteith <alison.monteith3@w...> wrote:
>
>
> ligonj@n... wrote:
>
> > Alison,
> >
> > I'm wondering if you could kindly speak about your drones that you
> > mentioned? What are the various kinds you use in your music, and
how
> > do you achieve this? Are you working with the harmonic series as a
> > tuning for your drones?
> >
> > I use harmonic drones in my music, and I've found that - to my
ears -
> > harmonics 1-16 are very important in creating a drone which can
> > function as a tamboura-like timbre.
>
> Hi Jacky
>
> thanks for the opportunity to drone on about a topic close to my
heart. You might remember a
> thread last autumn about drones that frizzled out a bit
prematurely. As the Scottish Borders is
> cut off from the rest of the world by snow I can take more time to
share some of my thoughts and
> experiences. A lot of my earlier ( what's the opposite of
antediluvian?) 12 tet composition used
> modal modulation and hence various dronal and pedal point
techniques to pin down the modes. The
> shift to just intonation and other equal temperaments was at first
a matter of expanding melodic
> and harmonic resources and so came quite naturally. So the interest
in drones is still there. I
> suppose you can split drones into acoustic or electronic with
possibly a third category of
> electronically modified acoustic drones. It wouldn't be too far off
the mark to say that in
> electronic synthesis and in future instrument design we are looking
at the concept of the tuning
> of drones.

Alison,

Thanks so much for speaking about your use of drones!

My experience has been mostly with categories 2 & 3. With #2, I will
use sine waves which "sweep" through the harmonics, which are layered
with harmonics 1-16, 1-8 and 1-4. This creates movement in the drone
which has always been a direct effort to create a sound which can
serve a function that is similar to that of the tamboura.

With #3, I will combine a guitar note, with the harmonic sweeps, to
create an acoustic/electronic hybrid drone.

>
> My earliest experience of acoustic drones was of course the
bagpipes which we all learn in
> kindergarten here ; - ) What struck me about this instrument was
its total self sufficiency (so
> much so that a lot of people are quite happy to leave it well
alone.). Secondly the drone isn't
> uniform in timbre. There is a constant dynamism in the sound which
I later discovered to be the
> rise and fall of partials caused by the complexity of the movement
of wind in the chanter bore. I
> think it is the quality of this movement that makes a good drone.

This is fascinating, and I couldn't agree more about the issue of
movement in the drone.

> For example I would be reluctant
> to use any of the four simple waves (sine, square, saw or triangle)
as a drone for long without
> running the risk of losing vitality in a composition.

Yes - I agree that a static drone without "sweeping" or "movement" of
the harmonics is not effective.

> BTW one of the best wind produced drones
> available is a sample of your vacuum cleaner in full voice. Zappa
would have approved. The vacuum
> is simply an electrically driven airbag with a simple cylindrical
bore. Sampling is an art so you
> have to find the optimum loop length which involves listening for
cycles in the vacuum's sound.
> Then it can be processed with FX, eq, wave manipulation, layering
or whatever your sampler allows.

This put a smile on my face! I've explored using my WW2 short-wave
radio in this manner - an infinity of great tones is possible with
this old beast, which I really treat like a synthesizer, where
broadcast signals are the generating waveforms.

> The other obvious wind choice is the didgeridoo. This sacred
instrument is great as a drone to
> improvise over as a good player can produce strong controllable
harmonics in counterpoint to
> another instrumental or vocal melody. Strangely I have found that
very young babies love the didge
> and can happily relax and sleep to its sound.

I love the Didj and made two different models last year that sound
wonderful, but as stated before, I'm quite inadequate, when it comes
to circular breathing. It is a gorgeous sound to be sure, and I used
them on my last CD "Galunlati" in quite a few key places. Mostly
there I didn't employ any vocalizations, but just the plain sound of
the Didj alone, and by manipulating lip pressures I got some pleasant
overtones. I have played them quite a bit to develop the technique of
injecting a vocal note into the sound to create a really thick multi-
phonic chord sound (Manglesdorff inspired Didj playing). One thing
that's neat about the Didj (or about any winds), is that once you
have got the air column in vibration, it takes less energy to keep it
going - some things I did to my design help this too. These things
have got some serious bass too! I wanted to make them have as low a
tone as possible, so as to put the emphasis on the overtones. Some
early failures at design, involved making them too long, and my lips
were of insufficient mass to activate the vibration. The wax
mouthpiece, I've found to be vital to good tone, and when I custom
tailored this to my own dimensions, the results were nice. So there
was a bit of trial and error, leading to the ones I kept. It is one
of my favorite drone instruments too!

>
> String drones are an obvious choice and my formative experiences in
these were from Celtic and
> Indian musics. I learned a lot from living in Ireland and
accompanying traditional music. As well
> as the guitar I had a 5 course flat back bouzouki made by a great
Dublin luthier called Joe Foley.
> They call the 5 course version a blarge which I think means bloody
large. I got the tuning dadGD
> from Donal Lunny, the bouzouki main man. This instrument has an
incredible zing to it, very strong
> in upper partials and if played rhythmically the open strings and
good fifths of 12 tet can give
> fairly just chords. As the style of music is often purely modal or
uses tonic, dominant,
> subdominant with the occasional minor substitution, there is no
need for the tenseness of dominant
> sevenths or complex chords. The guitar in drop D can have the same
effect.

This sounds very nice. Please let us know when CDs of your music
become available. By all descriptions, I would love to hear anything
you've done.

> If you want to hear
> this style, listen to Matt Molloy's (flautist) "The Heathery
Breeze." This is a landmark album in
> Western acoustic music because of the combination of the
accompanying bouzouki and guitar played
> by Donal Lunny and Arty McGlynn. There is also an accompaniment by
the latter on an album by
> Uillean piper Paddy Keenan in which a complex polyrhythmic drone is
set up and tones from the
> harmonic series touched on to give a truly mesmerising effect of
two or three instruments. Or
> perhaps the very fact of hammering a guitar into a good valve
microphone can increase the
> intensity of the lower partials. The style is very much an
emulation of the drones of a bagpipe. I
> can supply a recommended discography by private email if you like
this style.

Please do send me a discography. I'll try to seek out some of it
here. Thanks!

> Which all leads to the mighty tanpura. The beauty of this
instrument lies in its simplicity.
> Strings and a resonator. The fact that there is no fretting or
great tension in the strings and
> only unison, octave and fifth in the most common tuning allows the
full richness of the vibrating
> string to resonate. As it is normally plucked at the first harmonic
node, I suppose that partial
> is dampened so you get a strong second harmonic (the twelfth of the
fundamental), then, it seems
> to me, a good spread of prominent partials right up the lower part
of the series ( just as you
> pointed out Jacky) with the added complexity of combination tones.
Hence the lush wall of sound.
> I've never bothered sampling the tanpura. Even if you isolated one
cycle the residue of that cycle
> should linger on into the start of the next. Throw in the
irregularity of the plucking hand and
> you'd need several gigabytes of sampler to get a realistic sample.
Be as well learning to play it.

Yes, it is beautiful and inspiring sound. I would like to purchase
one someday. They can be huge though! A funny story is that some
friends I have locally bought one about 100 miles from where I live,
and couldn't get the case in their car, so the next time I drove to
this store (a dealer in "world music" instruments), I was able to
bring it back in my car, but I had to lay the seat down to get
this "coffin" sized box in there! Quite funny actually, but they were
glad I brought it to them.

> A lot can be done in electronic music with complex waveforms.
Modular analogue synths are the
> business for drones because once you have the timbre patched in you
can play the partials in a
> very hands on fashion, a difficult task with digital synths even
with controllers. And they are
> analogue, so, in my view, better waves. Two modules that I
experiment with a lot are an audio
> divider which gives attenuators for the first to fourth sub octaves
of a given input, in effect a
> subset of the sub harmonic series. All waves output are square. The
output can then be seriously
> mashed with a voltage controlled waveform processor which has a
clipping circuit and an
> assymettrical amplifier. The signals are then added. As well as
being manually controllable, the
> resulting waveforms can be modulated by control voltages. It's the
resulting complex and changing
> waveforms which are ideal for drones though lethal on the speaker
system. The next step is to try
> to add an element of methodical control of the series number and
intensity of the harmonics (your
> particular interest I believe, Jacky) which is what I suppose
synthesis was originally all about
> in the beginning, ie emulating acoustic instruments. Just as I
would challenge an electronic sound
> designer to come up with a realistic tanpura or pipe drone so
would I challenge an instrument
> maker to create some of the timbres that can be had out of a
Doepfer or a Moog. Each category has
> its uniqueness. I found some of that uniqueness in David
Beardsley's two pieces.

It appears we have similar sounding methods of doing this with
electronics. I have uploaded a 35 second long example of my drone
sound design to my folder in the files section for everyone to check
out. This one is in the key of E, which is the lowest functional note
I can sing in. It has always interested me to know what my vocal 1/1
is - which seems to be E.

Here I have layered the sweeps of harmonics 1-16, 1-8 and 1-4, so
there is constant movement going on. Any comments are welcome and if
anyone feels so compelled, you may use this sample in your music,
provided you let me hear what you do with it. I have a compliment of
JI scales that I use over this kind of drone, which are derived from
a series I have grown to call the "Harmonic Mirror", of which there
are 12 - a scale for each month of the year. Some of this I've spoken
about before here.

Yes, I have enjoyed David Beardsley's music too for all these
attributes.

> Lastly, the human voice. Composers like Arvo Part and John Tavener
use choral drones to great
> effect. Both have ascribed mystical significance to the use of the
drone, explaining that it
> represents the unchanging divine principle underpinning the
changing world. Behind this concept
> lies the substantial authority and beautiful musical culture of the
Eastern Orthodox Church.
> Interesting that the basso profundo is normally associated with
this tradition. Then there is
> harmonic or overtone singing, again a self sufficent system with
drone and melody possible at the
> same time. I tried sampling some of this from a radio excerpt. I
think it was an East European
> folk ensemble with a solo male voice doing the overtoning. Again I
found it impossible to isolate
> a usable loop because the intensity and movement of the lower
partials was so random. In fact the
> vocal line was no longer a timbre within an ensemble but a
composition in its own right.

I love Arvo Part and John Tavener, and feel similarly about the use
of drones. In my Creative Collective, we are all hugely into singing
harmonies, and also work with overtone techniques quite a bit too. I
practice daily, and have gotten better at suppressing the fundamental
in my voice, so as to make the harmonics more clear. There's
something that one can do in the throat, which defies description
that enables one to control the volume of the fundamental, not to
mention strategic use of the tongue around the teeth.

> I hope all this rambling helps to answer your question. I have
found the more scientific threads
> on spectral analysis to be most useful in my study and
understanding of drones and look forward to
> more fruitful discussion.

It has been wonderful, and I apologize for the time it has taken to
reply - I've had a real juggling act going on here this weekend.

It may perhaps be of interest to know that on my current CD project,
we are using ensembles of idiophones (gongs, bells, ting sha and the
like) as drones for choral singing. I'm using a method that I'm
calling Spectral Tempering, where the spectra of all the idiophones
are taken into consideration for the best ensemble tuning. The
results of my initial tests and sequences have proven to be quite
lovely in combination. This method requires one to, in a way,
consider all the timbres being used in combination as a single
timbre. When complete (which may take until summer), we will use many
forms of harmony singing and overtone (throat singing) techniques,
where we sing in the spectral scales of these inharmonic timbres. An
interesting aside, is that I found that compressed octaves, rather
than stretched were more common in the spectra of the idiophones -
really quite a surprise to find, because I think I had some
preconceptions that I would find the opposite. Certainly makes a case
for having a open mind about what one may find in such an endeavor.

All this has grown out of an experience I had last year where during
a sampling/recording session, I was able to clearly make my voice
unison with the partials of several Gongs. This immediately made this
whole concept spring into mind, but I've had to wrap up the last CD,
before I could get on with it.

Looking forward to further discussions.

Best Regards,

Jacky Ligon

🔗ligonj@northstate.net

--- In tuning@y..., Seth Austen <klezmusic@e...> wrote:
> > From: Alison Monteith <alison.monteith3@w...>
> > Secondly the drone isn't
> > uniform in timbre. There is a constant dynamism in the sound
which I later
> > discovered to be the
> > rise and fall of partials caused by the complexity of the
movement of wind in
> > the chanter bore. I
> > think it is the quality of this movement that makes a good drone.
For example
> > I would be reluctant
> > to use any of the four simple waves (sine, square, saw or
triangle) as a drone
> > for long without
> > running the risk of losing vitality in a composition.
>
> Alison,
>
> Thanks for your truly wonderful post on drones. It is a subject
close to my
> heart as much of the music I play and/or compose, whether it is
Celtic,
> Appalachian, delta blues, klezmer, etc. is modal melodic material
over a
> drone accompaniment. And yes, the drones in traditional musics are
so
> harmonically complex and full.

Seth,

Could you please speak about the drone methods that you employ?

What instruments do you use for this?

Do you have a tamboura?

> > as the guitar I had a 5 course flat back bouzouki made by a great
Dublin
> > luthier called Joe Foley.
> > They call the 5 course version a blarge which I think means
bloody large. I
> > got the tuning dadGD
> > from Donal Lunny, the bouzouki main man. This instrument has an
incredible
> > zing to it, very strong
> > in upper partials and if played rhythmically the open strings and
good fifths
> > of 12 tet can give
> > fairly just chords.
>
> I also play the flat backed bouzouki, I have a 4 course tuned GDAD
(missing
> the low D) built by NH luthier Robert Abrams. I use it extensively
for
> Celtic, Greek, Balkan, French (w/ hurdy gurdy), nordic and other
folk
> musics. I play it in a style of using lots of open fifth and
suspended 4/9
> chords, no thirds, going for that near-just sound that you mention.

So you actually own a hurdy gurdy? Very nice! Are you using any
microtunings on this?

> I've actually been contemplating of having the luthier add a few
frets that
> would give me 5 and 7 limit thirds and sevenths, maybe a few other
choice
> pitches as well.

This sounds very interesting! Has any of this made it onto CD yet?
When it does please let me know! I've always known that when your
lovely melodic style, and musical voice is put into a microtonal
setting, we all will be in for a real treat!

> Has anyone on the list checked out the octave mandola playing of
Ale Moller?
> He is a player and producer extraordinaire in the Nordic music
scene. He has
> extra frets on his octave mandola (a bouzouki-like instrument) to
> accommodate the non-ET intonation of the fiddle and styles. He also
plays
> the willow flute, a traditional overtone flute.

I'll attempt to track some of this locally, and thanks for the
recommnedation.

Jacky Ligon

🔗Seth Austen <klezmusic@earthlink.net>

on 3/4/01 8:01 PM, tuning@yahoogroups.com at tuning@yahoogroups.com wrote:

> From: ligonj@northstate.net
> Subject: Re: meditation & music

> Could you please speak about the drone methods that you employ?

At one point I used a lot of synthesizer drones, however, I never got into
sound design such as you have, and found much of the presets two
dimensional. At a certain point, I started to feel, if I wanted a banjo,
flute, mbira or didj sound in my music, I should just learn to play it on
the instrument.

If I am playing a piece on the guitar with drones, my most commonly used
method is to use an open tuning that will give me those drones, and to try
and keep as many open strings ringing throughout the piece as possible.

I used to use electronic effects to enhance this, using chorus and delays
tended to keep the overtones swirling around in there, but I'm going for a
very clean acoustic sound these days. I remember when I first got exposed to
the overtone singing of David Hykes, I learned the basics of harmonic
singing, then wondered and attempted for hours upon hours to say if I could
achieve plucking an open guitar string in such a way as to excite specific
harmonics. Needless to say, I shall be working on this one for as long as I
play the guitar.

>
> What instruments do you use for this?

Open tuned guitars, acoustic lap steel guitar, bouzouki, fretted dulcimer,
fiddle, voice, I'm also learning to play didj, the jaw harp (a wonderful
drone and harmonic melody instrument)...

>
> Do you have a tamboura?

Not yet, I probably should get one.

> So you actually own a hurdy gurdy? Very nice! Are you using any
> microtunings on this?

My partner Beverly has recently taken up the hurdy-gurdy and the
nyckelharpa. It is within the tradition of both instruments to tune
non-equal. And so we do...

>> I've actually been contemplating of having the luthier add a few
> frets that
>> would give me 5 and 7 limit thirds and sevenths, maybe a few other
> choice
>> pitches as well.
>
> This sounds very interesting! Has any of this made it onto CD yet?
> When it does please let me know! I've always known that when your
> lovely melodic style, and musical voice is put into a microtonal
> setting, we all will be in for a real treat!

I have various wish list instruments, I want a fretless acoustic guitar, am
waiting for the particular model I want to show up at the store where I
teach, then I will have our luthier do the conversion. I also have an
interchangeable fretboard system that needs an instument to get installed
on. As mentioned, more frets on my bouzouki would be nice. A good quality
saz could keep me busy for a long time as well. My dream guitar will have a
fretless neck, along with sympathetic strings like the hardanger fiddle or
sitar, I need to find someone to build this beast...

Seth

--
Seth Austen

http://www.sethausten.com
emails: seth@sethausten.com
klezmusic@earthlink.net

"All TRUTH passes through three stages.
First it is ridiculed.
Second it is violently opposed.
Third it is accepted as being self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

🔗Lawrence Ball <Lawrenceball@planettree.demon.co.uk>

Dear Alison,
here is something to read while the snow is still there, I do hope
conditions improve soon or have improved.

Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 21:00:37 +0000
From: Alison Monteith <alison.monteith3@which.net>
Subject: Re: meditation & music
>Dear Lawrence

>I suppose that the Zen masters would say they you don't really need
anything to meditate (they'd
>probably say there's no such thing as meditation) but there is a lot to be
said for good music in
>guided meditation.

If meditation is a communion with the soul (yoga actually means union) then
maybe one needs meditation to create music.
A Zen master would have no need to become one?

Q:How many zen masters does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 3! One to change the light bulb, one to not change the light bulb, and
one to neither change it nor not change it.

> A lot of commercial stuff is of the synth-wash /jungle sound variety and
>doesn't really take you anywhere. I was particularly taken with Indian
music when I started
>practising yoga and meditation and the sound of a tanpura with simple
slowly evolving melody is
>immensely relaxing.

I like the Awakened Mind model of the optimum condition where all the
brainwaves of different frequencies are active - all the way from deep
trance/sleep to conscious logistics.
delta 0.5-3 Hz deep sleep or shock
theta 3-7 Hz deep trance or deep meditation
alpha 7-13 Hz relaxed, ease of activity, creative mind working
beta 13-30 Hz conscious logistical, mental arithmetic, surface level
NB TV sets, (pre digital) - screen refresh rate in the beta stimulation zone

I really love Indian music though (see post to Haresh) - isn't it amazing
what "merely acoustical" waves can do to one's being at all levels?

> I spent a lot of time working with various drones and my exposure to Eastern
>music led me to Western sacred music. I have played Renaissance choral
music in my classes to
>great effect. My compositional activities were initially based mainly on
dronal, modal modulation
>and contrapuntal choral musics. Arvo Part led me to look at purity in
tuning and from there to
>Just Intonation.

A curious but logical step - Arvo Part has for me a remarkable ability to
step back from his music, to allow it to follow simple rules, and to have
immense restraint in his developments of sound. I came to JI more via Terry
Riley through finding that timbre and scale melted into each other
beautifully and warmly. I loved and still love playing in mixolydian mode
with a pure (to 1 cent anyhow) 4/5/6/7 tonic tetrad. That to me is a great
goal for tuning, to have the timbre and the scale become part of one entity
or at least become indistinguishable .It makes the act of hearing more in
the unconscious, and easy. In my 1985 piece Silverstream, I use 16 voices,
each with a slightly different timbre, so that the long envelopes on notes
make melody and timbre into a highly structured but amorphous sounding
mobile sculpture.

>Although some might disagree, I find great purity in justly intoned music and it
>is this element that has ramifications for music therapy and meditation
music. I'm sure you know
>the effect of communal overtone singing and chanting. As a performing
musician I play guitar and
>lute and sing in choirs. And I teach yoga and meditation.

Greatly broad and deeply rooted! Good for you.

>The upheaval of learning a new universe of scales, harmony and theory set
me back a bit in
>composition. I had a guitar refretted to 22-tet to keep me going and have
some compositions ready
>for performance soon. But like you it seems, I can't get away from tying
together music and
>meditation.

Why "but"? Just curious.
When and where is your music being performed? - I do hope its being
recorded, I would love to hear it.

I came to JI/retuning slowly. I saw what only playing JI on piano did to
Terry Riley's concert availability. I actually feel personally that to make
JI into an exclusive crusade is not essential. Some will prefer to devote
themselves to it, but despite interest value I sense that JI is no guarantee
of great results, I hold a lot of store by being able to play tempered
pianos, good music is from the ethers and is not that biased towards tuning
fussiness. That said I am still vastly interested in tuning, and deeply
respect those who aspire to compose with those approaches.

> The art is in placement, repetition without boredom and subtlety in
timbral shift.
>You're right about gongs and bells. I use Zen bells a lot (they are
actually traditional in some
>meditation schools) in composition and in meditation classes. I've just
converted a double garage
>into a workshop in the Scottish Borders where I've started making simple
instruments and learning
>the skills to make more elaborate ones.

Do tell us more about this.

> Very liberating. Several of the compositions I have in
>mind will be introspective and meditative in nature. Having written and
performed meditative
>pieces to shaggy cramped audiences in performance venues I developed a feel
for the power of
>various forms and timbres to relax and uplift.

What kind of performance occasions are these?

>On the electronic front, as I said, I use an Doepfer analogue system, very
powerful and capable of
>beautiful timbres. With an analogue sequencer endlessly varying gamelan
like sequences can be
>generated. I'll try to get some stuff up on a website soon.
>But I have to resist the urge to churn out bleepy ambient techno. One
avenue I will be pursuing
>shortly is the tuning of the Doepfer to some of the amazing Hexanies,
Eikosanies and other
>systems. Maybe an oscilloscope would help. And then with some Zen bells,
dronal strings and justly
>intoned choir......

May you resist the urge with style and honour (or not at all - if that's
part of your personality!).
I wish you Good luck and fertile inspiration for this upcoming music.

>I suppose it would be interesting to gather feedback on the effects of
various scales, ratios,
>harmonies, timbres and their variations on groups of meditators.

In 1989 healer/counsellor Isobel McGilvray conducted 100 free therapy
sessions to analyse the experiences of 15 folk listening to each of the 7
sound mandalas that had been devised (then called ShapeTapes) which resulted
in a small booklet describing this. In practice individuals vary enormously
so it can take some pinning down.

>Thanks for the opportunity to
>share ideas about these topics. As you say there's a long way to go in the
field but as they say
>the journey of a thousand miles begins with just one step (or is that one
just step?)

Probably both! This was very interesting Alison - I hope it will lead
further.
many good wishes and muses
Lawrence

PS
>I can supply a recommended discography by private email if you like this style.
This would be most appreciated.

LAWRENCE BALL-
composer
math tutor
director, Planet Tree Music Festival http://www.planettree.org

🔗Lawrence Ball <Lawrenceball@planettree.demon.co.uk>

Hallo Haresh,

I am pleased to make the acquaintance of a practising raga musician,
especially so one who is interested in tuning experiment.

I suppose I am interested in creating sounds and music which have a strong
effect on helping folk (myself included) to reflect strongly upon their own
deeper being.
Music arguably does this at its best anyway but the overt and conscious
pursuit of spirit through music is what I feel is most compelling to me.
India, particularly North Indian raga, is very attractive to me as a
listener and collector of music. My friend Terry Riley studied for over 25
years with the singer Pandit Pran Nath. When I hear Pran Nath's recordings
or Terry's singing or Fateh Ali Khan or Bhimsen Joshi I certainly feel close
to my roots in inspiration.

Sound Mandalas: the subject of a previous post, evolved through my deep
concerns with the work of John Whitney sr. and LaMonte Young- I created an
orchestral note - a digitally alive smooth journey through 400000 timbres
and back to base. There are parallels with tamboura both acoustic and
metaphorical. My friend Nickolay Kachanov (who leads the Russian Chamber
Choir in New York) and who sings the most beautiful undertones and
overtone-singing was awed by the mandalas as they conjure higher harmonics
than are physically possible with the human voice. I am trying to develop
the sounds further at the moment in MAX/MSP as I have intuited that I have
only just scratched the surface when it comes to etching tone sequences on
the timbral loom at one pitch, let alone more. I'm trying at present to make
clusters of harmonics, several harmonics wide, each cluster travelling up
and down the harmonic axis at different speeds. This all attempting to make
sounds which change using a new language derived from the natural laws of
acoustics.

Some people can't believe I'm (the sound mandala man) the same person who
produces my piano improvisations, but I feel that both areas are highly
linked. I have recorded over 1500 piano improvisations, and in the near
future I hope to use JI or other re-tunings in this work, what I most am
attracted to is to not know what I am going to play beforehand as much as
possible. True one repeats oneself but this allows a deeper, less surface
self to speak (dare I call it the soul here? perhaps not ..... people might
get the idea that this is a read-about or received idea- .........which it
is not...) and this depth self is to me a source of potent, exciting and
immensely peaceful refreshment. It forms the backbone of my
score-compositional, computer-generated-musical and other activities, and
this aspiration to imbibe ideas spontaneously is a risky but, when it works,
awesomely wonderful method of creating for me.

In my 1977 piece for tape "Unstruck Sound" I experimented with attempting to
make a piece imitating the "Sound Behind Sound". In the Vedas, I am informed
by my friend and Vedic scholar Jeanine Miller, physical sound is described
as being only 1/4 of the sounds which sound on all levels of the universe.
Other levels are often unrecognised consciously. One can make hovering
effects with long piano chords by removing the attack with fadeins, and this
piece was made with streams of these sounds at different speeds. Danielou
had inspired me with this idea from Indian music 'cosmology' and to this day
I feel that if music does not resonate at a higher level than merely
physical then it is not communicating as it could. A second music should be
heard over and above the physical. I find this transcendence in the music of
certain composers (Alan Hovhaness, Lou Harrison, Jean Catoire, Arvo
Part........see http://www.planettree.org for more thoughts and my essay
"The Universe As An Infinite Piano") but certainly not in that of Harrison
Birtwistle and many "sustained aggression" composers who stimulate more on,
and identify solely with, the level of concrete mind, even though Birtwistle
speaks about going for the stars.

I share your view that entertainment is of a different order than raga, of
course! But humanity is waking up slowly. Contemporary music is absorbing
the richness of more established cultures slowly but surely and by creating
Planet Tree Music Festival in London I hope to emphasise that absorbtion.
For years in my youth I felt Terry Riley's music was the real trailblazer
toward that integration.

Well Haresh, I'd like to know your elaboration on your interests.
What is your conception and intuition of the relation between Indian raga
and its contemporary relations?
What is your background to tuning, experiment and sound creation as of the
current time.
Where exactly do you live?
Can you tell us about your work, or an element of it , in this/these
field/s.

In a spirit of friendly and open enquiry

Lawrence Ball

PS this is an OLT post (overlapping-topic).

>> I developed a series of Sound Mandalas during the 1980s which have
>a lot in
>> common with tamboura and harmonic overtone singing.
>
>Hi Lawrence, while Indian classical music may be entertaining, it is
>ONLY about meditation and samadhi. More about this later, maybe.
>
>Right now, I am interested in Sound Mandalas, and "tamboura and
>harmonic overtone singing". Can you please elaborate? I am also
>doing much work in this field.
>
>Thanks.
>Haresh.

meditation & music

🔗Lawrence Ball <Lawrenceball@planettree.demon.co.uk>

🔗Haresh BAKSHI <hareshbakshi@hotmail.com>

🔗Alison Monteith <alison.monteith3@which.net>

🔗Dave Keenan <D.KEENAN@UQ.NET.AU>

🔗Alison Monteith <alison.monteith3@which.net>

🔗ligonj@northstate.net

🔗Alison Monteith <alison.monteith3@which.net>

🔗Seth Austen <klezmusic@earthlink.net>

🔗Mats �ljare <oljare@hotmail.com>

🔗Seth Austen <klezmusic@earthlink.net>

🔗ligonj@northstate.net

🔗ligonj@northstate.net

🔗Seth Austen <klezmusic@earthlink.net>

🔗Lawrence Ball <Lawrenceball@planettree.demon.co.uk>

🔗Lawrence Ball <Lawrenceball@planettree.demon.co.uk>