If you look on the Internet or go into your nearby audio store you’re likely to find music labeled “Healing Music.” The section may include music for relaxation, meditation, stress reduction, pain relief or tapping into one’s soul. There may be a variety of instruments or sounds from a forest or the ocean.
So what makes this music “healing music?”
Music has a way of stirring our innermost feelings and all of our senses, of tapping into parts of ourselves unlike anything else. Music is a universal language that has the ability to speak to us deeply and uniquely.
If you’ve paid much attention to how you respond to a variety of music, you may have noticed that some music seems to energize you, some music can move you to tears or spark a special memory of a time, place, food, or perhaps a certain person. Some music seems to make you relax, feel less stressed, and feel happier. And some music fills us with deep spiritual attunement.
The following are some examples of what I mean.
- Tapping into our innermost feelings:
Think about some of the movies you’ve seen. “Jaws” wouldn’t be the same without its daunting, low, repetitive sounds that makes you sit on the edge of your seat waiting for the shark to attack from somewhere. Then there’s “Titanic” and its gorgeous love theme that permeates throughout the movie and throughout ourselves with its bitter sweetness, generating the beauty of love and the tragedy of the massive ship’s sinking and loss of so many lives.
One aspect of “healing” music is to stir our feelings, to help us deal with grief, sadness, anger or other feelings. By allowing ourselves to FEEL those feelings, the intensity will eventually lessen and even dissipate, resulting in being healing for us. When we avoid our feelings (consciously or subconsciously) they nonetheless tend to build up inside. They don’t just go away. Music can be a tool to help us deal with feelings within us, whether we’re aware of them or not. This is one of the wonderful ways music can be incredibly healing.
- Music for an energy boost:
I recall the late 1970′s when I did housework to the Doobie Brothers’ latest album, “Minute by Minute.” It would help keep me energized and cheerful while I did the laundry, dusted and straightened (not my favorite things in the world to do). Remembering that, I recently bought the CD and I find that it still works to energize me. Handel’s Messiah is also a very energizing piece, or the last movement to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, the famous Ode to Joy.
In The Mozart Effect, Don Campbell talks about using music in a variety of ways throughout the day, in the morning to help energize us, throughout the day to help us focus or concentrate better, music to help our intelligence, and in the evening to help us relax.
- Music for relaxation:
Sometimes I have trouble falling asleep, so I listen to relaxing music, which can be a tremendous help. Lately I’ve been listening to some wonderful Native American flute music by Scott Cunningham to help me go to sleep as well as recently during some very busy days to help me not feel so stressed out. I’ve also drifted off to sleep listening to a guided meditation by Ron Mann, Ph.D., Sleep.
What exactly is “relaxing” music? Whether we are aware of it or not, music that’s relaxing tends to slow down our heart rates to about one beat per second. If we’re feeling stressful, angry, anxious, or irritable, our heart rates tend to increase. Music can actually help our heart rates slow down to a more relaxing pace, changing our physiology. This phenomenon is what can help me fall asleep more easily. It’s what is found with many meditation tapes or other music specifically designed for stress reduction or relaxation.
- Music for spiritual attunement:
Chanting has existed for centuries. For example, there are wonderful recordings of Gregorian chants, chants from India, chants sung by Catholic or Buddhist monks and other religious or secular groups. They tend to be repetitive with the goal of deepening our spiritual lives, whatever they may be, or at the very least, to help bring peaceful feelings into our beings.
There is a large variety of music that taps into our souls. For example, I am almost finished recording music that I’ve written for a new CD (or audio tape), Journey Within. It has been a truly inspirational journey, one that has been incredibly healing. It was all written from my soul, and those qualities are heard throughout every piece.
- Choosing Music
How do we know what music to choose to be healing for us? What about the variety of musical tastes that we each have? I have some suggestions on my Bibliography page to help get you started. There are also several books listed there, such as Hal Lingerman’s, The Healing Energies of Music, which lists music categorically, a tremendously helpful resource.
If you don’t already, I encourage you to pay attention to your responses to a variety of music – physically, mentally, spiritually. To refer to when you need it, jot down the music that helps you in different ways, such as some of the examples I’ve mentioned above. That can be a valuable tool to use when you need it.
Within the musical community, there is a debate about the value of music theory that will probably never end. Is it important to study music theory scales, or is it much better to just dive into the music and experience it viscerally. The proponents of learning the theory regarded it as an essential part of knowing how to play music. You can learn by trial and error, they say, but you would do much better to benefit from the knowledge of other people. Not learning music theory when you play music is like refusing to learn arithmetic when you are studying math.
The other side, however, has just a strong of an argument. They claim that music theory worksheets are stifling. The point of music, they argue, is creativity. You should dive into it and experience it viscerally. Learning the theory of music too early on can stifle the imagination. Although it is alright to learn music theory chords later on, it is much less important than having some experience actually playing music.
I used to be on the latter site, but I have recently switched opinions. You see, I learned music without music theory. I didn’t even know music colors theory, much less the more formal and rigorous stuff. To me, you see, playing music was almost a physical experience. I could feel the sounds and textures around me. I didn’t really need someone telling me what the structures meant. I could tell what they meant with my entire soul.
As I have matured as a musician, however, I have seen the use and the need for music theory. I have even begun to use music theory worksheets, and I hope to understand it pretty thoroughly within the next couple years. You see, the most important thing about theory is that it gives you a good vocabulary to talk about music.
I believe that you can learn to play anything without music theory. What you can not do, however, is to talk to other people about it. If you don’t know the names of the chords, the different scales and progressions, and the rhythmic patterns that define various forms of music, how can you tell other musicians what you want? Learning about music is almost as important as learning language if you really want to collaborate with other people. Without it, it is very difficult to express yourself and ask people for what you want. Why make life difficult?
Starting a composition is a difficult task. Getting your inspirations, thinking creatively, applying your creative thoughts to your music and supplementing your ideas with additional composition are all difficult tasks to accomplish.
For starters, your current state of mind will greatly affect the music you write – whether you feel angry, joyful or sad chances are your musical composition will in some way reflect this mood.
Different times of day and different seasons affect your composing as well as current affairs and any stress’s you might have.
The varieties of factors that can influence your composition periods are immense and hopefully these few pointers will demonstrate some methods of breaking out of the psychological restraints placed on you.
• Colours – If you are looking to compose a piece of music based around a certain mood find a relevant colour that matches for instance orange gives the impression of energy and drive. Eventually you will learn to bias your mood to suit the composition you are aiming for.
• Character – it is well known for actors to really get inside the character they are portraying through their acting. Understanding key emotions and various behaviors help the actors ‘ live ‘ as their proposed character. If you are creating a theme for a character (think darth vaders theme tune) you need to be demonstrating and describing that character through sound. If you follow the same process as an actor would you will eventually unravel hidden details that will help refine your composition, make it more realist and detailed and allow for it to be much more creative and expressive.
• Nature – a lot of creativity and inspiration can be got by observing nature. From birds communicating through a song like speech to the rustle of leaves in a summer breeze. Trying to emulate nature is an excellent way to begin a sound-scope – or incorporating nature into a character theme for example to express an angelic quality, singing like the birds (fast trills on piccolo or glissandos on the violin)
• Memories – another great source to tap into is your memories. A lot of emotion will go into compositions that are personal in some way to yourself. Spend a few minutes reflecting on your past – try to imagine the memory in great detail – sounds, smells, colours the weather – anything that will give you a good image and story to compose about.
These are just a few sources for inspiration – use your imagination – it has never ending possibilities!
With so many possibilities to compose about and now that your creativity is running, the next area to discuss is music theory.
The last thing that you want to happen is to have all these wonderfully creative ideas for your composition but being held back by the lack of musical knowledge.
A rugby player could develop his passing techniques and his scrum techniques but if he doesn’t know the rules of the game he won’t be able to perform during a game.
Although music composition and as a whole is not bound by any rules you still need the knowledge of writing music – in the same way as a poet needs a knowledge of his language to write a poem.
Some of the key areas you should know about and be constantly revising are:
• The Staff, Bar Lines, Clefs, Time Signatures.
• Note Values, Rests, Phrasing, Rhythm
• Articulation, Instrument Specific Techniques (pizz, con sord)
• Key Signatures, Circle of Fifths, Accidentals, Cadences
• Major, Minor, Diminished, Pentatonic, Diatonic Scales
• Modes
• Chords, Extensions, Inversions, Sequences, Arpeggios
• Instrument Ranges, Timbres of Each Instrument, Difficult Areas of an Instrument (The break on clarinet for instance or seventh position for trombones)
Of course it is not absolutely essential you know about all of this but it will mean that your creativity is weakened due to lack of a means to fully communicate.
Use music theory books – go through them and notate comments on the pages, take notes on to blank flash cards to memorize scales and extended chords, use past music theory exam papers to test and analyze your knowledge and then act on your weak areas, purchase a aural perception CD to recognize different cadences and the general sounds achieved from different combinations of notes and chords – there are many ways to learn all of this but find the way that you are comfortable with and stick to it.
Finally the last piece of advice in this article is to keep your composing active.
Aim to compose a short piece of music each day, maybe before you go to bed you can reflect on your day through a composition. Mix it up – compose for different orchestrations and different abilities.
Composing is challenging but by keeping active like this will greatly benefit you and your compositions – and you never know – you may accidentally stumble upon your masterpiece!