Kurt Leland, "Music and the Soul"

[Neil Templar]

the first time a friend introduced me to Deep Purple, i had an experience of flying over a mountain range with two huge dragons, soaring, diving, entwining themselves around each other in the air.
i never knew the name of the track, but every time i hear it i'm back over those mountains.

[Korpo]

I wonder if this can be combined with something like the Mindstereo software OlderWiser mentioned. I looked it up, and it seems a bit inconvenient - it's a player program adding binaurals on anything it plays. Better (for me ) would be a program that modifies/rerecords tracks so you can play them on an MP3 player with the modifications.

This way the meditative attention recommended for listening might be easier attained and maintained.

Oliver

[Neil Templar]

I wonder if this can be combined with something like the Mindstereo software OlderWiser mentioned. I looked it up, and it seems a bit inconvenient - it's a player program adding binaurals on anything it plays. Better (for me ) would be a program that modifies/rerecords tracks so you can play them on an MP3 player with the modifications.

This way the meditative attention recommended for listening might be easier attained and maintained.

Oliver

i've been thinking along the same lines, but simply using whatever audio editing software is available, logic, soundtrack pro...anything that allows you to put layers of audio on top of others.. then export the file as mp3..

i've also been toying with the idea of doing one of my dj sets, i guess it would have to be quite minimal stuff, with binaural tones layered underneath.
but i guess it'd only have an effect if everyone in the club was facing forward all the time with left and right ears facing left and right speakers.. hmmm..
maybe in a chill out situation it could work...

[Neil Templar]

There are three experiences with music I want to relate in here, but right now - I don't have the time!

The first one is about Tchaikowksi's waltzes, how they uplift my spirits, what they do for me, and a strange little experience that happened to me.

me too!! i used to have a job in a bookstore, and every night when we closed, my last 20 mins was spent mopping the floor. i always played a specific section of Swan Lake to accompany my mopping, and was often moved to near-tears of joy by it. ( i'm listening to it now, actually, and the hair on the back of my neck is standing up! beautiful!)
also the act of mopping the floor became an effortless dance, wow, this has just brought to mind something i heard the other day, in the audio recording - the Teachings of Abraham, from Esther and Jerry Hicks.
Abraham teaches us to undertake all actions in joy.
now, mopping the same floor every night of the week could so easily become the most tedious of tasks, but to me, those final 20 mins of my working day were pure joy.

There are times in my life when I want to instantly convey to somebody the way I feel, and all I can think of is a tune, a melody, a sound, something I already know from somewhere. When I want to say "This is undescribable. If you could listen to this music like I do, you would know what I mean right now." The sheer rich texture of instant expression in music, even if I only recognise it in bits and pieces, is one of the most rewarding experiences there is.

Oliver

i totally get that too.
i've always found it easier to express myself through art, and later in life music. that's why djing is so satisfying to me.
people who know me well have listened to me play and could tell me after, what kind of day i'd had, or what kind of mood i was in, just from the selection of tracks, or the structure of the set i played.

[Korpo]

Hey, Neil.

Just a quick one about your first post.

Actually, there is technology that produces the effect without the stereo requirement. Neuroprogrammer has it, for example. It's just one of the possible effects that alters brainwaves.

I'm not sure what you mean with layers. Standard binaurals take the tone and create a difference between left and right channel to make the brain assume the difference as its dominant brain wave. So, you can alter any record to do this by just altering one of the stereo channels.

A lot of what goes into binaural records is "masking" so that the brain does not simply filter out the effect. Standard binaurals are masked behind layers of statistical noise to prevent this filtering to happen.

Oliver

[Neil Templar]

Standard binaurals take the tone and create a difference between left and right channel to make the brain assume the difference as its dominant brain wave. So, you can alter any record to do this by just altering one of the stereo channels.


Oliver

what kind of alteration is needed?

i never got round to installing the brainwave generator on my computer - it's not Mac friendly. maybe i should dig it out and install a windows emulator or something...

[Korpo]

what kind of alteration is needed?

The most basic binaural is a tone at a given frequency, modified in pitch for one ear to be different from the other. If the difference between left and right ear frequency is let's say 5 Hz, this is the frequency of the brainwave entrained by this binaural.

I just realised I'm not too sure if I got this right, actually... (I keep mixing up frequencies and amplitudes all the time )

But I guess if you'd modulate one stereo channel in pitch upward by the desired frequency difference, that should do the same for a whole piece of music. The frequency differences are very minimal, as the low-frequency brainwaves are the interesting ones.

Oliver

[Korpo]

And the third one is about Bruckner's 8th Symphony. How the switch between two different conductors changed the experience in total, but also the energies that hit me.

That one was an interesting change. When I first listened to it conducted by Giulini, it didn't hit me as it did when I listened to it conducted by Böhm.

There's a passage in the Adagio that Kurts describes as 8th center music. While the first recording brought the wonderful piece of music out - soft strings carry the harmony, and the harp plays notes that accompany and accentuate it - only listening to the second recording brought out more of the piece's qualities.

The harp notes feel like water drops falling into a quiet pond. But also that recording gave me shivers of a cool energy around and in the back of my heart. A very interesting sensation. That expandedness in feeling energy stayed with me afterward and contributed to the experience I had with the "Ride of the Valkyries" I described above. I was so much more receptive afterward.

Another thing I noted that for a brief moment I felt the "timeless" quality of 8th center music realised. In a passage of the strings it seemed that the speed of the piece was slightly accelerating and slowing down, but more like time itself had contracted and expanded a bit, and the strings were just playing in the same pace. This expansion and contraction felt like a breath - but the breath of time itself. It was just a small sensation, but quite a difference between the recordings.

It's beautiful music anyway.

Oliver

[CFTraveler]

I thought this could go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmRTGRbrATs

[Korpo]

I ordered it today!

How did you like it?

Oliver