Good Vibrations
Exploring the Now and Next in Sound
Over the past months, we have talked about the power of music to modify our mood and the ability of music to make us move. I wrote about my experience with ecstatic dance and a few readers even sent in messages recounting their experience with mood altering or dance inducing sound. While the transformational power of music is not new territory for readers of Chord Changes, I want to travel a bit deeper into the forest than we have been up to this point. The general agreement seems to be that music unites us, but what about the times that music divides?
In the last two weeks, I have had two separate conversations about musical vibrations; what they are and what they can do for us. One conversation was centered on a podcast episode in the works. The author I spoke with wrote a fictional book about a character who uses sound to interrupt the vibrational equilibrium of city residents for evil. The premise is fascinating to me because, though just a tad bit beyond what we know about right now, it has elements rooted in what science has already shown us.
The idea of a supervillian using sound to control people has been explored in DC Comics with Black Siren, the evil counterpart of Black Canary. (Not to geek out too much, but Canary has a ‘canary cry’ that incapacitates people, destroys objects and can even kill.) The fiction, though, is based on the fact that highly trained people can destroy glass with their voices. Seriously! Documented cases actually exist now, so the next step in that trajectory would be to understand how to control, amplify and weaponize the skill. Then science fiction would become reality.
The other conversation was with a man who grew up listening to hip hop. He started with something to the effect of, “I’m using music to shift the vibrational energy around me.” My ears perked up, even though I was stuck in a barber chair with a bib in my lap, like long cape suspended the wrong way around my body. I prompted him to say more and he explained how the music of our youth was often filled with negative messages and derogatory lyrics. Point taken. Those songs also have specific memories attached to them now because of what we were doing when listening to them. However, instead of scrapping whole catalogues of music, he reasoned we can preserve our enjoyment of the sounds, the chord changes, by switching up the instruments and eliminating the lyrics. We keep the good vibrations while getting rid of the negative elements.
This idea of using sound to hack into our mind, body, heart and spirit goes pretty deep. According to the scientific community two things are true: everything in the universe is in motion and everything does not move at the same speed or the same frequency. If we accept to those two premises, objects are not the only things moving. Humans are also moving, vibrating, just at a much slower rate. It stands to reason then, that we can tune the vibrations of a person up or down. Crazy, huh? What if we could go into a booth like a cryo chamber or lay in something like a tanning bed and get a tune up or down to the frequency we desire for the day - or for the hour?
You know how people sometimes will say, “I need you to match my energy,” or “Your vibe is off?” It is purely the stuff of science fiction right now, but imagine being able to take out a digital tuning fork and assess what frenquency they were vibrating with and then matching that with some type of electromagnetic sound machine. Talk about picking up some good vibrations.
Maybe even sweet sensations?
For now, we will put our records on, open up the windows and sing out loud whenever we can. We will listen to what motivates, soothes, saddens, or lifts us up. On that note, what are you listening to today?
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