Hi. I'd love to share experiences and ideas about applying the Integral principles to music. Especially, the creation of music. But listening too. And performing.

I play guitar, sing, and have been studying piano for the last year. I've written a whole bunch of songs across a bunch of genres. Love songs, little operatic pieces, jazz type structures for improvisation, etc. (Am toying with the idea of writing an album based on poetic visions of Integral ideas.) 

Right now what really fascinates me is studying really great music and unlocking the keys to how it works.

I was strongly influenced by reading "Through Music Through the Self" by Peter Hamel. This is a spectacular little book that discusses the function of music in awakening and reflecting the evolved self.

I love world music, but also classical, rock, pop, jazz, folk and other genres. There are only a couple of genres I cannot really get anything from, but I won't name them.  

What I'd kind of like to ask if people would mind sharing ideas along these lines:

1. Is there a useful way to apply the Integral ideas to music creation, performance, or listening?

2. Is there a way to express the range of feelings and inspirations from music in Integral ways?

3. Any thoughts on using music to communicate in an Integral way?

4. What are some of the elements that characterize music that resonates best at different structure stages of development? Any chord structures, for example, that you feel really touch a particular level or lead to a particular state of consciousness? Any instruments that you feel resonate better at different levels?

5. Would anyone like to share what they do or how they go about getting new musical inspiration? (One of my preferred techniques is to draw out the structure of the chords as a picture of shapes and then fit the melody motifs in like I am working on a garden trying to find where to plant bushes and plants.) 

6. And any other related ideas. For example, what role does music play in our lives? Is inspirational music as good as it can be? How could it be better? Are there any themes in the different genres of music that can be said to reflect Integral principles?

If there are any musicians out there, I guess I am inviting you to share your inspiration using Integral vocabulary in about any way you feel comfortable doing it.

Hey Kerry:

Look forward to your contributions.

I am re-reading my "Through Music to the Self" by Hamel.

From an integral perspective, we can start with a basic panorama of magical, mythical, mental, and integral modes of awareness a la Jean Gebser.

At magical, the music will have the following: highly rhythmic, multiple voices in unison, a lack of harmony, and a relation to dance and possibly initiation. I am thinking of the opening strains of Queen's "We Will Rock You" as a sort of campy imitation of this. I live not far from an Indian reservation - their chanting seems definitely at this level. Hip hop seems definitely to follow these conditions too. This is pre-story. It is an invocation.   

At mythic, we have: greater use of harmonic, multiple patterns of tonal phrases, less reliance on strict rhythmic patterns, and a close tie in to cultural myths. Examples might be Indian raga music and Appalachian folk music. But we might also say that most rock music is grounded in a mythic base.

At mental, we get: higher complexity in the overall structure of the pieces, multiple instruments or voices, polyphony, tone colors rather than straightforward expositions, and an invitation to really pay close attention in order to appreciate the music. Bach, Beethhoven, et. al.

At integral, ... I am not sure.

schalk,

I caught this thread on my way out the door this morning, pleased to find it having just last night heard my own music reproduced digitally for the first time. While most of my self taught playing/composing was in my mid-teens, with only a few months of time on the piano scattered throughout the last twenty years, I do consider music, both interiorly and exteriorly, central to my aesthetic life, even as a visual artist.

Not too long ago the thread Integral Frontiers of Sacred Music was started by balder on gaia.com . Some of your questions are taken up there as well.

What I'd like to bring here is a hypothesis on the AQAL rootedness of styles of musical expression.

Using the example of 'sacred' vocal music, particularly that which developed since people began singing indoors, acoustic settings with distinct insulations from outdoor soundscapes (markedly more insular than tents or yurts or caves). 

There are some sounds, mainly those of the 'natural world', with which we as a species have longer histories, deeper co-grooves, with: those that most of our evolution took place with. 

Among these sounds some came to hold specific survival value as signifiers. For instance, the chirpping of crickets. To our ancient ancestors hearing the sound of cricketsong likely signified a comfortably moderate temperature and that one could relax in relative safty. When crickets suddenly shut up (like caneries in coal mines) was a signifier of danger, risk of attack, that something stealth enough to fly under your conscious radar was, perhaps, way too close. ("Chrip" = peace. Chirp stop = fight or flight.)

In the UR we're 'wired' or imprinted or programed with the significance of cricketsong. I think that that ancient and deep signifier was established in direct association with the baseline in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. A foundation of the foundation of spiritual aspiration and turning leasure attention to aesthetic persuits.

Interestingly enough, when you listen to a recording of cricketsong slowed down to about 1/100th of usual heard speed, you hear the entire range of human tones used in the soprano through baratone styles of vocal music. And you hear these overlayed and harmonized in successive waves, which, to my ear, is remarkably similar to the choral styles we began to express once we got into cathedrals and such.

So I've begun to sketch out contours of what I'm seeing as the musics sometimes refered to (in flatland) as "other-worldly", or "futuristic" as (not some 'eternity' referent calling attention to an else-when, but) a fuller, more thorough embodiment of what we always already are. Furthermore, I'm positing a transposition of meaning. That one of the deep signals of peace built into us over millions of years found it's directly correlary expression in a specific style of sacred vocal music. 

..to be continued,

Kerry

Kerry:

I am excited to hear more from you!

We are sharing a common recognition of the profound role of primordial sounds in affecting us. And also, the notion of the "co-grooves" that we share.

Hope to hear more about your theory on "transposition of meaning."

S

Schalk,

It's taken me a while, I know, to get back to you here, but the idea of transposition of meaning has to do with a reframing of what is meant by 'context', that there may be a type of context which operates differently than what we might think of as a linear-temporal sense of contextual location. Morphogenic resonance would be an example of such a context.

So, while meaning can still be said to be context dependent, I'm asking if there are other kinds of context, contexts of the LL, in which one kosmically habituated interior event (such as the peace, or restfull reflection associated with the signifier, 'cricketsong') becomes resonant or harmonic with or (like I prefer) transposed 'into' another place / time. (Recontexted?)

Another way to think about this would be to recognize meaning itself as a type of context. That although 'the names have been changed to protect the innocent' the plotline gets recast with fidelity.

I'm trying to notice if and how cultural forms might be rooted in the long cycles of collective experience.

K

Kerry:

How do you see this applying to the creation of musical form?

Schalk,

Of all the possible aesthetic choices, of uses of voice, design of instrument, development of genre, etc., there are ways that some became more probable than others. I'm supposing that there are extremely long histories to our sensibilities as to what is desirable in music. And that deep factors in our aesthetic decisions are tracable back through our own development, ..and... that what-a-choice-means-to-us-now* holds clues or keys to where in our ancestry** we might find the sourses, or the beginings, of our aesthetics.

* 'what a choice means to us now' would be, in the case, the (still)current use of choral music in signifying a transcendent/expansive aspirational aesthetic.

** 'where in our ancestry' would be those earlier settings wherein that feeling, or aesthetic, or meaning began, where it started to take hold as a feature in the spectrum of human experience.

K

Hey, thanks K:

Let's say you and I wanted to create a song that deeply resonated with the greatest number of members of Integral Insitute:

- what instruments should we use?

- lyrics or no lyrics?

- if lyrics, what would be the structure? Topic?

- what would the tempo be?

- any other features of the music?

Let's just place with this and see what happens, eh?

First, Schalk, I would consider the variety of primates and from them, apply this artifact.  ; )

k

Touche!

Let's say we had to write a song that brought the greatest amount of resonance to the greatest number of members of I-I. What are some of the principles we should follow?

Then, we aught to reinvent this wheel. Though that's just another survey suggestion.

Using the examples given in that thread will help guage tastes as represented in our demographic, and would be a decent platform from which to launch an effort to address the aesthetic tapestry we have here.

Yet this could also be approached from the artist side and left to intuition.

K

Well, let's just say for fun, that we didn't have the chance to gather inputs from people, and we just needed to start laying down some tracks right now to create the most resonant musical piece that the greatest number of people in the I-I community would hear and would say, wow!

Let me try out a few elements, and ask for your contribution:

1. Voice: the voices should be naked. Real voices not synthed up.

2. Number: a large number of voices like in the Hallelujah chorus. Some young voices, some old voices.

3. Lyrics: we have a lot of songs that refer to aethereal generalizations (love, peace, harmony, bliss, more love, more bliss, etc.) So I would stick to quotidian topics like the Beatles' Day in the Life for the verses, and then engage a larger theme for the chorus. Allow the grand topics to become evident as a natural consequence of the quotidian themes rather than baldly stating the grand topics (I am the Light etc.) Each new verse should reflect a v-meme from its healthy aspect.

4. 3/4 time. Waltz seems corny but that's the point. It doesn't have to be. And the Integral vision is akin to light waltzing rather than a marching variant of 2/4 or 4/4 time. Tempo-less music is great 2nd Tier sound, but we want this to ring throughout 1st tier also, so let's go with 3/4 time. Bach's Jesu, Joy of... was in 3/4 time and that was pretty sacred, by the way.

5. Throw in some off-tempo bridges in 5/4 time just to show that Integral is not about falling into trance.

6. Instruments: let's say all natural instruments unplugged with no synth sounds. Integral is real and naked, not a synthetic chemistry experiment.

7. Build a menu of instruments beginning with what were probably the earliest musical instruments, drums, and flutes, and then strings. Then bring in the instruments of the middle ages and then a clavier and then brass sounds, and have each of them continue to play with the newer instruments adding complex phrases.

8. The entire piece is building like Ravel's Bolero but with a shimmering quality that is simultaneously ominous and joyful.

9. I am hearing this at this point. I am getting the same kind of chill Pink Floyd's The Wall delivers.

What would you add or take away?  

I would caution against equating eclectic with integral. Especially any attempt to bring together in a single piece all the favorite optimal elements of all known music. This alone will not make the work integral, or resonant with this community.

I wouldn't be married to delineating natural from artificial in regards to unplugged or synthesized.

Whatever anthem this community deserves I'm guessing that it may not be arrived at via any abstract cognitive proposing, or conceptual sythesis of extant examples.

I think we'll have to let the I-I Muse herself propose while notes are taken.

K

p.s. I recall The Wall, live, the first time eight banks of speakers surrounded the entire audiance. I learned alot from that concert.

Kerry:

I hear you.

It would be like taking a spoonful of every single item in the fridge, lopping it all into a pot, and frying it up for dinner, right?

At the same time, I am wondering if you aren't sounding a little a little bit like the elitist here. You seem to be saying that this is such a high and luminous endeavor that nothing useful can even be said about it here.

Let's take Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. I can lay out in words the form and chord structure and tempo and time and voices of the song. There is a hell of a lot about the structure of music you can put in words if you really try.

I must confess - I have a weak spot for old time hillbilly music and old time blues. I heard the Carter Family do Skip to My Lou (I believe recorded in the Bristol Sessions where they rounded up people from the hills and brought them into the studio back around 1930). It just slays you! I I have my Deuter and Iasos and Peter Hamel et. al. but in a sense, they seem to be top heavy, transcending but not including.

I wonder if Deuter has included red while transcending it?

What I am trying to work out is this - are there principles that would allow us to invoke the richness of magenta, red, amber, orange, green and beyond levels of consciousness under one roof? After all, healthy green is supposed to transcend but INCLUDE previous levels.

Are there principles that would allow a song to resonate with the magenta hip hop crowd and the red country crowd and the amber rock crowd and the orange and green crowds and also give them a peak at 2nd Tier? It may be easier than we think.

You cautioned me against eclecticism - I am not sure how Integral is opposed to eclecticism.

What I hear you telling me is this - you are tapped into primordial truths about music at such a high plane that pedestrians like me could never possibly appreciate it. I'm a grass roots kind of guy, so I like to see the theory enter the world occasionally.  

By the way, I read the entire thread that Balder started on Integral music back in January. There were a lot of really great contributions. But at the same time, everyone seemed to be blowing their O rings trying to top each other with more abstract and ethereal notions about what music could or should be.

I am wondering if you took the entire group that joined in that thread and locked them in a room with a guitar, a drum, a flute, and their own voices, whether they could produce anything from the heart that really sounded honest and vibrant. 

Ever heard a guy sitting on the side of the road with a guitar and his own voice wearing shoes with holes in the bottoms ripping your heart open? Integral music needs a chair for him in the orchestra.

I watched The Last Waltz the other day - am thinking of Emmylou Harris singing Evangeline. Integral music needs a chair for that kind of angelic invocation as well.

Before we get into cautioning people about what not to do, I am wondering if we can identify what TO DO.  

Anyone out there care to share what they believe are important principles that might govern "integral" music?