ASCENDING
-- music for Contemplation and Healing

I'd never felt any enthusiasm for 'New Age'-type music, which seemed to me tiresomely bland and lacking in any real point, but recently circumstances seemed to be pointing me rather in that direction, to produce some music which could be used as a background for contemplation, meditation or healing sessions. Much music produced for that purpose is of the 'New-Age' type that I have no time for - just pleasant bland doodlings - yet I had heard some such music which did have more quality, with much more sense of light and shadow, tension and release, and a sense of real vision instead of the ersatz, synthetic sort of 'vision' dished up in so much New Age music.

The music that I am producing for this purpose actually has quite a gripping quality that is more suited to active contemplations and many (but not all) healing sessions rather than standard meditation sessions.  In healing sessions it can really come into its own as a powerful consciousness-raising and healing force, shifting stagnant energy and expanding awareness. Not everyone would want such music for their healing sessions, of course, but in many other cases it would be very beneficial.

It is a fallacy that background music for healing sessions needs to be as bland, unchallenging or soporific as people commonly assume. Indeed, there is a serious problem about using that sort of music, because it helps encourage a spaced-out ungrounded state which, although the vast majority of healers believe it to be beneficial, at least during a healing session, is actually harmful because it tends to unground everyone who hears it, whereas, especially during a healing session but also throughout one's everyday life, one needs to cultivate a strong and balanced groundedness.

In this suite of pieces, the first, Ascending, although not ungrounding in the way that 'New Age'-type healing music is, does have a rarefied, 'spacey' quality about it and many people would therefore habitually tend to listen to it in an ungrounded way, so I recommend therefore that it not be listened to on its own, but always followed by at least the next item, which, like the remaining two, is quite strongly grounding as well as awareness-expanding.

It is an especial joy for me to be producing this music, as it gets right away from the problematical inner agendas and stories which underlie all my wilderness-inspired works. Here we just look forward and rejoice in new sounds, new poetry, challenging the heart to open out in love.

So, this Ascending suite is a set of four visions, each of which is based upon the potentialities of one or a particular combination of MIDI instruments in my custom soundfont file. In this sort of music I follow the potentialities of the starting sounds, so that each piece has a strong element of 'getting inside the nature of the sound'. My intention is that each piece contain some basic or core element which is steadily ascending, whether or not this is readily noticed by the listener.

I am particularly indebted to Lorin Nelson, more widely known as Lorin Swelk, for his three excellent Soundfont collections of, respectively, bells, birds, and, particularly notably, whales. The whale songs / calls are in some cases tuned and looped so that they can be used as a musical instrument.

To get the full effect in listening to these pieces you need to use high-grade loudspeakers (or headphones) which can reproduce audibly down to 25 Hz or even lower. In #2 and in the final climax of #4 I include a powerful organ subbass (16 / 32 ft) in the instrumentation, and this will be largely missed by ordinary domestic hi-fi speakers and especially computer speakers.

1. Ascending -- 11'

The sound used for the core of this piece is a reversed version of an instrument sample described as 'swept chimes', which in the original descends through about an octave before the loop causes it to repeat. Thus the reversed version ascends, and because it is reversed, its sound is more other-worldly and strange than the original version of the sound. Additionally, other wind chimes sounds are used, along with processed antique cymbals and orchestral triangle and more or less unprocessed temple gongs, also with a strings pad which goes into harmonics. The atmosphere is rarefied and remote, beyond all earthly emotions.

2. Love Is In the Oceans -- 15'

The backbone of much of this piece is a complex sampled sound described as 'Atlantis'. This is a veritable wall of electronic-organ-like synthesizer sound, continuously descending in wave upon wave in an agreeable and even radiant mode. I use this as a background, starting at a very low pitch, where its elements are all slowed right down and you can hear within it all manner of implied melodic motifs that were probably never actually played to produce the sound - just as when you listen to an extended peal of church bells (at least in the UK, where bell-ringing is a special art) it becomes possible to hear all sorts of beautiful things in the sound that are aural artifacts and have not actually been played. From some of these implied motifs I take the actual melodic material, which is then given to softly playing French horns (allowed to play a much wider pitch range than 'live' ones), a special, remote-sounding French Horns pad with a metallic resonance, and, most importantly, whales. I use fragments of both untuned and tuned whale songs. There is an incredible power and energy about the whales' singing voices, their imprecisions of pitch enhancing the effect.

Very often it seems quite confusing as to whether a particular melodic motif being heard is actually a played item in the foreground or just one of the artifacts in the background. This is quite deliberate; I have chosen timbres and volume to achieve this effect, so that motifs, like fish, come into and out of focus within the vastness of the ocean.

This piece is a song of joy, a celebration of life. A darker section has about it a gentle sense of humour as the various orcas weave their songs and calls among the organ-like minor chords, and the feeling of joy is never lost despite the brief view into the darkness of the abyss. In a later, mysterious and haunting section an almost breathing-like ostinato on the metallic horns pad gets taken up by a very deep whale voice while dancing motifs for horns eventually get taken up by whales, who briefly show that they can dance too, at least in spirit...

3. Sunrise on Atlantis -- 14'

The body of this movement uses a slowly ascending sequence that I have already used in Clarity of a Mountain Sunrise and in a passage in the second movement of The Seen and the Unseen. It is two very slow ever-ascending chromatic scales a minor third apart and out of sync - effectively in close canon. Both of these are harmonized a minor third below, in lower octaves.

A dark and spacious introduction leads into the even darker bottom end of the ascending sequence, into which is interwoven the sound of whale songs, which are themselves subjected to the ascending sequence, which seems to carry within it an emotional intensity of some sort of striving to fulfil a deep longing. Each semitone step up gives us a resolution of tension which just leads us into the next tension and resolution, and the striving leads us inexorably upwards, the whales becoming higher and higher-pitched as though they were becoming birds welcoming the blazing light of the rising sun - as though the darknesses of sunk and lost Atlantis were being flushed out as Atlantis arises again with the sun as a new and brighter future unfolds for it. Unrealistic such a vision may be, but it is just that - a dream, a vision.

On account of the lack of musical 'action' for much of the movement apart from the gradual ascending, it will not necessarily be to the liking of everyone who enjoys the other movements. Near the end of the movement we leave the ever-ascending vision behind with a return to the opening spacious music with which to finish off.

N.B. As far as I can tell from my own 'reading', immensely supported by my abundant observations through hard experience of how the dark force is interfering with every human, the whole notion of Atlantis is actually a legend based on historical events that occurred not on Earth but somewhere else in this Universe or indeed quite possibly in another universe, which the dark force is covertly encouraging people to believe is a part of human history on Earth - especially through the diverse 'New Age' paths and various healing traditions, and countless channellings from mediums and psychics, for the purpose of ensnaring us with illusory realities that are liable to manifest for us when we die and so to prevent us then from 'going home' and reverting to 'Source' 'as Nature intended'.

It is therefore extremely important that nobody associates this work with any beliefs about Atlantis that they may have picked up at any time. Sunrise on Atlantis is NOT any sort of expression of belief or depiction of reality or historical fact but simply a beautiful piece of imagery drawn from a legend - as is the case for so many other art works through human history. The moment you get involving yourself with such imagery as indicating a part of reality - as unfortunately so often people do with music works that are based on Mass settings - then you are in trouble, because you are then unwittingly getting inveigled into the dark force's agenda of entrapment for you. For more about such issues, please visit my Self Realization & Clear-Mindedness site.

4. Seven Chakras, Seven Joys of Nature -- 23'

I originally entitled this movement Seven Chakras, Seven Archangels, because for some years I'd taken on the notion of higher beings such as ascended masters, angels and archangels, in which most healers (at least in Western cultures) believe. However, I have since come to recognise that such higher beings are bogus - inventions of the dark force, which pose as higher presences whenever anyone attempts to channel from non-physical sources, in order to cause major problems for humans. Thus naturally I no longer wanted to associate myself or any of my work with archangels or any other inventions of 'the dark side', and so I renamed this movement.

As already noted, the issue of the dark force interfering in people's channelling is not a matter of some paranoid belief of mine, but something of which I have direct and very hard experience. Please see Better Without Channelling on my Self Realization & Clear-Mindedness site.

Although seven is supposedly one of the sacred numbers, the prime significance of the number here is that this movement is based on the notes corresponding to the seven main chakras* or energy centres of the human aura or subtle energy system. As given by Barbara Brennan in Light Emerging, one of her classic books on spiritual healing, the notes are, working upwards, G (below the treble clef), D, F, G, A, D, G. Actually, the tuning of these notes is not stated, so in the absence of other information I had to assume that the actual pitches of these notes were based on a tuning of A=440 - which I expect is incorrect, but I had to draw a line somewhere and simply plead a certain degree of artistic licence. According to Barbara Brennan these pitches are reckoned to resonate harmoniously with the respective chakras, so that one of these pitches can be used, e.g. by humming it, to energize and give healing to the related chakra. Although this may be true if the pitches are correctly tuned, I also think that the correct tuning is not just a matter of the overall tuning but actually having the notes on a just temperament scale, which is difficult for most people in modern Western cultures to achieve, as they are so conditioned to equal temperament scales or modes. I myself have no ready facility for producing musical realizations in just temperament.

* Even this I now understand to be probably incorrect, because the fixation on seven as a sacred number has itself been one of the many deceptions that have been part of the dark force's control agenda for us through religions and the myriad distorted spiritual paths. According to my own 'reading' via energy testing, it could be said that the true number of major chakras of the human energy system is actually ten, but for most purposes it is actually not helpful for us to concentrate on chakras and other supposed structures of the human non-physical aspects, because they do not exist in the objective way that so many people believe, and dwelling on those is a distraction from cultivating true enlightened awareness, which perceives only a continuum of consciousness between one's physical self and fundamental consciousness ('the Ultimate').

I should also point out here that the whole concept of sacred numbers or indeed any specific thing or location being sacred, has come to us from 'the dark side' and seriously needs to be jettisoned. In this context it's unfortunate that I composed this movement on the basis of 'seven' at all, because of the unhealthy 'resonance' of that number for many people. I expand more about the problems about 'sacredness' in Healing and Self Actualization - The Safest and Quickest Way.

Having drawn the line at getting the exactly correct pitches and having decided instead to stay with equal temperament, I was moved to try an experiment, to see if I could create a piece of music that mostly used only these notes, which would be suitable for healing purposes and yet would have variety and interest. In fact the development of the music directed me not to keep to those particular pitches at all, but, rather, to preserve their sequence of intervals, in melodic or chordal form, while the music makes its excursions. The music does, however, return to the basic seven pitches frequently, so that overall it does feel to be centred there. In fact for the most part the notes are used as a seven-note mode that spans two octaves, giving the respective intervals from bottom to top: fifth, minor third, major second, major second, fourth, fourth.

Many passages in this piece have an arched shape and timbres that give an impression of various vast palaces and illuminated crystal caverns. The birds add both humour and poetry, often singing completely naturally, but at other times manipulated to participate in the music.  In certain passages I associate the representation of the supposedly central and all-important heart chakra with a sudden and brief singing of the chiffchaff. No doubt many a bird lover will recognise the species that has the last word in this piece. And that word is -- "cheese".  Got it?

The main instrument sounds that I am using in this movement are:

• a modified sinewave that has a certain harmonic richness - in fact sounding rather like an organ Rohrflöte stop, except that I have shaped the sound to be non-sustaining and fairly percussive, as though it were a piano of sorts, and I have given it a strong cathedral-like reverb.
  
• a humming-choir sampled sound described as 'Bradbury', single notes of which actually seem to be in harmony or at least to contain strong harmonics. Every note of this humming choir usually starts with a simultaneous slow fade-in and strong upward glissando, and overall the choir imparts a static and timeless quality to the music.
  
• an 'electric piano' made with combined sinewaves, which has a very muffled quality in its lower reaches
  
• a synth pad that sounds intermediate between choir and string ensemble, with treble filter sweep which gives a lot of 'breathing' sounds and some 'wah' in places. I occasionally use other synth pad sounds too.
• selected bird songs, especially song thrush, blackbird and starling. The latter produces the harmonious clusters of downward glissandi that are heard from time to time. As already noted, the chiffchaff sings every time the music transiently focuses on the supposed heart chakra tone.