Music and Sound

The quality of music and rhythm should be developed from infancy. El Morya, Agni Yoga

How Music Affects the Mind, Health, Plants and Animals

Why 'Good Vibrations' may be Bad at Reverse Spins, by William House, Editor Reverse Spins: It may be the greatest secret on the spiritual path. Most of today's music is a hindrance not a help. This has been written about from ancient Greece and even more so today but has fallen on deaf ears. Why? Because this very same music makes us feel good, relieves our stress and tensions, releases anger and we're happier listening to it, so it can't be bad. Before investigating why feeling good may be bad, lets review the evidence published and otherwise documented. ...

Water Crystal Healing at Reverse Spins, Review by William C. House-- Two names ring out as giants in the field of sound and music research. They are Hans Jenny and Masaru Emoto. Both used inanimate objects to discover how sound impacts their physical makeup. Hans Jenny used sand and milk. Masaru Emoto uses ice crystals. Few, if any, have equaled Emoto-san's scientific method for showing how rythyms affect water, ice and since we are about 70% water—us. The classical music collected for this book ( on a two CD set) created beautiful ice crystals indicating profund opportunities for healing. Mr. Emoto sees energy as vibrations moving through matter. These frequences are unique to various forms of matter, including organs and diseases. They are called hado which translates as "wave motion" or "vibration." Looking at the pictures of ice crystals while listening to the corresponding music can fascillitate healing by assisting the mind to atune with the vibration. ...

On Music and Sound from Agni Yoga at Reverse Spins, "Music is needed for all fiery sowings. One should choose good music; it unifies our emotions. But one should not absent-mindedly let the music just pass by one's ears. People often have before them a great phenomenon, and yet they fail to hear the loudest and fail to perceive the brightest. People often isolate themselves completely from their surroundings, but fail to realize that precisely this state is very valuable if wisely induced." Fiery World

Possession at Reverse Spins, From article on demon possession. This excerpt is taken from Remarkable Healings, the author, Dr. Modi, is able to speak directly to the entity through hypnotherapy. She asks this entity about negative music: "Here we work through your ears. Focused concentration on music has a mesmerizing effect, almost hypnosis. The negative messages are accepted as suggestions and are recorded in the auditory cortex. The loud and cacophonous music can open the shield and we can come in and give them more desire to listen to the music and act on the negative messages. We plant into their auditory cortex transmitter type devices, which we can activate from outside the person and replay the negative messages over and over, till they act on them. You people do not realize how these movies and music can be addictive in nature and simply shift your focus away from your spiritual growth and mislead you." pp. 326-331.

Chalrles W. Leadbeater on Music: "There are very many directions which the higher thought may take. Some of these, such as affection and devotion, are so generally of a personal character that it is perhaps better to consider them in connection with the man's relation to other people; let us rather take first an example where that element does not come in —where we have to deal only with the influence of his surroundings. Suppose that one of his windows into heaven is that of music. Here we have a very mighty force; you know how wonderfully music can uplift a man, can make him for the time a new being in a new world; if you have ever experienced its effect you will realize that here we are in the presence of a stupendous power. The man that has no music in his soul has no window open in that direction ..." The Life after Death ... from Chapter 5, "Many Mansions."

The Effects of Music on the Mind, Beyond Soothing the Savage Beast by Kristian David Olson; Are people typically geniuses? Statistically, people probably are not. In fact, most people probably aren't even intellectually gifted at all. Most people are likely to be pretty much average, maybe a little bit above average, or a little below, but very average none the less. It is universally understood that people strive to learn to become wiser and more informed about the world around them. The more people learn, the more powerful they can become. It is the speed at which people learn that separates the geniuses from the average people from the learning disabled. Geniuses don't run into problems while learning, because they learn so fast. It is everyone else that could really use help. One solid way to increase the speed at which people learn is with music. People learn through music and their minds grow faster because of it. Some music, when implemented properly, can have positive effects on learning and attitude. Music is a powerful thing, and when we understand its significance, it can bring dramatic changes both positive and negative into our lives. ...

"Mahavan and Chotavan are the most characteristic rhythms of Fire. Mastery of these rhythms permits one to more easily approach the element of fire. This is not artificial forcing, such as by invocation, but is simply a conscious entering into the sphere whose meaning you consider essential. One must understand rhythms, for how else do we bring effectiveness to our actions? If lifeless sand arranges itself into special designs in response to rhythmic vibrations, then how much more is humanity influenced by rhythm! Not sorcery but knowledge will show the way to transformation. This path is an urgent one. Thus was humanity exhorted in the days before the end of Atlantis. It is not right to think that if today has passed unchanged, then tomorrow will also pass in the same way. Each hour can bring transformation for the advent of the New World." El Morya: Agni Yoga, 357; 1929.

Som Sabadell flashmob-7/17 Ode to Joy

"Whosoever proclaims Beauty shall be saved! ..."
"Remember, Art is the one vital medium of the coming culture. Through Beauty will you approach."
El Morya from Agni Yoga Society

Playing classical music to your child can improve their listening skills later on in life-1/10 Daily Mail,
• Playing classical music to young children boosts their concentration and self-discipline as well as their social skills
• The Institute of Education, University of London examined a scheme that introduces children to classical music in assemblies and classes
• Teachers said it increases pupils' listening power, musical knowledge, aspirations and in some cases improved their English ...

Forget coffee for concentration: A burst of Mozart can 'significantly help to focus the mind'-7/1 Daily Mail,
• Scientists have discovered that listening to Mozart is better than listening to less flowing music or silence when trying to focus on a task
• Say that findings prove that music plays crucial role in brain development
• Previous studies have found that the composer's pieces have a beneficial effect on the brain which as been termed at the 'Mozart Effect'

Those violin lessons weren't a waste of time after all: Learning an instrument 'makes children grow up smarter'-2/22 Daily Mail, Sending children to music classes from age seven enhances motor skills development, research finds. Brain scans revealed enhanced white matter in the corpus callosum, which connects the right brain and left brain; but it won't necessarily turn your child into a virtuoso composer, the researchers add ...

Not just for the birds: Man-made noise has ripple effects on plants, too-3/21 PhysOrg, A growing body of research shows that birds and other animals change their behavior in response to manmade noise, such as the din of traffic or the hum of machinery. But human clamor doesn't just affect animals. Because many animals also pollinate plants or eat or disperse their seeds, human noise can have ripple effects on plants too, finds a new study. ...

Music lessons can offset aging-1/31 Science Blog, Age-related delays in neural timing are not inevitable and can be avoided or offset with musical training, according to a new study from Northwestern University. The study is the first to provide biological evidence that lifelong musical experience has an impact on the aging process. Measuring the automatic brain responses of younger and older musicians and non-musicians to speech sounds, researchers in the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory discovered that older musicians had a distinct neural timing advantage. ...

Learning music good for aging brains-5/2 University of Kansas researchers found that people aged between 60 and 80 years who have more than 10 years of experience with a musical instrument perform better on standard cognitive tests compared to their peers with no experience of learning music. The findings that appeared in the journal Neuropsychology showed that people with the most experience in music, with 10 or more years of training, scored higher on cognitive tests related to visuospatial memory, even if they are no longer playing the instrument.

Brazilian scientists investigate Beethoven’s cancer-fighting properties-4/18 IO9, Dr. M�rcia Alves Marques Capella and colleagues performed a series of tests in 2010, exposing dish-cultures of both healthy and cancerous cells to audio playbacks of various music genres. In repeated tests, Dr. Capella found that recordings of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C minor destroyed around 20% of cancerous cells within a few days � yet the healthy cells were unharmed. A similar result was obtained with �Atmosph�res' composed by Gy�rgy Ligeti in 1961. But, curiously perhaps, no measurable changes in cell growth were found for Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D major. ...

Classical music moves the heart in vegetative patients-7/5/10 New Scientist, by Wendy Zukerman-- Classical music pulls at the heartstrings of people in a vegetative state as well as those of healthy listeners. If you play music to vegetative patients, their heart rate changes in the same way as that of healthy controls, suggesting that music can affect the neural systems of emotion even when conscious thought is impossible. ...

Mozart Effect Helps Premature Babies Get Stronger-1/13/10 LiveScience/Yahoo, by Clara Moskowitz-- Playing Mozart music to premature babies seems to help them gain weight faster and become stronger, new research found. Once a day for two consecutive days, doctors played either 30 minutes of music by the 18th-century composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, or no music, to 20 pre-term babies at the Tel Aviv Medical Center in Israel. After listening to the music, the babies were calmer and so expended less energy than the no-music group. ...

Health Music Improves Brain Function-11/11/09 Live Science, By Phillip F. Schewe-- For most people music is an enjoyable, although momentary, form of entertainment. But for those who seriously practiced a musical instrument when they were young, perhaps when they played in a school orchestra or even a rock band, the musical experience can be something more. Recent research shows that a strong correlation exists between musical training for children and certain other mental abilities. The research was discussed at a session at a recent gathering of acoustics experts in Austin, Texas. ...

Music and Speech Based on Human Biology, New Evidence Shows-12/4/09 Science Daily, A pair of studies by Duke University neuroscientists shows powerful new evidence of a deep biological link between human music and speech.-- The two new studies found that the musical scales most commonly used over the centuries are those that come closest to mimicking the physics of the human voice, and that we understand emotions expressed through music because the music mimics the way emotions are expressed in speech. Composers have long exploited the perception of minor chord music as sad and major chord music as happy, now the Duke team thinks they know why. In a paper appearing in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA), the Duke team, led by Dale Purves, a professor of neurobiology, found that sad or happy speech can be categorized in major and minor intervals, just as music can. So your mother was right: It's not only the words you say, but how you say them. In a second paper appearing Dec. 3 in the online journal PLOS One, Kamraan Gill, another member of the team, found the most commonly used musical scales are also based on the physics of the vocal tones humans produce. ...

Miraculous Messages from Water Dr. Masaru Emoto's groundbreaking work on how music affects water and our consciousness. Wellness Goods.com: From Mr. Emotos work we are provided with factual evidence, that human vibrational energy, thoughts, words, ideas and music, affect the molecular structure of water ... Mr. Emoto has been visually documenting these molecular changes in water by means of his photographic techniques. He freezes droplets of water and then examines them under a dark field microscope that has photographic capabilities. His work clearly demonstrates the diversity of the molecular structure of water and the effect of the environment upon the structure of the water. ... With the recent popularity in music therapy, Mr. Emoto decided to see what effects music has on the structuring of water. He placed distilled water between two speakers for several hours and then photographed the crystals that formed after the water was frozen. ... More at Dr. Masaru Emoto's: Hado.net

The Metaphysics of Sound by Patricia Spadaro, The mystical traditions of East and West tell us that the key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe is sound. In fact, they say that sound is the very fount from which our universe arises. It is the primordial First Cause. It is responsible for creating, sustaining and transforming all life and all matter. Sound, simply put, is the organizing and integrating impulse behind everything. ...

John Lennon made pact with Satan, says new book-5/15 WND, ... Lennon himself, obsessed with the occult, magic, numerology and being bigger than Elvis Presley, confided in his friend Tony Sheridan that he made such a deal. ... Written by a lifelong Beatles fan and musician, the book hypothesizes the pact was made just before the band experienced its first major successes and ended 20 years later with Lennon's assassination in New York by Mark David Chapman, who later claimed to have demons exorcized from him while serving his sentence for murder in Attica State Prison. "Chapman said that as the last demon left his body he was given the reason for his possession," Niezgoda told WND. "It was to make a show of Satan's great power in the world using John Lennon's murder as the vehicle. ...

Brain Music-4/29 Newswise, Every brain has a soundtrack. Its tempo and tone will vary, depending on mood, frame of mind, and other features of the brain itself. When that soundtrack is recorded and played back -- to an emergency responder, or a firefighter -- it may sharpen their reflexes during a crisis, and calm their nerves afterward. Over the past decade, the influence of music on cognitive development, learning, and emotional well-being has emerged as a hot field of scientific study. ...

Music, the Ancestor of Medicine-11/27 The Epoch Times, By Mu Jie-- Pleasant music works to cultivate one's temperament, to purify one's mind, and to deliver a sense of beauty. But has it ever occurred to you that the creation of music was originally intended as a medicine to cure? The origin of music can be traced back to the creation of Chinese characters by Cangjie (2650 B.C.), a legendary figure in ancient China. The Chinese character "Yao," which means medicine, is derived from the character "Yue," which means music. The character Yao is composed of two parts: a radical, meaning grass or herb, and the character for music. In addition to carrying the meaning of medicine or cure, this character can stand for music itself, happiness, or enjoyment. Music is therefore the ancestor of medicine. ...

New York Jets Listen to Mozart on the Football Field-8/16 FitBuff, There's nothing more macho than a bunch of big, strong guys throwing on the gear, hitting the field, and battling it out during a grueling NFL football practice — all while listening to Mozart. Huh? What was that last part? That's right: New York Jets coach, Eric Mangini, has Mozart blaring through the loud speakers during practice. Why? "From different studies, they've shown — I may be a little wrong on the technical side — that Mozart's music and brain waves are similar and that it stimulates learning. They play it a lot at schools around the country, very low, underneath. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but why not give it a shot?" said Mangini. ...

Music therapy may improve schizophrenia symptoms-11/27 geekland, Music therapy for psychiatric in-patients with schizophrenia can improve some of the symptoms of the disorder, according to a new study by researchers at Imperial College London and therapists at the Central and North West London Mental Health Trust. ...

Mozart for muggers-2/13 The Guardian, by Helen Pidd-- ... London Underground now has your surroundings all wired up for soothing sounds. Specifically, 40 hours of classical music for broadcast via MP3 players into station foyers - the likes of Vivaldi's Concerto for Two Mandolins, for instance, or numbers by Mozart or Schubert.... According to a tube spokesman, the music is "an attempt to reduce stress levels" and "not primarily to discourage antisocial behaviour". But anecdotal evidence from other transport systems has shown that blasting a bit of Bach over the tannoy significantly reduces crime levels. ...

Cymatics - The Science of the Future?-5/22 World Mysteries, By Peter Pettersson-- Is there a connection between sound, vibrations and physical reality? Do sound and vibrations have the potential to create?

Music - it's the new age cure-5/12 Daily News, By Di Caelers-- The use of music is being used as an aid to medical treatment ...

New Book Reveals the Rediscovery of a Long Lost Musical Blueprint: 9/29Primezone, To those who may be unfamiliar with the name, Aristoxenus was the first Greek musical theorist of note. His treatise, Elementa Harmonica, is considered to be the earliest substantial textbook on music theory that is preserved. Unfortunately, much of what he wrote has been lost, including what is held as the key that unlocked the objective power of music -- the enharmonic genus. But owing to Mitzi DeWhitt's tireless efforts, this ancient musical code has been recovered as revealed in her brilliant new book, Aristoxenus's Ghost. ...

The Body's Symphony of Sound and Vibration, Part 1 by Patricia R. Spadaro, What really makes us tick? How do we know? And what are the implications for our health? From molecular science to string theory, modern researchers are proving what ancient sages have taught for millennia—that our body responds to vibration and that the trillions of cells inside of us form one grand symphony of sound...

Music and the Brain Scientific American, Nov. '04 Issue, By Norman M. Weinberger-- What is the secret of music's strange power? Seeking an answer, scientists are piecing together a picture of what happens in the brains of listeners and musicians ...

Hard Rock is dangerous for lungs-10/3 Pravda, Listening to Hard Rock or Heavy Metal music may be hazardous to one's health. A team of Belgium scientists from the University of Medicine in Brussels managed to draw such conclusion after extensive research work. ...

Music, especially by Bach, helps reduce stress-5\1 Honolulu Star Bulletin, Heartbeat music calms chimps-- By Helen Altonn-- Music, particularly classical compositions by Bach, relieves stress, says a University of Hawaii music professor. "Of all the music we tested in medical school with patients, colleagues and others, Bach's music consistently made the brain work in a balanced way better than any other genre," ...

Molecular basis for Mozart effect revealed-4\25 NewScientist, New research has revealed a molecular basis for the "Mozart effect" - the observation that a brief stint of Mozart, but not other music, may improve learning and memory.

Exercising to Music May Make You Smarter-3\26 Reuters, If music makes you smarter, and exercise helps brain function, can exercising to music really boost brainpower? U.S. researchers say it can. Volunteers who listened to Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" while working out on a treadmill did much better on a test of verbal ability than when they exercised without music, a team at Ohio State University found. ... I don't think they would have gotten the same results with rock and roll. Editor

Fast music linked to car crashes -3\13 New Scientist, Speed kills. But it is not only the speed at which people drive that is the problem: the speed of the music they are listening to also has a hand in their fate. An Israeli researcher says drivers who listen to fast music in their cars may have more than twice as many accidents as those listening to slower tracks. ...

Moosic to their ears 6\01, New Scientist; Farmers may want to employ disc jockeys after the discovery that cows produce more milk when they hear slow tunes by Beethoven and REM. However, unlike many humans, they hate upbeat hits by The Beatles. ...

Dogs prefer Bach to Britney-10\24 New Scientist, Dogs are more relaxed and well-behaved when listening to classical music, rather than pop or heavy metal, according to a new behavioral study. The researchers say the results could help dog pounds work out the best play list for calming their canines. ...

Amazing Water & Sound Experiment #2

Using Music in the Classroom- ABT, By Dorothy Lockhart Lawrence, Editor of PPOV; Can music in the classroom make a difference? Welsh science teacher Anne Savan couldn't believe the difference it made in her chemistry lab. When the government insisted that all children complete the standard National Curriculum, Savan became concerned. ...

Kill the music for good grades, compiled from New Scientist\The Hindu, Bad news for students. Parents and teachers have always warned that listening to music while studying does distract you. Psychologists at Florida Atlantic University have looked at how fast students wrote essays with and without music playing in the background. They found that playing music slowed the students by an average of 60 words per hour. That may not sound like much, but is shows that the students did not cope well with the task of listening and writing simultaneously. But students with some musical training were not as badly distracted. Musically trained students may have developed more automaticity in their dual-tasking behaviors involving music, add the psychologists. Contrary to the myth that instrumental music is less distracting than singing, the researchers found that different types of music had the same effect. One's writing fluency is likely to be disrupted by both vocal and instrumental music.

How Music Affects Your Kids Certain kinds of music are energizing for your children's minds and can help them learn much faster, and even help them digest their food better. Other types of music actually drain energy from your children's brains and bodies and can affect their hormone levels (this is especially a problem with teens). Certain frequencies of sound are beneficial to your children's bodies and are more often present in certain instruments and in works by certain composers. ...

Violent Music Lyrics Increase Aggressive Thoughts and Feelings; Even Humorous Violent Songs Increase Hostile Feelings: Songs with violent lyrics increase aggression related thoughts and emotions and this effect is directly related to the violence in the lyrics, according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association (APA). The findings, appearing in the May issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, contradicts popular notions of positive catharsis or venting effects of listening to angry, violent music on violent thoughts and feelings. ...

Music Leaves Its Mark on the Brain-12\15 LA Times, From Mozart to Miles Davis, the harmonies of Western music rewire the brain, creating patterns of neural activity at the confluence of emotion and memory that strengthen with each new melody, research made public Thursday shows. By monitoring the brains of people listening to classical scales and key progressions, scientists at Dartmouth College glimpsed the biology of the hit-making machinery of popular song. Focusing on the structure of Western music, researchers show how the musical mind hears the flat notes in Flatt and Scruggs, the sharps of the Harmonicats and all five octaves in pop diva Mariah Carey's repertoire.

Music Power by Laurence O'Donnell: ... The influence of music on society can be clearly seen from modern history. Music helped Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence. When he could not figure out the right wording for a certain part, he would play his violin to help him. The music helped him get the words from his brain onto the paper. Albert Einstein is recognized as one of the smartest men who has ever lived. A little known fact about Einstein is that when he was young he did extremely poor in school. His grade school teachers told his parents to take him out of school because he was "too stupid to learn" and it would be a waste of resources for the school to invest time and energy in his education. The school suggested that his parents get Albert an easy, manual labor job as soon as they could. His mother did not think that Albert was "stupid". Instead of following the school's advice, Albert's parents bought him a violin. Albert became good at the violin. Music was the key that helped Albert Einstein become one of the smartest men who has ever lived. Einstein himself says that the reason he was so smart is because he played the violin. He loved the music of Mozart and Bach the most. A friend of Einstein, G.J. Withrow, said that the way Einstein figured out his problems and equations was by improvising on the violin. ...

Music and the Brain by Laurence O'Donnell: ... The power of music to affect memory is quite intriguing. Mozart's music and baroque music, with a 60 beats per minute beat pattern, activate the left and right brain. The simultaneous left and right brain action maximizes learning and retention of information. The information being studied activates the left brain while the music activates the right brain. Also, activities which engage both sides of the brain at the same time, such as playing an instrument or singing, causes the brain to be more capable of processing information. ...

Soundless Concert Stirs The Emotions, A bizarre experiment in soundless music has revealed how people's emotions are affected by noises they cannot hear. Scientists have begun analyzing the responses of 250 people who took part in the study into the effects of infrasound, carried out at Liverpool's Metropolitan Cathedral last September. They showed the audience's emotions intensified as the inaudible sound vibrations, too low for the human ear to perceive, were blasted out during a 50-minute piano recital. Those feeling uncomfortable when the concert began, found their mood turning to anger. Others, who had felt happy, started to notice sensations of joy. Some physical affects were also experienced, including tingling in the back of the neck and a strange feeling in the stomach. ...

Better life with Vedic chanting,NT Bureau, Chennai-- Vedic chanting along with classical music reduces stress, anxiety and depression. Ancient Indian culture is so devised that it encourages listening to or chanting Vedic hymns so that memory and power of concentration are enhanced during one's life- time, [said] Dr Krishnamoorthy Srinivas, senior neurologist.. ... 'It has been found that Indian children have more capacity to learn with better memory when brought up on Vedic chanting and music, than those those in western countries,' ...

Mantra Wars by Bhakta Vaikuntha, I will concentrate on the nature of mantras and how they were used in ancient times or in ‘Vedic’ civilizations that go back more than 5,000 years and were employed not only for spiritual emancipation but in military applications as well. In other words, mantras were used to defeat the enemy in times of war. ... In the Srimad-Bhagavatam 1-7-20 it states: Since his life was in danger, (Asvatthama on the battlefield of Kuruksetra) he touched water in sanctity and concentrated upon the chanting of the hymns for throwing nuclear weapons, although he did not know how to withdraw such weapons. Srila Prabhupada's purport to that verse is as follows: "The subtle forms of material activities are finer than grosser methods of material manipulation. Such subtle forms of material activities are effected through purification of sound. The same method is adopted here by chanting hymns to act as nuclear weapons." ...

Curing the Mind Through Indian 'Ragas' Times of India, Music and more specifically Indian classical music, has been known to work wonders in the field of holistic healthcare, for aeons together. But now, Shri Kumar Misra, the musical survey officer at the Sangeet Natak Akademi in the state capital, claims to have achieved substantial success in treating mental complexities and disorders through his ‘Spiritual music formula’. The formula incorporates the use of Indian classical ragas ...

Music Instruction Aids Verbal Memory Eureka Alert, Hong Kong study explored the possibility that music training. Those dreaded piano lessons pay off in unexpected ways: According to a new study, children with music training had significantly better verbal memory than their counterparts without such training. Plus, the longer the training, the better the verbal memory. These findings underscore how, when experience changes a specific brain region, other skills that region supports may also benefit –- a kind of cognitive side effect that could help people recovering from brain injury as well as healthy children. ...

Sound and vision The Guardian, Edward Said was a great thinker. And it was music that made him tick. Daniel Barenbolm remembers his playing partner-- Edward Said was many things for many people, but in reality, his was a musician's soul, in the deepest sense of the word. ...

The sight of sound: Stunning video uses paint to reveal
the movement of musical vibrations as they travel through the air-10/14

More Articles on Music and Sound

Sites on Sound and Music

Cymatherapy International Excellent site on "Restoring health and harmony through sound therapy."

Oriental Music Treatment From Europe and Asia, dedicated to promoting Music treatment for some diseases.

Main Page: Reverse Spins

The Hidden Messages in Water	The True Power of Water	Water Crystal Healing: Music and Images to Restore Your Well-Being	Secret Power of Music	Your Body Doesn't Lie
Music Its Secret Influence Throughout The Ages	Creative Power of Sound	The Secret Life of Plants	Cymatics by Hans Jenny