THE INNER SPACIAL PSYCHO ACOUSTICAL JOURNEY

Here is a collection of my personal favorite sonic journey's brewed up from my modular synth onto my tascam 234 tape machine from this winter quarter.  Enjoy. I believe these are the most concrete recordings I have so far, as well as the ones which will be included in my exhibition in May at DU. Between now and the show I will be creating 5 more heavy duty aural adventures as well as drawing documenting my own listening experience to these selections. There might even be a special morsel of osilloscopic magic thrown is as well...stay tuned.

Wrapping it all UP...INTO GLORY RIDE!!!

Earlier this week, on Tuesday to be exact, I witnissed something few survive on planet earth.  This is the phenomenon known as MANOWAR.  For those of you who are not aware of these KINGS OF METAL...WARRIORS OF STEEL, it is too late, you will die by their mighty blow.  

You may be wondering, how is in the lord are these gorgeous lads even slightly related to my sonic endeavors? Well, they just so happen to be the loudest band in the world.  They have broken the Guinness World record multiple times.  They never use the House P.A. system when on tour, that is not good enough for Manowar.  They bring their own.  I saw them at the Ogden and the entire balcony was closed off and covered in special acoustic enhancing curtains.  Here is a great video showing what goes into the Manowar live rig: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJEasKYBoGo .  This shit aint for FALSE METAL WIMPS.  It sounds fucking unbelievable and is literally bone rattling at lighting speeds.  I experienced a high like no other simply from the whirlwind of the air pumped out of the the speakers.  Such a magical, life changing event.  There were probably only 250 people there, where in Europe they play to 250,000.  So, yes, that was quite a dose of sound therapy.

Now to my plan for the development of my sonic prescription for the remainder of the quarter.

Next Week: Have 3 new audio tracks completed and listen in 3 different environments.

Following Week: Have 3 new audio tracks completed and listen in 3 different environments. Also, during listening exercises make visual responsive drawings in dark.

Following Week: Complete last 3 audio tracks for sonic prescription, continue fleshing out drawings. 

Following Week: Master all audio tracks in some interesting way, possibly through a combination of optical and tape compression.  In addition, figure out some way to have lightning component to exhibition.  Most likely utilizing a slow, color changing LED plate.

!!!PREPARE FOR SONIC MIND-TRANSFER EXPLOSIVE IMPLOSION!!!

Shot out of the Sonic Spiral

This week was pretty intense.  I decided to do an exercise where I would synthesize what I felt to be a extremely powerful drone and go to sleep with it on. The idea was that my dream state would be severely altered...and indeed that is what happened...to say the least.

I set up the studio with an air mattress...very cozy.  When you lay down your ears are perfectly alligned with the studio monitors.  This makes the binaural beat experience a little bit TOO comfortable.  After settling down for bed I went in and out of sleep for the next 4-5 hours.  At about what seemed at two or three in the morning and woke up and the entire room seemed to be spinning and the room was illuminated in blue (from the LEDs) completely fractal.  I was hallucinating uncontrollably and did not feel all too attached to my human form.  So bizarre.  At that point I had to shut down the synthesizer.  It simply could not go on anymore.  For the next two days I felt extremely out of it.

I felt like I was tingling from the after effects are an extremely potent psychedelic voyage.  My brain felt like it was pulsating and being squeezed to the point where the entire organ was vibrating.  I did not feel effects I would describe as overly negative, such as anxiety, or headache.  I just felt very odd.  The following morning after the experiment I went to my intro to cognitive neuroscience class.  I sat in the front row and did not comprehend one single thing during the almost two hour lecture.  I have realized these binaural beat things are astoundingly powerful and should be taken with utmost caution.  Nevertheless, my relationship with sound has been reinforced once again!

Blog Entry 1/31/14: Let the sonic mind numbing begin!

Alright, so this is my first blog entry so far.  Yes, I missed the first two. Although I have not been updating you guys in this realm, there has been a lot going through my head in concurrence with this project.

First, a couple of books I am reading:

The Power of Sound by Joshua Leeds: This is an incredibly eclectic source of sound therapy techniques and all sorts of other kinds of information based upon how sound affects the brain.  Joshua Leeds is one of the few leading experts in psychoacoustics and far as I know.

Psychedelic Shamanism by Jim DeKorne: You may be wondering why a book entitled "Psychedelic Shamanism" is having a major role in my sound studies.  Well, my project is all based around consciousness.  This book has some great techniques described for achieving different states of consciousness and I have found it essential as a guide during my sound practices.  It many ways it describes how to "feel" for these different levels of sensation, in my case stimulated by sound.

Second, what I have been up to this week:

I started researching Binaural beats a little bit more.  For those of you who aren't familiar with Binaurals, they are frequencies generated in the brain when we hear two slightly different frequencies in each ear.  I recorded two tracks, one in the low register, and the other in the medium frequency domain.  Using two oscillators, I panned each one hard to the left and right, and tuned them ever so slightly apart.  In addition, they were modulated by the same source, an extremely slow lfo, to induce a bit of drifting.  Quite hypnotizing indeed.

Capstone: Sonic Hyperspace Projection

The omnipresence of sound is taken for granted by humans on planet earth.  While the human hearing range only encompasses a narrow, audible scope of 20hz-20,000 Hz, the majority of the frequency content inhabiting our daily lives is aurally incomprehensible. The future, and fate of man depends on understanding the role these vibrations have on every detail of our daily routines.  Due to the lack of tools for analyzing the sonic properties of various environments, there has not been much research done until the latter half of the twentieth century into how humans are involuntarily connected to sound and how we perceive sound.  The emerging field of Psychoacoustics pertains to precisely how sound affects the brain, or can be condensed to, the psychology of hearing.

I have been fascinated by the power of sound for as long as I can imagine.  Starting with a love of music at a young age, I began to break it down to its raw form as I got older.  Within the past couple of years I have become more and more interested in how sound affects the brain, and our overall wellbeing. I believe that understanding how the benefits, and faults, of sound intermingle with the high intelligence of the human brain will unlock knowledge that very well could change the direction of our evolution for the long run.

For my capstone I would like to focus further in on a particular aspect of the role that sounds plays in affecting how we function.  I’m not positive at this point what that particular aspect is going to be; however, I am confident that it will be revealed through experimentation with different psychological sound trials.  Sounds therapy is the primary avenue I plan to travel down.  In many ways this capstone project is all about personal therapy.  I want to reinforce my relationship with sound and stumble upon its deep healing properties.