Part One: Music For
Therapeutic Ends
Music can and does have a purpose
beyond mere entertainment; it can be quite meaningful and inspirational. I find
its therapeutic use to be quite interesting. Music can be immensely calming in
some cases. At the same time many people believe that music always causes
stress; in reality, style and other elements matter a lot. Slow-moving, soft
music can induce a sense of serenity more effectively than virtual silence; in
this respect music is very effective in reducing stress. Ambient music is much
more calming, at least to me, than the sound of a fan spinning above.
I do not accept the notion, as
should be obvious, that music is inherently stressful. For me personally many
sounds – the ones you probably hear every day – are annoying. Silverware
hitting something hard or metal creates a horrendous high-pitched clang; the
sound of cars is also irritating. In a medical setting the number of disruptive
sounds increases due to the machinery. Machines add their own distinctive
timbres to the background white noise. In this case the ambient noise is hardly
ideal.
Many places
– even on my university’s campus – have pianos in buildings for entertainment.
The piano can be especially calming when played in the background, unlike a lot
of sources of ambient noise. It is a simple but very effective idea that soft
music can be serene and calm the listener. The morning before my first final in
college I felt anxious but listening to Murray Perahia play Bach’s Goldberg
Variations soothed my nerves and helped me return to focus. The calm music was very beneficial ultimately
in helping me retain my composure in a timely manner. I imagine music could be
very calming to bedridden patients, in particular ambient or soft classical
music. From my understanding therapeutic music is used in some buildings used
for medical purpose. This approach works well, from past experience at least,
so it should be more greatly explored.
Part Two: Music and
Sleep
To further explore this
approach I conducted an informal experiment where I listened to Neroli by Brian Eno as I slept. After
waking up I wrote notes about my quality of sleep and other aspects of my
sleep; in doing so I hoped to elucidate how music impacts sleep. The first
section of notes is mixed into a series of opinions and will not be
paraphrased. I will, however, paraphrase the second round of notes I took.
“Seems to not have an effect.
Loud music – high frequency – tends to rouse me from sleep. Oddly enough I still
tend to wake up fairly late after a couple of cycles of the music. […] Low
frequency – slow but perhaps not necessarily dark – seems to be less disruptive
and better for sleep [which makes Neroli
fitting]. Moderate frequencies also work well: they seem to straddle the
esoteric boundary between “calm” and disruptive. The relation is important but
hard to characterize. Needless to say, volume matters immensely. Sometimes I play
music too loud[ly] and have trouble [falling] asleep.
“Music does not seem to be that
disruptive [provided it is not too loud or fast]. I am of the opinion that our
mind incorporates external sounds [thus] we cannot truly be disrupted by one
single thing. Our mind deals with […] intense activity and many different
sounds and feelings, not just music. As we sleep the mind makes many
connections. Music and sounds have unknown effects – to me at least- and I
wonder how the process of making connections as we sleep is implicated […]”
Months after writing Part 2 I experimented more with listening to music as I
slept. The context I this: I had been having poor quality sleep despite not
waking up many times in the middle of the night. At least not to my knowledge.
Since I was fasting he next day (which entailed getting up early), I slept for
three hours, during which I listened to Neroli
playing in my earphones. Upon walking up I felt relatively calmer and not as
sick, so perhaps my sleep quality was improved by the music or some other
external cause. To test this theory out further when I fell back asleep I
listened to On Land, also by Brian
Eno. I felt abnormally good after sleeping and I believe the music itself
helped me calm down while sleeping. The melodic sound built upon low
frequencies helped induce a calm; I believe that the human’s aptitude for
feeling these frequencies rather than mostly hearing them allows for calming.
The other album gave
a similar experience. Music is not the only factor but the use of music helped
distinguish a few nights from others, resulting in a more favorable sleep. A
subtle serenity helps me sleep, more so than a conscious inducing of calm right
before sleeping. The next day I slept to Harold Budd and my sleep was also
comparatively good; Budd’s repetitive yet free music helped me sleep without a
conscious reminder to calm down. I should note the influence of a softer bed,
though, so my sleep was aided by the softness of the bed. Again, music seems to
impact the conscious in a very different way than the subconscious; absorbing
the music allows for attaining serenity.
A few other days I also conducted a similar experiment
though with different artists. Falling asleep to Dustin Halloran’s soft piano
music helped me sleep better. My retroactive evidence is the fact that I felt
no need to sleep in additionally upon getting up; my head also felt clear.
Similarly I fell asleep to Bach’s Goldberg Variations a couple days later and
woke up refreshed. Once again my head felt very clear and having music playing
seem to help me sleep better. A few days later I ended up stopping the
experiment due to fear of further damaging my iPod.
On the note of the subconscious, an event like a nightmare
or something jolting happening jolts one out of sleep. The reverse of this
situation, I imagine, is listening to soothing music or having something
soothing going on in the background. If an external sound can make you wake up
then certainly one could help you sleep. This statement is just conjecture, though.
To complement my experiments with music and sleep I made a
song that aligned with my experiences. This piece is named “Ribbon Room.”
Part 3: Making Therapeutic Music
“Personal preference will play a
role in my quest to make sleep-friendly ambient music. For example, I find
elevator music boring, if not simply because of environment, due to its lack of
interesting layering or flow. Classical music and jazz music – provided that
neither style is too vigorous – can effectively be therapeutic. Music should at
the same time be interesting even if the goal is to induce sleep. I plan to
make a song based around a melodic yet jazzy sound. I intend to pool together a
diversity of moderate pitched instruments while maintaining diversity. [I will
also make use of lower pitched instruments, provided they are melodic.] I plan
to employ slower instruments but perhaps some will be faster. The song will be
smooth and soft, hopefully. […] More about that when the song is done!”
Ribbon Room has a tempo of around 80 BPM (which is very close
to the average human heartbeat) and features the following instruments:
-
Bass
-
Multiple layers of synthesizer
-
Cor Anglais (English Horn)
-
Glockenspiel
-
Choir
-
Guitar
Its sound features the use of
reverb to create a soft yet expansive and dynamic sound; stereo separation will
also be used to vary the sonic placement of each instruments. Layering was very
important in this song.
“Ribbon
Room taking influence from soft rock will feature near-acoustic electric
guitar, soft bass, and other muffled instruments to create an ambient sound.
The timbres converge to create a soft sound, the result of ambient influences,
and ultimately the lower half of the frequency scale will feature more
prominently. I added flourishes to make the music unique while keeping it soft,
including distortion the guitar digitally. Reverb helped put instruments at a
distant so they can more easily be accepted by a sleeping person. Making the
music fill a wide variety of frequencies prevents any one instrument from being
harsh or dominating.”
Compositionally the guitar and
glockenspiel have fairly abrupt changes but their disturbances are for the most
part small and nondisruptive. The glockenspiel, however, had to be changed down
in the master track to make itself slightly less obtrusive. Each instrument
plays softly in the end, so the piece retains an ambient feel despite the high
pitched instrument. Ultimately the immense layering gives a full feeling and
the bass provided by muffled bass guitar and synthesizers helps the music reach
the subconscious mind without potentially waking the person. No harsh screeches
of any kind play. Ultimately the use of a simple, repetitive melody that is
only altered slightly gives a sense of calm and structure. Repetition can be
quite calming in that the listener knows what follows for the most part and the
flow of instruments continuously helps sleeping. Harold Budd was a strong
influence in making “Ribbon Room” more freeform. The lack of drums helped
create this freeform yet ethereal sound that lacks concreteness.
Ultimately the final touch of
repetition – provided by the choir and cor anglais - gave order, which helped the mind accept it. The
reoccurrence is calming due to a tension being created by the introduction of a
new sound; subconsciously the listener expects a piece to return to its
beginning. At the same time sleeping to a repetitive piece is easy due to the lack
of parts that could startle one awake. “Ribbon Room” has a high pitch sound but
in the end the sound helps add to the calm. Ultimately the piece is very
calming, though it’s not quite a song to which I would sleep.
Part Four: The
Evolving Theme
Talking
about an “evolving theme” in this post may seem tangential at first. (An
evolving theme is essentially one where the same melody/theme is played in its
entirety with instruments slowly being added or other small changes occurring.
Essentially one theme gives way to a myriad of themes.) An evolving theme gives
a frame to use: a theme can be expanded or shrunk across a game or other
medium. The evolving theme can be known as a leitmotif. A leitmotif is essentially
the use of a melody to represent an object, idea, or person and in the video
game world it is simply a musical theme played repeatedly. The evolving theme
approach, in my view, is having one theme in some form or another dominate a
musical score and appear many, many times. One notable example of this approach
is the “Map” theme from Super Mario World
2: Yoshi’s Island; this theme steadily gains instruments as the player
progresses through the game. This approach is quite calming because it gives a
structure but still leaves room for playing around; the evolving theme glues a
soundtrack together. This approach is calming because it takes a theme and adds
to it gradually, giving a greater sense of novelty and change without startling
the listener.
Ambient music operates in a similar
manner: a song with a simple melody is gradually changed within a structure of
some kind. In this way the music is very calming.
In Lackadaisy I will likely
make use of an evolving theme, which I have tentatively named “Map,” after the
Yoshi’s Island theme. “Map” will help create a general atmosphere for the comic
vocal dub and help elucidate the story throughout the project. Through this
leitmotif I hope to give a sense of calming and structure at the same time.
Psychologically the dub will give a sensation of building as the comic does,
justifying this approach. “Map” may not end up actually going on the soundtrack
in any form but the use of leitmotifs and perhaps having general themes that
evolve will likely influence my writing for that soundtrack. At any rate the
very idea of the evolving theme lies at the heart of good music writing:
instilling a change of some kind without rushing.
