The Ability To Remain Calm

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.”

  [Ribbon Room]

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.