brainwave frequencies

The Phat Conductor · Post by **The Phat Conductor** » Tue Dec 27, 2005 11:55 pm

werd.

just to be 100% clear, i am not claiming that this is an exact science, but rather that SOME effects have been demonstrated, and that it is interesting, and worthy of further investigation/tune making...

now as far as how music affects the brain (and not just tones) i would have to say that i agree with Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man) to a degree, but with music serving the place of art. I believe that art, as something external and frozen in time, is harder to aesthetically appreciate than music because music is internal and temporal (like the consciousness which it effects). that said, the aesthetic effect in question can be elicited by anything which is abstract and beautiful.

humans are naturally drawn to beauty. it is something inexplicable, primordial, and nearly universal among our species. a truly beautiful experience does not depend on anything external for it's beauty (eg. the pattern of a snowflake; it is simply beautiful, not beautiful because it means something). we wish to bring about this sort of beauty for it's own sake.
***please note that i am not excluding things like a 'beautiful sentiment' from my aesthetic, but rather addressing pure beauty here, the kind of abstract beauty of a piece of music or art which is nonrepresentational...

the expereince of beauty unites our drive towards the sensuous with our rational need for order. it also serves as a model for harmonious existance at other levels (social, political, etc...). i believe that developing a sense of the aesthetic is essential to overcome the rift between the desires of reason and passion (one of our greatest problems since the beginning of 'civilization').

Confucius expresses something to this effect, as does what remains of the ancient Chinese 'Book of Music'. they say that there is something about the abstract aesthetic relationship of sounds which leads us to become more harmonious and integrated with our fellow beings. their formulation is not as succinct and german/western as Schiller's Letters buit i believe that it is superior in that it cites music and not art as the best vehicle for aesthetic education. the ancient chinese were real fuckers about tradition in music though. you were not allowed to use certain keys because they would lead to licentiousness and impropriety. it is important to examine the aesthetic principles of more than one culture because we cannot understand the underlying assumptions without something to contrast them with.

anyway, that's my two cents... i have a few papers on this stuff if you are interested, or if you want sources.[/i]

Moody · Post by **Moody** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 4:23 am

Did anybody mention NLP?

a voice pierces your ears my words enter your brain - Front 242

ciw · Post by **ciw** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 6:12 pm

can't say i know much about this, but as far as i'm aware, binaural beats have been proven to 'set' the brain's clock frequency (for want of a better word) if you listen to them for a couple of minutes. I'm not sure any health benefits have been proven, though there may be some, it sounds like a ripe field for quacks and snake oil. but don't be put off the genuine science by the conmen exploiting it.

Also with training, you can create a binaural beat in your head by thinking about it - there's a guy called Simon Fisk who did a PhD on controlling synthesisers with the brain in this way. (Can't find any links, sorry!) Not very practical (apparently you can produce about 10 notes/minute with your head covered in electrodes) but very interesting nonetheless.

jerry123 · Post by **jerry123** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 6:29 am

In audio school, we learned that the brain notices changes and ignores constants. Say, when you don't notice the AC or fridge running, but you hear it shut off, and the silence after. Psychoaccoustics are a good thing to think about when mixing.

Moody · Post by **Moody** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 9:06 am

Wish I new more. Anybody hears of synesthesia?

The Phat Conductor · Post by **The Phat Conductor** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 3:43 am

Moody wrote:Anybody hears of synesthesia?

yea, i've had a taste....

hee hee

heard about the NLP, but had no idea you could control a synth with thought! that is fucking cool!

pulsoc · Post by **pulsoc** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 9:58 pm

I can't believe no one has mentioned Hans Jenny and Cymatics. I think he was one of the originators of this stuff. Check out http://www.cymaticsource.com/ and in particular the video portion. Amazing stuff.

babkubwa · Post by **babkubwa** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 10:36 pm

check out that book - the man who mistook his wife for a hat,

years since I read it - would love to come across it again

particle · Post by **particle** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 5:40 am

i have heard that in the newer psytrance, the reason that the bass is played in short bursts in 1/16 time divisions, around 145-150 bpm, where the sequence is like : Kick bass bass bass Kick bass bass bass, is becasue it comes in and out of sync with your alpha and theta brain waves wich are the same brainwaves that you are in when you are in betweem sleeping and awake.

i also heard that part of the reason we generally hear things from 60 Hz - 16kHz has to do with the convoultion of the sound on cave walls....i dunno if its true or not but if it is then i think its a great idea to blast people with hyper frequencies all night long and its probably a great idea for those people to bring their kids to them too like they do sometimes. becasue i mean if you expose yourself to that sort of high intensity vibration on a regular basis and your kids are exposed to it and then their kids do the same thing the eventually our brains will be able to pick up on a more wide range of frequency in the sound spectrum