On Sound, Consciousness & Healing

What is sound?

Sound is created by vibrations traveling through air as sound waves. Sound waves are produced by vibrating objects and radiate outward from their source in all directions. A vibrating object compresses surrounding air molecules (forcing them closer together) and then rarefies them (pushing them farther apart). Although the fluctuations in air pressure travel outward from the object, the air molecules themselves remain in the same overall position. As sound travels, it bounces off objects along its path, creating further disturbances in the surrounding air. When these changes in air pressure reach and vibrate our eardrum, nerve signals are sent to our brain which are interpreted as sound.

Sound produced by specific musical instruments called harmonic-overtone-emitting instruments (gongs, Tibetan singing bowls, bells, metallic discs, etc.) can be used as a therapeutic tool to disconnect from discursive thinking and delve into a transcendental state. The goal is to enable listeners to disengage their undesirable habitual patterns and to empower positive cognitive change. Harmonic-overtone-emitting instruments have been used in meditation and sound therapy for centuries in many cultures and continue to be used.

So what are overtones?

Sound produced by musical instruments, the voice, or other source is an intricate compound, an infinite sum of waves of different frequencies. The pitch, or tone, that we can hear and identify is composed of various elements: the fundamental frequency and the overtones, or harmonics, or harmonic overtones, which are the natural parts of that pitch. The particular strength or weakness of the overtones creates the tone colour, or timbre, of the pitch and this is what allows us to distinguish the sound of a note played on a flute from the sound of the same note played on a violin, or one person’s voice from an other. The fundamental frequency is much louder than the harmonics and therefore with common musical instruments we hear it as a single pitch. When playing metallic harmonic-overtone-emitting instruments the overtones start to become clearly audible to our ears.

Some of the overtones may sound slightly dissonant or out of tune to the Western ear because in the 16th century the current tuning system was introduced based on the equal temperament which subdivided the musical octave in 12 equidistant half-steps (semitones, the distance between a white and a black key on a piano keyboard). This musical choice ‘removed’ so to speak some very important frequencies from the picture, frequencies that are a fundamental part of the harmonic overtone series, nature’s true harmony, thus leaving us a bit “out of tune” for a few hundred years.

Therefore immersing oneself in a sound meditation with these special instruments can elicit a psycho/physical, emotional and spiritual recalibration to nature’s original harmony which responds to a complex mathematical ratio, the Golden Mean.

References:
https://documentation.apple.com/en/soundtrackpro/usermanual/ index.html#chapter=B%26section=1%26tasks=true
www.soundmeditation.com