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Sonic Meditations for JANUARY 15th, 2025
Dissolving your ear plugs:
For classically trained musicians and anyone else interested.
Pauline Oliveros
1) Take some time – no matter where you are – sit down and close your eyes for a while and just listen – When you open your eyes consider what you heard as the “music”. Later try to remember what you heard and express it with your instrument or voice.
Do this practice often until you begin to hear the world as music.
2) Another time – sit down with your instrument and just listen with your eyes closed. As you realize that whatever you are hearing IS “music” allow your instrument or voice to enter this musical stream. Stop when the music is over. This is supported improvisation.
3) Listen to a favorite machine and play or sing along with it.
4) Listen to a favorite natural soundscape and play or sing along with it.
© Copyright Deep Listening Publications 2006
ANGELS & DEMONS
Angels represent the collective guardian spirits of this meditation.
Demons represent the individual spirits of creative genius.
Angels make steady, even, breath-long tones which blend as perfectly as possible with the steady, even, breath-long tones made by other Angels.
Demons listen inwardly until sounds are heard from they own inner spirits.
Any sound that has been heard inwardly first may be made.
During the course of this meditation, Angels may become Demons and Demons may become Angels.
- Begin by just listening for a few minutes until the spirits move.
sum for 5+ performers – open instrumentation
There are two kinds of entrances:
out of silence, or
emerging from the sound of those already playing.
If a performer chooses to enter within the existing sounds, they must do so imperceptibly, If such an entrance is not possible at any given time, the player should refrain from entering.
Each time a performer enters, they play a long tone/sustained sound of any type.
The goal is always a fusion of sounds.
The purpose of the piece is for the performers to create spaces that will allow others to enter.
– Christine Burke
Three-layer Score:
Improvisation on the 3 modalities of Deep Listening
1. First Layer-Low voice: Vocalize/Sing any low note and hold it, stay on that note or gravitate to other low notes you hear.
Normal sound volume. Allow silence in order to listen to other voices.
2. Second Layer-Middle voice: Sing patterns of 3 notes in any order, pitch or rhythm. Use your hands to reflect the energy and shape of your 3 note gesture. Sing or play at medium dynamic volume.
3. Third Layer-Top Voice: Imagine a melody, if you are comfortable; bring the melody from your mind to your vocal cords. Use a humming voice or soft dynamic volume.
– Elizandro Garcia-Montoya
EXCHANGES
Follow the leader.
Accompany the leader.
Blend with the leader.
Become the leader.
Microhocket
Assemble a small group.
One person starts a pulse at about the speed of a heartbeat
The person nearest to them picks up the rhythm, offset by a 1/16th note.
This continues throughout the group.
17 breaths
for 5-8 musicians
Performers use wind instruments of their choosing, such as a flute, harmonica, clarinet, melodica, etc.
Starting simultaneously, the performers play a note at random and sustain it as long as possible. Then they rest for a period approximately equal to the length of the preceding note.
For the next breath, each performer randomly chooses a note different than their preceding note.
The process is repeated until the performers have each played 17 notes, performers falling out of synch with each other according to how long they are able to maintain their breath/notes.
ZINA’S CIRCLE
Stand together in a circle, with eyes closed facing the center. One person is designated, the transmitter. After observing the breathing cycle, individually, gradually join hands.
Then slowly move back so that all arms are stretched out and the size of the circle increased.
Next stretch the arms towards center and move in slowly.
Finally, move back to the normal sized Circle, with hands still joined, standing so that arms are relaxed at sides. Return attention to breathing.
When the time seems right, the transmitter starts a pulse that travels around the circle, by using the right hand to squeeze the left hand of the person next to her. The squeeze should be quickly and sharply made, to resemble a light jolt of electricity. The squeeze must be passed from left hand to right-hand and on to the next person as quickly as possible. The action should become so quick thot it happens as a reflex, before the person has time to consciously direct the squeeze.
Simultaneously with the squeeze, each person must shout “hah!”. This shout must come up from the center of the body (somewhere a little below the navel) before passing through the throat. There must be complete abdominal support for the voice. When the first cycle is complete, the transmitter waits for a long time to begin the next cycle.
When the reaction time around the circle has become extremely short, the transmitter makes the cycles begin closer and closer together until a new transmission coincides with the end of a cycle, then continue trying to speed up the reaction time. If attention and awareness are maintained, the circle depending on its size, should be shouting almost simultaneously.
Variations:
1. Reverse the direction of the pulse using the left hand to transmit and the right hand to receive.
2. Reverse the direction of each cycle.
3. Each person chooses which direction to send the pulse. The transmitter continues to control the beginning and ending of a cycle.
horse sings from cloud
Sustain one of more tones or sounds until any desire to change the tone(s) subsides. When there is no desire to change the tone(s), then change.
Pauline Oliveros 1975
dreammountain
for a group, in person or in webspace
Each person dreams a mountain.
Taking turns, each person sounds their mountain in any way they choose. After each individual has sounded their mountain, the whole group echoes the mountain back to them with a movement.
This continues until the whole group has sounded and received back an echo.
-Emily Robinson