Wild Thyme Music (1): A Sonic Meditation

The need to communicate beyond words and express feelings led humanity to invent music – long before the first civilisations emerged. Today, the use of sound in a spiritual context is the oldest tradition on planet Earth.

Between 1979 and 1983, New York-based composer and musicologist Randall McClellan researched this largely unknown field and its ancient mystery schools. His research culminated in the book The Healing Forces of Music: History, Theory and Practice, but also led him to develop compositions that induce altered states of consciousness.

Inspired by Indian ragas, McClellan developed a series of constantly evolving, multi-layered melodies, which he realised using two Moog synthesisers, a drone box, a tamboura, his voice, and a tape delay. The title The Healing Music of Rana (rana = breath of the sun) is an allusion to ancient philosophical concepts that recognise vibrations as a fundamental creative force.

Throughout the United States, McClellan gave numerous improvisational concerts lasting up to three hours, during which the audience could relax on the floor in dimly lit rooms to bring their bodies and minds into harmony.

Composer Pauline Oliveros also recognised the healing power of sound. However, her focus was on the act of listening. She coined the term Sonic Meditations in 1971 when she published a series of guides with this title. These were intended to challenge and improve people’s listening skills.

Some of her exercises were aimed at individuals: “Take a walk at night. Walk so silently that the soles of your feet become ears.” Others were designed as group experiences, which the composer had developed together with the ♀ Ensemble. 

The image for the title Horse Sings From Cloud comes from a dream: a horse is lifted up in a cloth by a flock of bluebirds and carried to a cloud to sing from there. The instruction for the performer is one of Pauline Oliveros’ sound meditations from 1975: “Sustain a tone until any desire to change it disappears. When there is no longer any desire to change the tone, then change it.”

Conscious listening can lead to physiological and psychological changes

Oliveros’ meditations on sound aim to create awareness of the listener’s position within an environment, whether with other people, in nature, or as part of the universe. In her opinion, conscious listening can lead to physiological and psychological changes. The composer’s research on deep listening and sonic meditation is also part of Paul Paulun’s experimental approach to coping with the disorder misophonia.

Together with Pauline Oliveros and others, Ramón Sender was active at the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the early 1960s. Taking a collaborative approach, the group explored the potential of tape recorders, often in combination with prototype synthesisers.

Even as a child, Sender discovered that he could hallucinate any kind of music he wanted when he listened to the kind of pink noise that was created when he tuned a radio between two signals. Much of his compositional work is based on experimenting with such a meditative state of mind.

For his piece Worldfood VII (To See Him With My Eyes), Sender used the phrase of a soprano who sang a chamber cantata he composed at the conservatory for Easter. The words “To See Him With My Eyes” are played simultaneously on seven tape loops of slightly different lengths. Complemented by a second layer, the piece encourages listeners to create their own melodies from what they hear, exploring the boundary between meditation and trance.

Featured cover art: Ramón Sender ‎– Worldfood

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