2018 — Meditations



Play The Meditations



In this year I am developing a new way of “making” music. I don’t really know what to call the process I’m trying to perform. It might be telepathy, clairvoyance or a musical form of automatic writing.

  • 1. I sit down with my keyboard already hooked up to my DAW (the Cubase Digital Audio Workstation).
  • 2. I close my eyes and do my best to stop thinking. I especially don’t want to think of any music.
  • 3. I open my eyes, click RECORD and just play. I don’t know what I’m going to play in advance, the music just comes out of nowhere. I think of these events as being contacted by my Muse or Muses. I think (but don’t know) that one of my Muses is the departed composer John Barry. I could be wrong . . . but I don’t think so.
  • 4. Later I listen and try to perfect the idea a little.
  • 5. Over and over I play what I call Meditations with my mind and heart open to incoming ideas of what to do with these pieces next.
  • 6. The Meditations in the file 2016-01 are the ones created with help from my Muse or Muses.
  • 7. In addition you will find Nature-Storm and Nature-Waves which have no music, only a compilation of nature sounds.

Clicking “Play the meditations,” (above) will open a new browser window and automatically play the meditations one by one automatically and continuously. You can switch windows and otherwise use your computer while the meditations play. If you want to skip a meditation, return to the player window and click next.

These are VERY long “songs”—25 minutes or longer in most cases. If you have a set of speakers on either side of your bed and play these mediations at whisper volumes (perhaps from an iPod) you will enter dream-land fairly soon according to our experimentations. If you have noisy neighbors, just turn the volume up. At first, I mixed the music WAY back behind the sounds of rain, wind in the trees, waves, mountain brooks and other nature sounds.

After several weeks of listening, however I found the ultra-faint music levels distressing. This is the exact opposite of the peaceful feeling these pieces should provide. I changed the mixes so that the music was more listenable while the nature sounds still predominate. See what you think.

I did the mix using an Envelope Follower I invented inside Cubase Pro 8. When the nature sounds get louder, the music instantly gets louder too. When the nature sounds fade some, the music fades too.

To me, it sounds like living in a guest house on a peninsula where there’s surf on both sides, wind, rain and sometimes a running brook. The mellow sounds from the “main house” are just barely coming through under the sounds of nature. I find the effect very reassuring and calming. I hope you do too.

Enjoy!

These recordings are available only on a flash drive (thumb drive). The songs are too big for a CD. With the flash drive, you can put the songs into your computer or iPod. Unlike a CD, you can reuse the flash drive you receive. 

Just send us an email to acquire the sound files.


Tune in
from time to time
to see how these
meditation compositions
progress.


— Sherman Barry —


Meditations $14 on a Flash Drive.
Just send me an email to get started.