Music has not always been entertainment.
Between 1000 and 1300, when polyphony and counterpoint met the numbers, music became a powerful healing tool to trigger mystical suggestions and to touch souls.
My idea is to demonstrate that today, all of us can use the art of sounds as a very effective exercise for the mind and for psychophysical health.
Emotions
Our existence is utterly based on emotions, they make us feel alive and for this reason we are constantly looking for new and stronger emotional stimuli. However, emotions have also side effects: stress, discomfort and diseases.
As a matter of fact, meditation, since its origins (India, IX century b.C.), identified emotions and thoughts as the mother of dissatisfaction and illness. In Chinese medicine (2500 b.C.) as well, they were considered responsible for health damages. The same thing can be said for Hippocrates, 400 years before Christ in ancient Greece: he was also convinced that health is strictly related to the balance of the humours which float in the body, generating emotional responses.
Today everybody is overwhelmed by various and persuasive emotional inputs that can provoke severe psychological and physical problems.
Unfortunately, because of this addiction, we continue to feed a dangerous emotional crescendo.
Facing the emotions
When we are dealing with emotions, first of all we need to keep in mind that they represent, at the same time, target and means. This prospective discourages a pharmacological approach, in fact, chemistry in medicine cannot distinguish the target from the means, with the consequent risk of damaging the entire emotional system.
Therefore, we need to find a less invasive process to persuade the mind to re-organize itself and its emotional mechanism.
Personally, I believe that music is the most appropriate discipline for the purpose, because its structure combines both emotional and rational elements. It has been proved that musically illiterate people perceive music especially with the right side of the cerebral hemisphere - realm of the emotions- differently, musicians, while listening, engage the left side of the cerebral hemisphere - realm of rationality-.
Music and mathematics are bound by a very tight relationship. This combination makes music an influential device in terms of emotions' organization.
We do not want to control emotions or, even worse, try to restrain them. We are made of emotions and our database, tied to self-awareness, is filled with memories associated with it.
This essay proposes to re-organize, each person in a personal and independent way, the emotional process, through the mathematical side of music. The brain will spontaneously open the access to emotions by listening to music, while the mathematical aspect will work as an organizer.
The DMX Method - (Deep Music Experience)
Music is built of organized sounds in a period of time. The tempo is given at the beginning of the piece by the composer, and it is expressed in fraction. If we have a 3/4 tempo, for example, it means that each bar is composed by 3 elements of 1/4 each.
In this case tempo is a 3 pulses' loop that forms a bar.
In my method, we count pulses and measures out loud while the musician is playing.
...
1 2 3 4 5 6 ...
Everybody can easily count with minimal effort. Therefore, a high level of concentration is not required to access complex levels of calculation on a step by step basis.
A musician guides the experience, sort of a very informal concert without the show, a sort of therapy or a group meditation.
The participant are relaxed, seated or lying down and, while the musician is playing, they count measures and pulses on the hand phalanges, following given numerical schemes.
Baroque counterpoint based compositions are the most suitable for the experience, especially Johann Sebastian Bach music, because its perfect balance involves without being emotionally intrusive.
The goal is totally reached with the Masterpiece BWV 988: Aria with 30 variations, also known as Goldberg Variations.
Music in Baroque period: a bridge between ancient and modern times
Arabic numbers (which are actually Indians) were introduced in Europe at the end of 900 and spread out since 1200, by mathematician Fibonacci.
In this period, Medieval music encounters the new numerical system and the rhythm, as we know it today, is born. This aspect allows the composers to elaborate more and more complex mental exercises.
Most likely, Baroque era musicians, were capable of reading on different scores while counting measures and pulses.
Socio-economic changes, during the Baroque times, influenced a series of evolutions which led to today's Pop music.
For this reason, I consider Baroque a door to ancient music, a pattern we should walk to change the way we listen to music.
DML and DMX Target
DML ( Deep Music Learning) and DMX (Deep Music Experience): 2 new methods for everybody, including professional musicians. They can be both applied to different fields of expertise and the experimentation is open to new contributions. Both methods are addressed to several categories:
· Children, including infants with parents: babies should be exposed to music and to its mathematical aspects, just like with languages, at a very early age. As a matter of fact, it is known that babies, since the very first days of life, have in the brain a primordial ability to count.
· Kindergarten and Primary School children: at this age, Kids are particularly sensitive to any emotional stimulus. The producers of infants' entertainment products see them as consumers, by offering inadequate programs without defences nor filters.
· Middle School and High School children: it is very difficult to convince young generations that hard working and studying is the key to success when they have an answer for each question at a glance; this is the most delicate phase. At that age, repressed emotions may lead to psychological damages
· College/University students: the multitasking approach of the method increases brain potential abilities in every field of study.
· Adults: For those who still have time to begin a new path but lack focus to face changes with enthusiasm.
· Elderly: it is an opportunity to socialize, concentrate and prevent diseases such as senile Dementia or Alzheimer.
· People affected by Alzheimer and by other degenerative diseases: DMX treatment has the ambition to delay the degeneration.
· Music students: DMX is a crucial preliminary asset for those who intend to study a musical instrument. Furthermore DML (Deep Music Learning) method proposes the advanced level for aspiring professional musicians.
· Professional musicians: both DMX e DML can be used in addition to other methods. Professional musicians can see the methods as an alternative way to master their ability or use them to research and to expand the methods' boundaries itself.
Jean-Philippe Rameau, remarks the importance of mathematics in music in his Essay on harmony in its fundamental principles (1722):
Music is a science based on precise and fixed rules: these need to come from a clear mathematical principle. Despite my long experience achieved after years of practice in music, I have to say that only through mathematics I could order and organize all my ideas.
Only if we know how to control our mind, we can live a balanced life between rationality and feelings, logic and emotions.
Everything is vibration
Pulses are low frequencies tones and the entire universe is just a sound made of harmonic relations.
Recent quantum physics discoveries are in line with Pythagoras' intuitions and with esoteric ideals.
Everything is vibration: nonetheless matter is simply a frequency perceived by mankind as a solid feeling; for this reason music can be seen as the perfect representation of the universe!
Music can awake cerebral functions, the mind and the conscience by provoking emotional reactions. Through music man can experience self-awareness as part of the world he belongs to.
Furthermore, through music man can categorize himself as part of a social system; that is why I consider music an ontological revelation.
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