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| Chilling Out with Meditation Music |
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I make meditation music for a living, and have done so for the past three years. It can be a little bit hard, but it is where my passion lies.
That is why it bothers me how little respect music for meditation gets. Don't get me wrong – there are plenty of fans of meditation music out there. Most of them, however, are not serious musicians. They are meditators. Music meditation is viewed as gimmicky, sentimental, shallow, and even soulless. People do not understand that meditation music helps people. They don't see that I am fulfilling the highest calling of an artist. I make art that makes people feel joy and peace. What could be better than that? I understand that some of the complaints that people make about meditation music are justified. I hate electronic meditation music. I find it jangly and synthetic – maybe even soulless. For me, music involves a sort of sublime interaction between musician and the instrument. If you take it away, there is no soul to the music. I make my meditation music without the use of synthesizers. It is true that I use effects pedals, loopers, flangers, and a lot of studio processing. Nevertheless, at the origin, my meditation music is based on the deeply spiritual interaction of hand, breath, and instrument. Finding the right music to meditate can be a deeply personal, and a deeply difficult process. A lot of people like Hindi songs music. They like the authenticity of it. It can be helpful to know that the chants that you are using in meditation are the same chants that people have been using for thousands of years to energize the chakras. Other people like more contemporary Celtic meditation music. This music for meditation was not originally used for this purpose. Nevertheless, because of its warm melodies and continuous flow, it really lends itself well to meditating. In fact, there is little meditating music that I like better. Of course, in my own meditation music, I like to mix it up. I use Native American flute music influences, a little bit of Celtic music, and a healthy dose of the Hindi stuff. I also use some urban contemporary influences to round things out. Some people think that my meditation songs are a mishmash, but a lot of my fans believe that it all fits together as a seamless whole. I like to think that I help people reach a higher state of spiritual consciousness. Many people have written to tell me that this is so. |
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