THE MUSICIAN OF THE SILENCE.
By: Alexia Parks (RAPID Evolution,The Washington Post,)
International award-winning film composer and singer Ocean Summer 's latest song, New Time, is included in the soundtrack of the wildly popular bio-feedback video game, The Wisdom Quest from the Wild Divine. The video and New Time soundtrack features Deepak Chopra, who has sold more than 30 million books and CDs worldwide.
What makes the voice and music of Ocean Summer unique is that he can hold a frequency, a resonating new tone that can enter the consciousness of people and resynchronize their body, mind and soul to the same frequency.
Ocean Summer’s music has also gained international awards. His soundtrack for "Sita: the Girl of Jambu" won the Best Score and Best Feature Documentary at the Moondance International Film Festival, in Hollywood at the Raleigh Studios and 2 nominations for Emmy Award for Best composer for the PBS show “The Water Edge”.
In a recent interview, Ocean Summer describes his work this way:
When I'm working at my keyboard in my studio, I notice everything about the music that I'm composing: the frequency of the harmony, the color, and the wave. In creating a soundscape for film, I first imagine myself inside a temple, then create a palate of sound and color. I see sound as color all the time.
Where do I find my inspiration for music? I feel music in everything, everywhere. When I enter a room, I catch the energy of music and start to sing it or play it on the keyboard. At first, I smell things, and then I get the feeling of the room and the play of light. I experience a room through my feelings. If I like something, I move toward it: the picture, the color, an object, a person and I'm happy.
For example, I look at an oriental rug hanging on a wall, I experience it as peaceful, so I start to create some oriental music in my mind. I sense the rug's Middle Eastern vibration. As I enter the vibration, I begin an inner journey…, a sound journey. There is a pyramid, and sand. I might put some drums and rhythm into it for singing and dancing. Then the pyramid becomes a tunnel that transports you someplace else. My work is different from most composers. Most musicians work from sheet music. They work to perfect the melody. By contrast, I work to catch the silence between the notes. I create a color and sound palette from this silence. I care about the sound and feelings and emptiness where one can listen to the voice of the Divine. I don't worry about the melody that goes on top… a flute, for example. Have you experience a massage in a beautiful spa,,and you hear a healing Cd ..but with the piano...sometime..you hear more the musician’s skill then the harmonic of its soul. So i let the music unfold.....
The sound I work with is a higher frequency. You know, "In the beginning was sound… then the Word." It's a universal sound because everything that is placed on top of it is a personal (human) choice.
In crafting a soundscape, I use a harmonic structure, a wave form. I create this really long note, a long frequency. In a sense, it mimics the biggest sound frequency we have on the planet, the sound of a whale. The sound of a whale, in fact, can be heard over one hundred miles. Other whales connect to this sound wave and can be re-united …. So I work with this frequency, i blend their sounds, haunting melodies with my voices. We enter in the more primal sound of the Universe that is a resonant frequency of hundreds of millions of miles.
The sound OM, for example, is an original, primal sound. However, it's only a tiny bit of what frequencies can be detected in the Cosmos. Technically, it's impossible to hear the sound of the Cosmos. It's too vast to detect. So I call it the Silent Sound.
Yet that silent sound is captured by some churches, temples and pyramids that use the principles of sacred geometry in their design. In these structures, the silent sound of the Cosmos is carried throughout the building. The sound is carried by the air, the structure amplifies it and spirals it into the body of the people. You step inside, and instantly feel a sense of peace and oneness with the Divine.
I guess you could call me the musician of the silence, of the I AM. In my work, I have to be very creative with the use of high technology and powerful computers such as Apple G5, Logic audio, 1000's of samples and many keyboards like Korg (named Karma..) to create this virtual temple, this algorithmic reverb.
When I gaze out over a beautiful field of lavender, or perhaps roses, I feel a beautiful sound moving across it that touches my soul. It's a soft sound. I turn this silent sound into music.
When I begin to compose, I draw upon the natural sounds of the Earth. I use wave and ocean sounds, and wind through the trees. I use voices too. I use the London Symphony Choir, for example, and stretch it, and merge it with natural sounds and my voice and it becomes a new sound. It cannot be distinguished as nature or as human.
In my music, I use a new tone, a high frequency sound that comes through me. It's a resonating sound that can enter the consciousness of people and resynchronize their body, mind and soul to the same frequency. It's the frequency of the heart. It's the voice of the Hathors.
About 10 years ago, the voice of the Hathors began coming through me. Because it was such a high frequency, I began to practice it in places with unique acoustics – like tunnels or large rooms, such as the Post office in Santa Fe, or a special garage in Boulder Colorado. I also began studying about the Hathors and their ancient civilization in Egypt. I learned about temples that were designed to resonate at a certain frequency and this sound – the sound of the Hathors - would enter into the consciousness of the people. So this is what I do. I also use a combination of sound and voice to create a lot of emotional texture to the music.
I want the listener to have an emotional experience; I don't want an intellectual experience. I want to take them on a new journey, or to experience a new space. Because of this, my music doesn't work with music for violent movies or violent, action-oriented video games.
Music can also be an element of war. And there are different instruments associated with it. The Irish, for example, marched off to war with the bagpipe. The call of the trumpet mobilized the Calvary, and the sound of the trumpet was used to mobilize the soldiers to destroy the Indians. The drum was used by the Indians to elevate a tribal urge for survival. Today, music is used in sports arenas to create solidarity in support of one team against another. One team will win; the other will lose.
Now we are at a crossroads for humanity. We need to create new music to be at peace on the Earth. We need to consciously change the frequency of music to create more harmony. Peaceful music creates a deep sense of harmony in the human heart.
Because I am a peacemaker, I try to use music in a different way… to create peace. You could say that I'm creating the music for the future.
How do I do this? I love to use the beat of drumming for dancing. Drumming should be used for dancing and not for arming people to hurt each other. The civilizations that can evolve this type of music will be more peaceful and oriented toward laughter, dancing, and love.
The heart, in fact, is a drum. Our heart beat is around 60 beats per minute. If music is able to touch our heart, it engages our inner music. The energy of heart-paced music is that of love and romance. It is soft music that mimics the beat of the heart. The heartbeat, of course, is our first natural rhythm. If we can synchronize music with the heart, that is, music that touches and heals the heart, we will change the frequency of the planet. We will become a planet of peace, not war. As we slow down the music to bring it closer to the symphony of silence, this will also slow down and open the heart to love.
To do this will take a major change. Today's society is based on speed, so the music is fast-paced and loud. Commercials are even louder. They wake you up; shake you up. The quality of MP3 music is even less oriented toward natural rhythms. This is because its compression carries less frequency so you can hear the highs and lows in music, but not the sub harmonic frequencies. This is also true of the typical CD. It has pieces of music missing. Right now, CDs are recorded at 44.1 kilohertz. Like the IPOD, the sound is compressed so that what we hear are the base and high sounds. The IPOD diet is really low in harmonic nutrients. The harmony in the middle is missing. We hear the songs, but they don't reach the soul.
Today, it's rare for people to have access to music with a full range of harmony. However, live concerts offer this. And happily, new technology like Blue Ray technology is reversing this compression trend; by expanding musical sound to 192 kilohertz, or more. It's moving in the direction of the Cosmos to pure sound and Real HD music.
My musical journey is in the direction of the Cosmos. I don't work with people who are creating movies that focus on duality: men hurting women, people hurting each other. Bad boy, good girl, that's the old formula. It's an old recipe that's used to destroy everything because it's easier to create fears, separation, destroy, blow up, than to build up. Our entertainment Economy has been base on that for too, too ..long. I wish that all of the trillions of dollars spent on war or violent movies can be spent on amazing composers and directors/writers who can make a difference and bring a new reality. I also wish they would stand for what they believe and create beautiful movies from their authentic artistry and dreams and not sell their soul for an old economic paradigm. Today there is finally more money being invested to support conscious movies about oneness and Peace.
The future world is the world of unity and beauty. It's a frequency that is at one with Peace. Because of this, I want to work with people who are changing the planet consciousness and walk the talk. I want to work with the aura, the crystal energy to make soundscapes for movies that can touch the public without doing violence. That's why I am so happy to have Deepak Chopra focus his amazing consciousness on my music.
If we can create beautiful music and beautiful movies, our theatres will become temples, so people, millions of people can experience the same frequency, the same emotions and feelings. It won't be a mental thing – a movie that you will see and forget two days later. It will be a movie which engages the emotions. The sound and emotions and movie will anchor you and stay with you for a long time. There is precedent for this. The original movie theatres were built more like Egyptian temples. They carried the visual imagery of Maxfield Parrish, and of temples and cathedrals. They were the churches of oneness.
In truth, I want Hollywood to become Holy-wood. We have to become holy again. Our movies can be used to teach awareness and beauty and show that we are all One on this Blue Planet.
In this newly emerging reality, all we really need is love and to allow our inner ear to listen to the music of the new Earth Heart. Can you imagine? Can you hear? A new music is born.
Ocean Summer Artist Heartist, Singer, Composer of The New Earth.
