The only music worth its salt is psychedelic..

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
there are two archetypal psychadelias. the womb and orgasm; cognitive obliteration through tranquility and through over stimulation respectively.

uk drill is revolutionary because it uses the rhythmic language of orgasm music to create womb music. despite it’s rhythmic complexity it’s sedated, lethargic and disembodied- psychedelically so. it woudln't sound out of place on driod's show amongst the daniel lanois and silky irish timbres.

 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Has anyone had a genuinely psychedelic experience via music alone?

Yes and with others present, via Guided Imagery and Music aka GIM. Ten sessions, with an intro and increasing levels of musical engagement.

Think depth psychology. Add a quiet room, comfortable seating. Start with a guided body relaxation technique run through with your practitioner/guide. Head to toe and back. Eyes closed. Commence music, details in here

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Classical, ambient, semi-new-age (bit too harsh a tag), drone. As each session's music evolves and with your eyes closed, your guide asks you to outline your internal visual world. First two sessions i felt like a child wanting the breakthrough without understanding. You think "i must be doing this wrong?". Third session. Run through the intro body relaxing (protocol is vital), but this time a different track in style played and something in my mind elevated itself instantly and vertically, like a bird. It was as if "I" shifted to "self", best language. All around you could see/sense the great rim of the world (McCarthy) combined with patterns like a Georgiana Houghton painting. You metaphorically fly around it and with it. This is as good as representation as possible, moving, always moving. The guides asks just the appropriate level of questions, not suggestions by any stretch

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When the session finishes you're asked to attempt to draw what you saw &/or felt. After the final session the guide lines up each session's drawing in a linear chronology, left to right. You can see the changes of engagement occur in your drawing as the experience deepens. Bit too personal to include the rest, all i can say is it seemed the neuropsychological epitome of Soul Flight


If you could measure cortisol levels with some clients at the start of each session and the post-session level, that'd be one thing, but it's the expression and postures of the people who go through this process, the brightness in their eyes, that twinkle of "where the hell did i just go and why do i feel this clear?". Repeated. If you'd like to try it i'd highly recommend not reading the book above, ironically, as it could add more expectation bias, but it has a superb compendium of case studies and a full discography to wet the appetite of any ears.
 

muser

Well-known member
struck me that gospel music, devotional music, soul music are all tapping into the same place as true psychedelia. The sound of an indescribable epiphany, hitting the higher plane, emotional tremors so intense they can be transferred to and immortalized in their musical expression.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
@muser, re reading the depths thread the other day I realised that a lot of the descriptive characteristics we landed on there were very relevant to psychedelia. Ideas of timelessness, the cthonic, the ancient, drone, other plains, space, transcendence, knowledge. All totally applicable here, too. No doubt in my mind that these things are all inspired by the same root source (some buried further back in the ancestral memory than others, but still a part of our collective history.) Just interpreted in wildly different ways. And all the more interesting for it.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
You can have psychedelic experiences just meditating, yet alone meditating and then listening to music. Might depend on how you define "psychedelic" though. I might mean "revelatory".
 

luka

Well-known member
If you meditate for a while beforehand, say maybe half an hour, you may become much more sensitive to such phenomena, rendering them more impactful.

What we used to do is to take a song and do a sustained intensive listening or we would nominate a person to do that listening. The song really opens out once you lay it on the operating table in that way and it reinforces just how lax we are in our everyday attentions
 

luka

Well-known member
Part of psychedelia is that very process of opening out sustained alert attention provides although I'm not sure I'd limit it to that definition
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
The phenomena of music may bring about visualizations or sensations more attributable to the psychedelic, whereas just meditating might not bring such sensations, just revelations.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Yeah also when I mean meditation, I do mean a sort of intensive stillness, sort of an unwavering focus on... the zero point of psychic being. The thing that does the surfing-across-thoughts.
 

wektor

Well-known member
Has anyone had a genuinely psychedelic experience via music alone?
YW [...] When I was practicing in my studio at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, I was able to build up these dense sounds until they were ringing in my inner ear and giving me strong hallucination effects from the resonance.

TW That seems very vivid, almost like a drug or dream—almost as though you remember the experience through the sensation of the sounds. When you say “hallucinations,” what do you mean?

YW I wasn’t taking drugs at that time. It wasn’t needed. Sound draws me into a dreamlike world, when the sound is in tune. It’s a very good effect and keeps me awake.

I'd agree to sustained alert attention - to bring the just intonation thread in, it might be a matter of harmonics and how everything in your laptop daw can easily be pitch shifted to sound exactly right?
equal temperament keeps the brain calm and soothed, compared to ie just intonation that might sound rough and usettling before you get used to it, even the harmonic ratios might sting your ears a little more than your usual.
 
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