Ear Exercise

Here is just an interesting bit of music understanding that may be of use, at least in my opinion, yet I doubt it will interest everyone here, so ignore it. It’s about directionality acquired from our history of listening to sounds, in particular music. It has to do with the power of sound vibrations, and the sound in music that penetrates our brain and leaves an impression, and we can start by asking ourselves just what is this thing we call music? For one, it is sound and vibrations.

I became a student of what the Tibetans call ‘Liberation Through Hearing’, way back in the late 1950s and early 1960s when I discovered the Evens-Wentz translation of the “Tibetan Book of the Dead,” “The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo.” I found this book in Bob Marshal's bookstore at 211 South State Street. There it was, sitting on the shelf with its green and black cover, almost impossible for me to read and even more difficult to understand. Yet, I persevered.

Then flash-forward to 2022 and by now I have had a long and sometimes arduous introduction to the dharma, including 36 years of working closely with a high Tibetan Lama, who never spoke any English. Everything was translated, yet we became very close, nevertheless. That’s one train that’s running. 

Another, and more immediate train, also running, is my listening to music. I can hear music really well, much better than I could play it, which makes no sense. And for me, music goes into my ears and penetrates my brain in various ways. It indelibly imprints and shapes my mind.

I imagine each of us records in our brain sound that is heard, from which a thread emerges that we learn to create over time to manipulate and give us the maximum impression our mind likes, for our ears the most bang for the buck, so to speak. Let me tell you something about my love affair with the sound that we call music; Of course, you will have your own threaded history, yet all I can point out here is my own take on this. And I include examples if you have the time for a listen.

And let me ask again, what exactly is music, aside from how it is popularly described? Obviously, music is sound, a set of vibrations that we can synch with or not. We can vibrate to music and sound wavelengths and do, each of us probably quite individually, even if we all hear the same sound. It seems I crave certain sounds much like I crave certain vitamins in foods.

As far as being exposed to music, probably the most impressive music I remember came from my Catholic upbringing, church music, and the Gregorian chant, often heard at a Requiem Mass, ‘Dies Irae’ and its poem ‘Day of Wrath, O Day or Mourning.” Trust me, that dirge left a deep impression, and I could feel those vibrations. It scared the bejesus out of me, yet it was beautiful.

“Dies Irae” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDJTN8L1JT0)

It affected me as a young child. And it came from way back in the church’s history and was not joking around. For a child, this was some serious vibration. And I had a long diet of it, not only this particular chant, but ones like it. Of course, this was amplified by being taken to church each Sunday (and other times) and, as the oldest kid, wedged between my family (the little ones) and some large ladies reeking of patchouli oil. All this kid wanted was out.

Yet, despite that impressive introduction to music, I was able to shake free of it over time, or at least put it in perspective, mostly thanks to being a teenager immersed in rock n’ roll. I think it was those seventh and eighth-grade parties in somebody’s home with my schoolmates, in their rec room or down in the basement with a little 45 record player, dim lights, and actually dancing close with a girl to tunes like “Earth Angel’. This was in the mid-1950s in my American Graffiti experience. That experience was a tune-up from my Catholic heritage. How innocent was that!

And of course, the slow dancing and tunes like that were the perfect remedies for church Latin and church in general, and church on Sundays, which I got out of as soon as I could find a way. I am not a fan of organized religion. Spiritual vision and experience, of course, but compulsory attendance to church, no thank you. What were my parents thinking?

Either way, all those years my hearing was logging all this sound and already beginning to have directionality, a way that my ears liked to listen to vibrations. Just consider the training those of us from that time period underwent: Little Richard, Fats Domino, Elvis Presley, and the most powerful of all was Chuck Berry. My hearing was honed by those years to quite a fine point, without ever having to work at it. My ears went to this music school, happily. What does sound do to us in its imprinting?

And there came a time when my ears developed their own unique directionality, what they wanted to hear. They then knew what they wanted and not only took everything in but began to seek out the particular kind of music my inner brain wanted to hear. By then I was on the hunt for the music vibe my brain wanted. And here comes the individuality I mentioned. What I sought and what you seek are probably two different types. Let me tell you about mine since that’s what I have to tell.

And for reasons it might be hard to explain, I would have to resort to astrology as a descriptive language to do so. Probably best not to say too much about that just now. Suffice it to say, I find that while I am sensitive to music, at the same time I have a high tolerance for, I will say here, ‘pain’, but what I mean by pain is strong music, music that penetrates the brain, and digs deep. Blues would be an example, yet even then I gravitate to a very special kind of blues, including the bar-walking, honking and squealing of a tenor or alto saxophone, just blasting in your ears. For me the raunchier the better, sax players like Eddie Harris, Earl Bostic, Willis “Gator Tail’ Jackson, Big Jay McNeely, Rusty Bryant, Arnett Cobb, King Curtis, Illinois Jacquet and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis. You can’t get much raunchier than that.

And if we slide up into jazz, you can’t do better than Les McCann with sax player Eddie Harris and the tune “Compared to What.” What a brilliant tune! This world, compared to what? We have nothing to compare it to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCDMQqDUtv4

And my ear also hunts for the sound of the Hammond B3, and for that matter almost any free-reeds instrument. I was an amplified harmonica player myself. Back in the old days, at the end of a hard day, I could think of nothing better than a quart of beer and listening to a Hammond B3 player like Jimmie Smith (and Stanley Turrentine on sax, Kenny Burrell on guitar, and Donald Bailey on drums), something like “Back at the Chicken Shack.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuMd8ldLqxo

And if you drift into classical music, and I have very much done that, I end up with Johann Sebastian Bach and pieces like his St. John’s Passion, and there is another threatening overture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnPPANrbOOg

Or my favorite piece of Bach, his very late composition “The Art of the Fugue in D minor BWV 1080:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ_qoS1_uPA

Or clean out your ears with Bach’s Trio Sonata No.6 in G major BWV 530:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bs267MSadc

Or almost any piece of Bach.

And if that does not do it, I end up right off the charts and out of music altogether and listening to the Tibetan longhorns or even the great foghorns at sea.

The Sumburgh Fogorn (starts at 1:43)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHCmzvzCmhI

Tibetan Monks Playing the Longhorn:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1_C3TLXRlI

And last, but far from least, one of my favorite musics of all time is the Japanese Imperial Court Music, called Gagaku.

I promise, this will clean your ear-clock for you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXtez8HyUS8

And the point of all this is to say that our ears get trained by hearing so that we each seek out the vibrations that are going to tweak our brain just right. For me, it is pretty rough sounds that I like. You may be totally different, but it will be your difference that you seek out.

And I can trace my brain's music requests down to specific types of music, and specific artists that scratch that itch. And so, behind the singer and the song is ‘sound’ itself, insistently penetrating our brain like a perfect perfume.