For 15 years meditation has helped me make music, but i haven't always placed meditation and music side by side.
Sitting on a cushion, forming my hands into a Taoist or Zen-inspired position, and allowing thoughts to float by, focusing on my breath & body each morning definitely helps practice the kind of calm that also helps with playing & improvising music. But the meditation would be in the morning, and the music much later in the day. As usual, working with another breathing human is what helped me see how meditation could cuddle right up to the music creation and make a world of difference.
When my dear friend, fellow meditator, former band-mate (Young Freaks forever!), and musician extraordinaire Cora came over to Studio Panda with her Flute, we began by setting up audio equipment and setting levels, trying various placements in the room where we could both sit down, see each other, and minimize bleed between mics (not hearing too much flute in the vocal mic and vice versa). Then we discussed what we would do, and came to some agreements:
We would press record, then sit quietly and meditate.
When i felt "in the groove" of meditation, i would drone the pitch A on the Shruti box. Cora could then enter however she liked.
I would add more pitches on the Shruti eventually, and return to the lone pitch A.
The Shruti would be the last thing we hear.
Mixing this project was a new challenge for me—it sounded really great after recording, well balanced & clear (a good sign that we had mics in the right place). Our performance was focused and satisfying. So the age old question of how much processing to do was paramount—a deep reverb and delay, distortions a-plenty? Or plain? What kind of room does the listener want to be in with us as we make this music?
Further more, a question that plagued me very quickly after recording was "What is this for??" Who wants to listen to this? Is this music to accompany meditation? To calm the listener or engage the listener? Does anyone care?! My anxiety demons know just the moment to pounce.
But in meditation the goal is to be calm and engaged! The answer to all of my mixing questions lay in the process that allowed me and Cora to create so effortlessly in the first place, i need(ed) to meditate while mixing.
A year after recording with Cora, i finally sat on a cushion in my studio, put on headphones, and listened to our recording, allowing the music to influence my breath. Then i got up and made adjustments—less reverb, less low frequency in the voice, less shruti, more delay.
And eventually i rejected the binary question i started with: More effects or fewer? Both! There are two mixes for your listening pleasure.
The effected mix—simply titled "meditation no. 1"—has long delay times. The vocal is panned left, with more delay feedback to the right, and the flute is panned right, with more delay feedback to the left. The vocal has a slight chorus effect, and the shruti has a slight phaser effect. The reverb has an 8 second long decay, putting the music in a huuuge space.
The effected mix feels nice for a solo meditation, and immersion into an alternate world of sound. The plain mix, with very slight delay and no reverb, is more like what it would sound like to come hear Cora and i play this live in an art gallery or other small intimate space. One is mystic, the other realistic. To my mind, both have equal value in all their differences. I prefer the effected mix one day, the plain mix another.
Cora and i have already recorded meditation no. 2 & 3, and i look forward to sitting on my cushion, listening, and creating mixes of those improvisations to calm and engage you, my dear readers & listeners. It is such a relief for me to actually release music into the world, instead of agonizing over its worthiness, as i have done for most of my life.
There's a moving passage about practice in "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind," by Shunryu Suzuki: "....our spiritual way is not so idealistic. In some sense we should be idealistic; at least we should be interested in making bread which tastes and looks good! Actual practice is repeating over and over again until you find out how to become bread....Just to practice zazen and put ourselves into the oven is our way."
When i think this way, my anxiety demons accept the inevitable truth that if i want to become a professional recording/mixing/mastering engineer, if i want to make beautiful recordings that nourish my fellow humans, i have to practice. Over and over again, just keeping calm & engaged and putting myself into the oven.
I hope you enjoy my latest bread: meditation no. 1. Until next time, don't underthink it.
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