Music, Colors and Emotions

Here is a letter that I have been sending to researchers that I thought might be a good read for my blog.  They are my thoughts, they are not Scientific Laws or anything (so far).  Just thoughts I have
(*'s are some things I left out)

Hello, how are you?  ******************************************************************************

********************I have a thought that might help in the field of music therapy.  Here it is, I will try to keep it short.  I learned that chemicals in the brain cause emotions.  But it is more then that.  I also learned that the chemicals have electromagnetic frequencies, and different frequencies produce different emotions.  I am not sure how it works, but that is in a nutshell, for that anyways.  Now by some kind of vibratory effect, different colors produce different emotions.  There is also color therapy, which has been around since ancient times and also a type of therapy still used today.  I believe very strongly that there is a great connection between color and sound (music) effecting our emotions.   So with that much in mind, this is what I did.  I went to Handel's Water Music Suite No.  Let me tell you why I did that before I go on. 

Handel wrote that music for a very specific purpose.  King George III or II, the King of England at the time when Handel was alive, was having a very hard time.  He practically was ruling the world at the time and felt his responsibility very keenly.  He was stress, couldn’t remember things, kept making mistakes and was troubled in his sleep.  He was reading a book that his nephew James was translating, (King James Bible) He was reading in the book of Samuel I think is was and read about King Saul.  Saul was ruling a very large kingdom too, and was having much of the same problems King George was experiencing.  Saul tried every thing, even sorcery, but to no avail.  Then one of his "cabinet” said that there was a young boy who had the ability to calm people and help them feel better by playing his harp.  So Saul sent for this boy (later king David) and David played the harp and it helped Saul.  After reading this George ask if there was a “Hebrew harp healer" around.  Handel met with George and George ask him if he could do the same, and Handel said yes, and then the Water Music Suite came to be.  Now, knowing that Handel's Water Music was written to help with relaxation, calmness, concentration, memory and whatever else the king needed, I thought "now the most important and most played notes (most of the time) are the tonic and the dominate in the key. 

Let me analyze, 

Handel’s Water Music

Suite No. 1 in F Major HWV 348

The frequency of F natural (the tonic) equals the frequency of the color violet (in a different octave).  According to my data, violet is associated with inspiration and creativity.  Benefits may be, calm nerves and reduced excitement.

Suite No. 2 in D Major HWV 349

The frequency of D and green/aqua are the same.  Green is associated with peace, renewal, hope, balance, harmony, self-control, growth and life.  Benefits may be stress reduction, rest, calmness, sense of balance and harmony, normalcy, and relaxation.

Suite No. 3 HWV 350

G major – Red.  Associated with courage, strength, vitality, vigor, ambition, alertness, pioneering spirit, willpower and aggressiveness.  Benefits may be, overcome negative thoughts, a sense of power, self-confidence, settledness, and a feeling of security and safety.

The correlation between the purpose of the water music and the relative colors to the tonic note of the suites are the same.  However music has more impact or “power” then just a single note.  Music has melody, harmony, and rhythm.  I think there needs to be some exploration in music as far as, the melody, the rhythm and harmony to find out just how it effect emotions so powerfully with my theory.  I strongly believe that knowing more about what I have suggested in this letter can greatly help in the music therapy and maybe bring us to new horizons of discovery.  I also strongly believe that with a deeper and better and fuller understanding of how music affects people, composers can also be brought into the music therapy sphere. 

Thank you for your time,

*********** 

P.S.  If you have questions please reply.  I am not to good with words, so I hope that the message I wanted you to receive is what the letter states.

             

Need Help

I am not getting much feed back from my readers, I would like to know what you think of my blog.  I am having a lot of views but very very little feed back.  I think one reason why might be some people may not know how to leave a comment.  At the bottom of each post there is a comment link where you can leave a brief message of what you thought about the post or experiances that you have had with music or you can ask a question.  There is also a reaction segment at the bottom as well.  All you have to do it click on a button weither you liked, disliked, or were indifferent to the post you've read.  I also have a my email you can contact me.  It is a link you can click on, however, it takes you a window that I my self do not know how to contact people through that outlook window that pops up.  So what you might try is copy the address down, then go into your email and send me an email from there.  So please take some time and let me know what you what you think.
Thank You 

Animals and Classical Music

I would like to share some experiances that I have had with animals and Classical Music.  I wanted to see what kind of response I would get out of animals when I played music to them.  Classical (barouqe, classical, romantic) era music was the only music that made the animals have any response and some hymns too.  I didn't play a variaty of music, but the music I could.  When other music was played besides the above, there seems to be no response or a definite one at least.  But when  Beethoven, J.S. Bach, Brahms, Mozart, Handel, or Hymns, the animals just layed down and poked thier ears up as though to listen to the music activly.  Someone I know had a sheep that just arrived to it's new home one day at this persons house.  The sheep was distressed and bleating very much and was pacing it's stall anxiously.  I suggested to them to play some classical music for it and see what happens.  When the music was played the sheep did not make another noise and layed down and seemed calm.  It would walk around abit, but mostly lay.  I witnessed it first hand, it was remarkable.  If you are wondering, the music played for the sheep what Handel's Water Music Suites.  Handel wrote that music for the King of England to help him calm down and to think and to remember better when he was feeling his resposibility of his possition very keenly of being the king.  I have a couple of older post that talk about Handel's Water Music titled,  "Handel and Healing", and "Words and Water Music" if you would like to learn more.

Bach and Black Birds

One day I was in my bedroom, which has a large tree just out side my window, I notice a group of black birds in the tree and on the ground.  I have lived around black birds all my life and have noticed that they bicker and squall with each other more then any other birds I have seen  they might of been starlings, the two look much alike.  Which ever they were they were, as usual, bickering with each other and picking at the ground and what ever else it is that birds do.  I then had a thought about the story with the whales Dr. Ballam talks about.  Let me quote "In 1968 a group of Beluga Whales were trapped of the shore of the Bering Strait under a blanket of ice. The winter had been more severe than usual, and the ice had formed quickly to entrap these remarkable endangered creatures of the deep under an icy barrier. Being mammals, they needed to surface regularly to breath, and in doing so found themselves trapped under a solid wall with no ability to get oxygen. The whales faced the potential for annihilation. Scientists and wildlife conservationists from the Soviet Union and Great Britain sent mighty ice breaking machines to open the way for the whales to get oxygen. They were successful in their mission to break the ice, but in doing so the whales had become frightened and submerged to the bottom of the sea to get away from the horrible sound of the ice crusher. They stayed on the bottom until some began to die. The scientists and conservationists thought of a way to bring them to the surface. They concurred that whales sing to each other through miles of open sea. In fact water is a better conductor of sound waves than air. Whales can communicate by song for upwards of 200 miles. They determined to “pipe” sound into the water in the hopes that the whales would find it interesting and follow it. They began by playing gentle lute music which had little or no effect on the whales. They tried American Jazz thinking the more sophisticated rhythms might stimulate their interest. It had no effect. In desperation they determined to blast heavy metal rock music into the depths of the deep. In doing so, the whales submerged deeper into the icy abyss. Someone had the ingenuity to try some Beethoven. For some reason the whales came forth following the music to survival."  So I wanted to play some music for the birds to see what response I would get out of them.  I played a Brandenburg Concerto, I believe it was #5.  Something very extraordinary happened.  In a few seconds it caught there attention and they started to just stand there and look around.  After a moment or two they went back to what they were doing.  It was very interesting to see them not fighting anymore when one would accidentally bump into the other or get to close to another one eating something.  They seems to just get along.  A feeling of peace came over me and the birds.  I can't describe it but I felt just a wonderful presence of peace that came about me.  Occasionally when a black bird or starling came from somewhere else and landed in the little flock it would squabble with a few then realize the music was playing and then looked around for it and then went about its business in a peaceful manner as the birds that were already there. It was the oddest thing I have ever seen in a group of that type of birds that I am so use to seeing bickering with each other.

New Info Michael Ballam is Sharing

I came across some info on http://www.ufoc.org/ that Michael Ballam compiled.  They are people's testimonials, including school teachers, about what they have experiance with playing classical music in there homes and classrooms.  here is a direct link to them
http://www.ufoc.org/index.php?p_resource=about_ballam_music_testimonials
I also found some other info about music, much like what I have already shared in my blog.  the link to that is, http://www.ufoc.org/index.php?p_resource=about_ballam_music  hope you learn something new!