From dasanu@interaccess.comThu Dec 15 20:06:38 1994 Date: Thu, 15 Dec 1994 16:09:23 -0600 From: Dasanudas Adhikari To: sustag-principles@ces.ncsu.edu, Joerg Khalid Bashir Subject: Observed Effects of Justly-intoned Music Psychophysiological Effects of Justly-intoned Music Copyright (c) 1994 by Dasanudas Adhikari All Rights Reserved. Background Justly-intoned music uses intervals or scale-tones derived from the harmonic series. The harmonic series is found in nature in every kind of vibration, from earthquakes to X-rays, and in the sound of the human voice and musical instruments. Every vibration (except for certain special kinds of "noise") is composed of one or more fundamental frequencies, each accompanied by a series of harmonic frequencies, or harmonics for short. These harmonics alter the sonic perception of a tone and therefore carry information about the source of the tone. For example, the harmonics give a musical tone its timbre, allowing us to tell the difference between a bassoon and a trumpet playing the same note. Similarly, differences in the relative amplitude of the harmonics distinguish the various vowel sounds of human speech. The frequencies of the harmonics fall exactly at integral multiples of the fundamental. Thus, if one plays a note at 100 Hz (about low B flat beneath the bass clef), the harmonics will appear at precisely 200 Hz, 300 Hz and so forth. A musical scale made up solely of intervals appearing in the harmonic series of its fundamental tone, with a preference for intervals using lower-numbered ratios, is called justly-intoned. Just intonation or just temperament was the style of tuning of all ancient music, both eastern and western. Western music adopted equal temperament, a mathematical compromise designed to facilitate modulation on keyboard instruments, around the time of Bach. The ancients ascribed sacred significance to justly-intoned musical intervals because of their cosmic universality. The Vedic civilization, for example, was quite aware of the inner harmonic structure of timbre, and felt that the various harmonic intervals symbolized the sacred emotions of love for Godhead. Thus justly-intoned music was a central element in Vedic colleges of sacred lore. The ancient Greeks expressed similar ideas as found in the writings of Pythagoras and others. Interestingly, over the past few years a movement back towards just temperament has begun, mostly on the basis of the more pleasurable sound of justly-intoned music. However, this music has more profound benefits that are not readily apparent to the direct observation of the senses. My own research work, performed in 1968-71, observed definite improvements in the state and performance of various living beings by exposure to justly-intoned music. First Series of Experiments My experimental work began by exposing simple plants to various kinds of sound vibrations and measuring the results. I worked with sprouts because they grew fast and were easy to design experiments for. I exposed various kinds of seeds to a wide variety of music available on commercial recordings and measured the germination rate, sprouting time, growth rate, rate of weight gain, chlorophyll content and time to second-stage growth (appearance of leaves). To briefly summarize, after a large number of trials I was able to determine several statistically significant trends in the data: 1. Plants exposed to early styles of music did better than those exposed to modern music or controls exposed to no music at all. 2. Plants exposed to Vedic and other justly-intoned music did better than other categories. 3. Plants exposed to Vedic devotional chanting and Gregorian chants did best of all. I repeated the same series of trials with animals (goats and cows) and got roughly analogous results. Things got really interesting when I extended the experiments to people. My principal measurement tools were the short form of the Stanford-Benet IQ test, and the common Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test (MMPI), both of which I had extensive experience using in advertising research focus groups. I also utilized simple task-oriented psychological tests, such as pegboard insertion and pattern-matching trials, for baseline establishment and to give the subjects something to do while listening to the music. I got very similar results to the previous trials. People who listened to modern styles of music, regardless of their musical preferences, did uniformly worse on the psychological tests than people who listened to ancient styles or Vedic justly-intoned music. Upon reviewing the results of my experiments I was faced with a conundrum. Several of them, in fact: 1. First of all, how do plants respond to music when they have got no ears or other sense organs to recognize sound vibrations? Standard biological theory thus provided no means to explain the results of my experiments. Can music influence living beings by some means other than the directly produced sound vibrations? 2. Next, according to standard psychological theories of aesthetics, a person should derive the maximum amount of benefit from music that they subjectively like. However, I found that an individual's subjective preferences had little or nothing to do with their responses to the music. Hence, the results I experienced could not be predicted or explained by modern psychology. I searched throughout the literature and could not find any suitable answers in conventional theories of aesthetics or the philosophy of creativity, art and music. What theory could explain the observed species-independent objective effects of justly-intoned music? 3. Finally, if modern music was proven to be less beneficial than other styles, and even less beneficial than silence, this means that modern music contains some actually harmful qualities or poisonous properties. Conversely, if ancient styles of music are proven to be more beneficial, they contain some life-nourishing ingredient. What is that ingredient and how has it become changed or polluted in modern music? Why does modern society produce and propagate such harmful music, and what can be done to rectify the situation? Second Series of Experiments My next series of experimental trials addressed question #3 mentioned above. I began by studying the fundamentals of Vedic music with an expert teacher, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. After thoroughly understanding the fundamentals of Vedic music, I then broke the music into its structural components, isolating the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic aspects of Vedic music from each other. I made recordings of these components using various instruments. Finally, I made a new set of experimental trials on plants and people. The results of these trials showed that, while all the elements of Vedic music showed some beneficial results, the least of these were from the influence of the rhythm. A greater proportion of benefit was obtained from the melody alone, but the greatest by far was derived from the harmonic aspect of Vedic music. I then concluded that the element of Vedic music most responsible for the beneficial effects I had observed was its harmonic structure. Someone may object that Vedic classical music has no harmonic chord structure, only a single-line melody over a sustained drone. This is true, however the harmony I refer to here is precisely the relationship between the melody note and the drone. In order to check this conclusion I made two identical series of recordings of early Western classical piano pieces, one using conventional Western equal-temperament intonation, and the other using the integral harmonic values of Vedic classical music. When used in experimental trials, the piano that was tuned to Vedic scale intervals produced almost the same beneficial result as pure Vedic classical music during the first set of trials. My theory and interpretation of the previous experimental results were thus confirmed. The main difference between the Vedic classical tuning and Western equal temperament is in the ratios used to calculate the harmonic intervals between notes. In Western music, this is a mathematical compromise developed around the time of J.S. Bach, wherein each octave is divided into 12 equal half-steps (hence the name "equal temperament"). However, the Vedic scale follows the ancient traditional practice of deriving the scale tones from the harmonic series of the tonic or bass tone. Since the harmonic series is fundamental to the structure of every vibration in the universe (no pun intended), it is a far more universal and cosmically significant basis for calculating the intonation of musical artistic sound vibration, especially if the music is intended for use in worship or other sacred applications. I therefore concluded that because the Vedic classical intonation is derived from a fundamental characteristic of the universe, namely the harmonic series, it automatically produces better results upon living beings than a system born in the limited mind of a human being, no matter how intelligent. The subject of the derivation, use and significance of the scale-tones of Vedic music is extraordinarily profound, complex and meaningful. As such, it is beyond the scope of this short summary paper and is treated at some length in my papers "Sabda Brahma" and "Sapta Svara". . . . Dasanudas Adhikari was a child prodigy in physics and music. After turning down a full scholarship to MIT in Nuclear Physics, he went on to become a successful composer and producer of film and television scores. Later, after becoming aware of the therapeutic properties of sacred Vedic chants, he went to India and was initiated as a Vaisnava monk in the Brahma-sampradaya. He currently resides in Chicago. For more information on this subject, contact Dasanudas Adhikari at dasanu@interaccess.com Your ever well-wisher, Dasanudas Adhikari, Congregational Development Minister, ISKCON Chicago ------------------------------------------------------------------ ISKCON: The International Society for Krsna Consciousness Founder-Acarya: His Divine Grace A.C. 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