Ananda Sound Travels

Why sound...my altar...my prayer

2008-02-19T08:37:00.000-08:00

For me, although voice is my first instrument, sound is more than singing.
It is drumming and chiming and striking and stroking and plucking..

I sound because it is my spiritual practice.
I sound because it nourishes my soul and makes it glow.
I listen deeply to the known and the mystic and
I sound to give 'voice' to the sonic mysteries swirling through the cosmos.
Sounding gives me roots to ground and wings to soar.
Sound brings me back to harmony when I am out of tune.
Sound brings me balance.
It reaches out to all the places I have stretched myself and offers
an alchemical container where I can return to my peace in the chaos.
Life is my altar and my body is not a temple to sit with hard, structured
boundaries unused waiting for a moment of occasional spirit ritual.
My body is my instrument. Constantly tuning and adjusting to life's symphony.
I chant it. I dance it. I sing it. I make mad passionate love to it. I breathe it.

Sound is my song, it is my dance, it completes me.

Sonic Blissings, Anny

Celebrating Light

2007-12-06T07:41:00.000-08:00

I'm a spiritual vagabond. Yes. I admit it out loud and in public. My defection from traditional religion, started early. At ten I could recite mass by heart while the priest read it out of a book. I found little or no sacredness in the rituals but, as a saving grace, loved the music and sang in the choir for many years. Today, my belief structure is a cosmic soup of shamanic-wiccan-pagan Buddhism and ideas that freely roam beyond any tradition. However, this medley becomes extremely awkward when trying to find meaning in those compulsory, statutory holidays that, I find, are founded on old paradigms and outdated symbology. When it comes to holidays, I prefer to celebrate the natural rhythms and magic of Mother Earth over Santa any day.

For spiritual nomads like me, it is consistently difficult to enter and enjoy the most celebrated holiday in our modern culture: Christmas. Despite the fact that a large segment of the population does not observe this Christian celebration, there is an arrogant assumption among the celebrants that everyone is supposed to be automatically happy. Individuals who have their own reasons for not acknowledging Christmas are constantly being told to "have a merry one." This attitude presents an unrealistic expectation that everyone should indulge in merriment, regardless of faith or secular persuasion. It is a strong argument that this pressure to experience joy on demand is a major factor in the crescendo of depressions and suicides every December.

Regardless of religious affection, all spiritual paths are paths to enlightenment. In this regard, drawing on the wisdom of traditional spiritual practices as well as personal experiences, we would do well to celebrate the one thing that human beings have in common..OUR LIGHT. After all, it's important to focus on the love that draws people together rather than on an ideology that pulls people apart.

If we want to honour our Light, a good starting point might be one of the oldest seasonal festivals: Winter Solstice. For about six days in late December the Sun appears to rise and set at almost exactly the same places, it appears to be 'standing still'. The word Solstice means 'standing still sun'. The northern hemisphere is leaning furthest away from the sun making our daylight shorter and putting the sun in it's lowest arch in the sky, giving us shorter days and longer, darker nights.
Solstice itself, transcends religious ideology, it is a simple astronomical fact and it was celebrated by ancient people everywhere in the world for some 1,600 years before the birth of Christ. Christians were quick to appropriate the ancient festivals into their own calendar of holy days. Christmas was deliberately timed to coincide with Winter Solstice because they are both times to celebrate the birth of light and to affirm our hope for renewal of the world. Many of the familiar Christmas traditions have more to do with Winter Solstice than with Christian doctrine. Mixing the two served to popularize the Christian festival as well as preserve some of the ancient Solstice traditions.

Festivals are times of singing, dancing and laughter. They are times when the child inside each of us is allowed to come out and play. They are times when old and young find a bond. They are times when we return to the simple truths at the heart of life.

I envision a seven day festival starting on Winter Solstice. Why a seven day festival? Well, I believe there are seven qualities to our inner shining. Seven is a number that, throughout the world, is associated with spirit, wisdom, sacredness and wholeness. It is the most frequently mentioned number in all our planet's spiritual as well as historical documents. Seven levels are universal. For instance, there are seven waves of light (gamma, xray, ultraviolet, visible, infrared, micro and radio), seven chakras with seven circles of sound, seven colours in the rainbow, seven notes in a scale, seven endocrine glands in the body, seven holes in the human head. There are many more examples that would surely fit an entire page.
Relative to our inner light, we might say there are seven specific qualities. Giving a name to each essence is a delicate exercise. Many of us search for words and labels for experiences as if, by giving them a name, we make them more real. Sometimes, by the very act naming, we rob some of its authentic essence and render it meaningless. All words have an energy. So often we use words callously, tossing them out into the world and creating a clutter of verbiage which, in the end, does not serve us but leaves us frustrated. However, if we pay attention to the energy of our words, they become a powerful means to express a particular essence. Love, is a word tossed about quite regularly. Close your eyes and feel the word love. Say it out loud. Feel it inside of you....it’s there. That’s what we yearn for and when you can find that in yourself, you can find it in anyone or anything.

It could be said that Inner Light is characterized by Love, Bliss, Wisdom, Peace, Freedom, Creativity and Unity. During the seven day festival, there could be wondrous things to celebrate, including Christmas for those who chose to. However a person chooses to honour this cycle, the most important thing would be to remember the seven qualities of Inner Light and to emulate them in whatever way is comfortable. One possible ritual, if you wish to celebrate your inner light amongst friends and family, is to write the seven qualities of Light on pieces of paper. Place them in a container and pass it around, each person taking one. Going around the circle, have each person express the quality they have chosen.

Another idea, if you choose to do this ritual on your own, is to take one day for one quality throughout the seven days. Spend some contemplative time each day on that quality. You can mark the occasion by lighting a candle and reciting something like: "I honour my inner light by bringing 'wisdom' into my life in the present moment." Write down your thoughts on each quality and save it. The next year, repeat the ritual and, on the last day of the festival, go back to your thoughts of the previous year and note how your perspective has changed and grown in that year.

Another possible Solstice celebration is to honour the birth a different spiritual master or the emergence of a personal miracle for each day. Use your creative imagination and have fun. Ritual is the act of consciously opening ourselves to the presence of Spirit and puts our lives in perspective. Ceremony is our opportunity to personalize that connection. We can each approach it in different ways, using different tools and settings, borrowing from diverse traditions and creating a little of our own imagination cooking up a ceremonial concoction that fits our unique being.

However you choose to celebrate your light this holiday season, I wish you much love and light. May you glow brilliantly. Blissings.

© 2002 Anny Fyreagle

Overtone Harmonics

2007-11-13T09:23:00.000-08:00

We hear sound as a whole experience, body, mind and spirit. When a note or tone is sounded, either instrumentally or vocally, we hear more than the fundamental note.
Overtones, or harmonics are a series of barely audible tones that originate from the fundamental note, creating harmonies.
The word ‘harmony’ was originally defined as a tension of opposites creating a whole. What would that sound like? If you were to strike a key on the piano to create a sound, a string would vibrate. If you looked closely, you would see that the tension causes other strings to resonate in harmony to the original string.
The complementary strings follow a pattern called the ‘harmonic series’ which was originally discovered by Pythagoras. The harmonic series, also known as the golden mean, follows mathematical proportions that can be found in the structures of all life; in sound, music, the human body, planetary orbits, in the sacred architecture of Egypt, Rome and Athens to the way in which leaves are spaced on a tree. Harmony represents the innate perfection at the very core of life.
An overtone defines the depth, timbre (acoustic quality) and colour of a sound. It is like when light passes through a prism or crystal and what is reflected on the surface is a beautiful rainbow.
The beauty of overtones is noticeable when you hear two voices singing the same tone. The same frequency will sound different because each singer’s overtone structure will be unique to them. It is like a genetic blueprint, a voiceprint which can be heard even when we are speaking.
The human body is a resonating chamber waiting to be sung. A singer can develop their overtones with a variety of techniques such as sustained toning, adjusting the shape of the vocal chamber and placement of the sound in the head or throat.

Benefits of Overtones
~ Gives the body an internal sound massage
~ Harmonizes body, mind and spirit
~ Develops a fuller more resonate presentation voice
~ Gives us an opportunity to surrender to the sublime bliss of sound
Overtones are a wonderful way to make your sound more resonant.
~ Sonic Blissings, Anoushka

© 2004 Anny Fyreagle

Time Flies, Sound Travels

2007-11-05T13:19:00.000-08:00

Wow! Time Flies and Sounds Travels.....Earthdance was wonderful....it was surreal...I was just talking to a participant today and I was telling her that I honestly don't remember it. I was it a sort of in a bubble and everything that was happening around me. She said that often happens when we are the organizer of an event. Pictures will be up soon on the website and I'll brave the video edits, I promise.

Creatively I feel like I'm ready to burst into something new and I will have a new stage/pen name to bring with me. In fact it's a very old name, an old family name, the one my mom calls me, Anoushka. It carries with it some of that old gypsy ancestry we recently found. I've always felt somewhat alone in this journey and this makes me a little more connected. It's a nice sentiment. It brings a whole new energy to my creative presence and I'm looking forward to all the positive vibrations that will ripple out.

With more time on my hands, I'll be blogging more....Sonic Blissings, Anoushka

Giving into the Music

2007-06-20T10:20:00.000-07:00

What happens when we give into the music?

Last week I had a phone with Cindy, who asking me about sound, healing and voice. After our conversation, something happened. Suddenly she could hear the music.

Cindy: My Fan in my bedroom sings to me now. I started to hear it after we talked. It is a two tone melody. Like a choir

I adore hearing stories like this. It's as if, suddenly, you've uncovered the veil and see, or in this case hear a whole new universe. The one that is making music all around you.

I explained that when you 'tune into' the sounds that surround you, you entrain to them, you find their 'groove'. When sound becomes a rhythm and rhythm becomes a pattern, you have music.

Cindy: If I just listen, I just hear it and it's going back and forth but when I relax I actually hear the music. I can't hear the music all the time though, just when I give into it. But the fan does have it's own music right?

Yes it does. Of course it does. Anything that vibrates on a molecular level makes sound. The fan is moving air which is creating sound. It becomes music when you can hear it's patterns.

Cindy: I swear it actually sounds like a huge church choir, it's volumes is tremendous. It sings me to sleep

Anny: Think of it as the Universe signing you a lullabye

Cindy: It's lovely, now I will start seeing what else I can hear. Thanx, for opening me to the music!

And THAT...is music to my ears!

2007-06-01T17:42:00.000-07:00

a song can shift a mood...instantly
it can bring peace........effortlessly
A song can stir your soul.
Bring a tear to your eye.
Move your spirit to dance.

A song can enfold your heart.

When I’m not listening to music, people that know me well ask me if I’m okay. Yet, people laugh when I say that I’m addicted to sound. After four years of making sound in therapeutic and ritual situations suddenly, circumstances gave me a dry spell. I listen to music constantly and yet no amount of playing music on my stereo, discman or computer filled a need inside me that was aching for attention. I asked my mentor, a wise man, why regular music couldn’t replace my need for live, organic sound and his answer was “good question!” Turns out he’s a wise guy.

And like the dedicated sound explorer that I am, off I trekked in search of an answer.
While spelunking through nooks and crannies, I discovered the three Rs on a cave wall. No, not reading, writing and rithemtic (whoever came up with that obviously hadn’t mastered the writing yet). The three Sound Rs....
• Ritual • Resonance • Receptivity

Of course! Suddenly it all made sense to me. Rituals are created out of seemingly simple things. We create ritual by focusing our attention to a set time and space. Ritual becomes our cycles in life. We all have our morning ritual that we follow and like all things in life, even our rituals flow and change into new ones constantly. Sound becomes ritual when we set aside the time for its practice. It reaches us when we set aside the stresses of everyday life, turn off the computers, televisions and cell phones and allow ourselves to be moved into the bliss of sound’s offering. Through ritual, we connect to the spirit, the miracle that gives us life. It’s our direct plug-in to the Universe (One Song).

Resonance takes us back to the basic physics. Our bodies are a collection of molecules bumping into each other in space creating a mass. We are actually 90% space. The kinetic energy of these active molecules creates vibrations. The essence of sound is vibratory and our physical bodies are vibratory. Our skin is a perfect medium for sound receptivity. When we listen to sound, our bodies get a vibratory massage which can be easily felt with a buffalo drum. When our body vibrations blend with sound we create our own unique songs.

Receptivity requires deep listening. Our receptivity increases when we are in ritual space. We tune our listening ears, our listening hearts and our listening bodies to the caresses of sonic expression that we make and receive. With our attention focused on sound making we become more aware of the harmonies, dissonances and blends with the sound of others.
Engaging in the three Sound Rs is an extra ordinary experience. On a regular basis it can definitely become addictive. But I can’t think of a better addiction to have than sonic bliss.

~ Sonic Blissings, Anoushka

Less is More

2007-04-28T17:22:00.000-07:00

I've spent a weekend immersed in sound. Friday night I went to a concert of crystal bowls, paiste gongs and a variety of instruments. What struck me, literally, was that vast soundscapes one can paint with just two, or sometimes even one instrument.

Another very striking thought was that there is an invisible quality to true music, that which sets music apart from simply noise and that is blending. It a challenging concept to explain but it allows each individual sound to be uniquely different and yet they are all part of everything else that is going on. THAT is what I listen for.

This struck me again Saturday afternoon listening to a master didjeridoo player at a didj workshop. With what to most people is nothing but a hollow log and a simple rattle, he took me on a journey that set the mood for the entire afternoon. I felt the sound move me. Not the outside of me. The inside of me. That's where I was listening from.

When we listen from that place deep inside us, we can find where we need to be, what we need to be doing. That place is where we find our true selves. Some of us can hear from this place. Some of us hear it and ignore it. Some of us hear it, acknowledge and carry on with 'real' life and some of us don't hear it all, which would be a very sad life.

I've enjoyed my weekend sonic 'vacation' immensely and hope to do it again soon. It was very refreshing for my soul.

Sonic Blissings, Anny

© April, 2007 Anny Fyreagle

Circle Singing

2007-04-28T06:43:00.000-07:00

Creating circles of sound is one of the most intuitive ways of making music. Circle singing is part of an oral tradition that dates back centuries to tribal gatherings where an elder would start with a sound or a phrase and inspire the whole community to join in. The rhythmic repetition of the sounds is what gives the songs their circular shape and chantlike structure making them uplifting and intoxicating, drawing the listener inside the music.

In my case the elder was vocal genius Bobby McFerrin and the experience was 5 days of sonic intoxication. Truth, beauty and love in a space where laughter filled the air like the scent of a nightblooming jasmine and tears flowed the river of joy and lament. Connections were made without words ever being spoken. We knew each other before we sat down at the same table for lunch. We sang for peace. We sang for freedom. We sang for creativity. We sang for grace. We sang for unity. We sang for love. And we sang in bliss. All qualities in the light of human spirit. And, yes, we glowed.

The key elements of Circle Singing are movement and listening. It is simply impossible to stand still while Circle Singing. Impossible! Listening, ah, blessed listening requires every ounce of effort you can muster up. You’ll need it. There will be a lot going on and you need to hear it all. Then as Miles Davis used to say, 'listen for what is not there' and you will find your part.

Circle singing is one of the simplest and most direct ways to build community. History shows us that singing in community is exceptionally powerful. You get people together in a room and get them singing and you instantly knock down all the walls – the creeds, the gender, age and race differences, the hierarchies, everything. You become one at that point, lifting your voices.

You release your mind and rely on body-based impulses that provide a perfect container into which ambiguous thoughts and feelings can be externalized and transformed using the symbolic language of sound. We tune into our ability to surrender control and trust with openness.

Circle Singing is about submitting to the music that is encoded in our bones, the music that comes directly from the spirit of life. It puts us in the moment, resonating with the life that surrounds us. Circle singing resonates into all parts of our life, in how you listen, blend, stand out find your groove or surrender to yourself.

“Singing without words makes one song a thousand songs because the people who hear it can bring their own stories into it.”
~ Bobby McFerrin

© 2007, Anny Fyreagle

Improvising in Sound and Life

2007-04-25T09:20:00.000-07:00

Sound vibrations surround us continously and can affect our thoughts, feelings and how we experience the world. Stop for just a moment and listen to the sounds around you. Notice their affect...are the calming, neutral or irritating?
For millenia rhythm, melody, and harmony have as natural as breathing and talking. For centuries the world over we have created music around our work, celebrations, and ritual. Our songs can moderate our passions or shatter the energy around us. They can reduce stress, provide comfort, create joy and wonder. They balance us and brings us into harmony with our surroundings.
Improvised sound is a dance with the unknown. It calls to all of our senses using body-based impulses, providing a perfect container into which obscure thoughts and feelings can be externalized and transformed through a symbolic language. We dive in with complete surrender and reclaim the hidden heart, the voice of the self, the innocence and imagination of a child who had no qualms about creating reality. I marvel constantly at the weaving of childrens’ improvised tales of mermaids, princesses and dancing bears.
As a natural element, improvised sound allows us the freedom to call out with rapture, grief, terror and bliss without engaging the thinking mind. It offers us a safe space to approach the unknown with curiosity and teaches us to trust that the path will be revealed.
It is about listening and exploring the dynamics of our inner music, putting us in the pregnant moment of the now, and resonating with the life that surrounds us bringing us into harmony. We surrender to the music that is genetically encoded in our bones.
As the oldest instrument in the world, the human voice is extrememly powerful and sensitive because it will resonate with the intention put into it. A word spoken in anger or in love can change our entire lives in an instant. The human voice has overtones, textures, colours, dynamics, and emotions creating an artistic collage of meaning and effect. The sound of our voice reflects our personality and our very soul. It is versatile and alive. It is breath and life.

Benefits of Vocal Improvisation
The more you can express yourself through musical improvisation, the more the self comes alive and contributes to your well-being and wholeness. Learning to improvise vocally will reverberate into other areas of your life, in how you listen, blend, stand out, find your groove or surrender to yourself.
Singing is one of our most creative acts.
It links us to our underlying substance and being because it involves the use of our whole self.

The singing voice is the breathe of life touching the heart of the listener.
~ Sonic Blissings, Anny

© 2006 Anny Fyreagle

Welcome

2007-04-23T12:03:00.000-07:00

I've always wanted to do a regular article called Sounds Travels about my experiences in the wide world of sound out there. I have been a practicing Sound Practitioner (consciously work with sound) for nine years now and have found that it's made me very sound sensitive. My experiences have been wide and varied and I am thrilled to be able to share them.

I'm working a few new articles that I will post soon. Until then, sonic blissings, Anny