0:49

Welcome, dear listeners, to another fascinating journey of discovery and inspiration on music. Ghost stories. I'm Donnie, your host. And today, we're diving into a realm where melodies become more than just mere sounds, where notes resonate with the deepest aspects of our souls. And where the synchronicity of music reveals its profound connection to our inner most being. We'll explore how music bridges us to different realities, delving into the concept of synchronicity and how it aligns our inner experiences with the outer world. We aim to uncover the significance of these moments and understand how they can guide us on life's journey. Before we get into it, I'd like to share another mystery sound. This sound will be revealed in parts. and combined at the end. So here's sound number one. What did you hear? Maybe a bird. Let's go onto sound. Number two. Was it a radio? Whistling. Here's sound number three. R2D2. No. All right. Well now let's combine all three of these sounds together. Some of you hear it. I'll add the text in the show notes. But how cool is it that when we combine these sounds, these weird sounds. We hear something far more familiar to us. Okay. In episode two, we explored using EEG to measure the brain's response to music and sound. As a followup, a colleague of mine recommended a portable EEG device by a brand called muse. Three researching this product. I discovered our very special guest for today's episode, Jason Snell. Jason is a neurofeedback engineer who developed custom code to use with the muse headband, allowing him to DJ electronic music, using things like his heart rate and his brain wave state. He's been involved in programs, helping others, including those with disabilities, make music with their minds. You're going to love this. So sit back, relax and open your hearts and minds. As we embark on this journey together. without further ado. Let's dive in.

Donny: 3:56

Hey, Jason, welcome to the podcast.

Jason: 3:58

Thank you.

Donny: 3:59

Give the listeners a brief introduction about who you are.

Jason: 4:03

Sure. My name's Jason Snell. I'm a, electronic musician and I also work with, biofeedback a lot. So different types of biosensors with, brain or motion sensors and making music from, I call biomorphic data. So it's data that takes the shape of life and life patterns. I've gotten pretty deep into, musical neural feedback. So that's making music from the brain. And then your brain hears what it's making in real time and what happens when that loop, gets deeper and deeper. My work is this. Mix of, music, computer programming and electronic music production. Those are themes that have been my life the past almost 30 years now.

Donny: 4:46

that's incredible. I was looking up this, product called Muse. If I were to purchase one, they have the one that's like a stretchy one and they have the other one, which one do you recommend?

Jason: 4:57

Depends on who it's for. I've used both. I usually use the muse too, which is the older one.

Donny: 5:02

okay, cool.

Jason: 5:03

The sensors are great. It's got heart rate sensor as well as, brainwave. And it's, I can pick up used ones for maybe like 125 on eBay. So I'm in a situation where I need 10 of them for, like a symphony of brains. That's a project I've been working on recently. That's a good route to go. the one that's flexible is the Muse S and it's a newer one. I found that one's useful for smaller heads, or heads that might be a different shape, so I've done some studies with, children who have different types of disabilities, and we need to use the Muse S to get a nice, clean fit on their heads, because the plastic one was, designed for an adult, head that's kind of a standard shape.

Donny: 5:49

Tell me more about that program that you're working on with Muse headband.

Jason: 5:53

It started with a middle school pilot program in my home state of Iowa. And what we did was we brought in Muse headsets and I'd create a iPad app. That could sonify their brainwaves, and, the students could choose from three different types of, sound kits, so they could have their brains compose music using gondolin bells, kind of a xylophone sound, or, electronic sounds, like a techno electronic, or symphony strings, or orchestral strings. And, each student, you know, their band and orchestra students, each one would choose the sounds that they prefer the most. And we're looking at, can they become more self aware or start to learn and integrate different types of, calming or social emotional learning techniques into their daily practice? If they could hear their brain changing in real time, as they try meditation or try a breathing technique and the way that, it would signify their brain is stress states would, detune the notes a little bit, make them a little bit harsher. And as they got calmer, the music would become more melodic and, harmonious. And that ended up being a big hit, worked with 121, middle school students. And they had a final performance at the school. And then my project partner in that. Introduce me to someone who runs the educational department, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And so I'll be implementing, a similar program with the Met this September, where students and educators will put on the EEG and hear their brain make different types of soundscapes and music as people look at art. I was approached by someone after I did a biofeedback sound bath, which I can explain later if you want, but I was doing a biofeedback sound bath and one of the attendees came up to me and said, Hey, this is really interesting. I work with these young children who have, cannavans, which is a disability that really reduces mobility, but the brain is still very active. So I flew to Chicago in the spring for a conference for kids with this rare disorder, and we experimented putting, using that flexible Muse S headband, putting that on the children, which was a good fit because it could really shape to the shape of their heads. And that was, you know, the first one we worked with, he enjoyed listening to music, and they were able to explain to him ahead of time because his comprehension is there, he can't speak, but his language comprehension is that he can understand what you're saying to him. So they explained to him that we're going to put this device on you and the music you're hearing is going to be coming from you, it's going to be coming from your brain.

Donny: 8:54

Wow.

Jason: 8:55

And so we put it on him and what I could visibly see was this laughter and weeping like the state of ecstasy. that's something that I had experienced in my early uses of this technology, when I was doing a tour with it in 2019, there were times where I had these moments of transcendence where my brain was hearing itself, making real time music and just the, Sense of power and awe. It feels like magic. It feels like a superpower. It feels kind of like you're an X Men. Just marveling at how beautiful and powerful life can be when you're creating and doing, something that's very human, like it's a very embodying, musical compositions inherently have emotional tones to them. And so for me, it was really powerful to see

Donny: 9:45

Oh, absolutely. Being that you're getting all this feedback and analyzing this data, do you have any theories as to why music achieves that deeper, inner, emotional, um,

Jason: 10:40

the core of the question is, I understand it is. Why is there such a strong emotional resonance, with music as opposed to something like a visual? I'm just going to guess because I haven't done that research just based on my own experiences. I think it has to do with the mechanical waves, the physical compression waves that are sound, that there are these, it's a physical thing that passes through the air and hits us, hits our bodies, hits our eardrums. And in many ways, it's a form of touch and touch brings up all sorts of emotion. You know, whether it's soothing or stimulating or scary, I think music can do the same thing based on the frequencies in the composition. A lot of my work has been looking at the power of repetitive beats. That was my thesis work at NYU is, you know, what is it about repetitive beats in all sorts of cultures, you know, so ancient Mayan cultures all the way up to warehouse techno parties, which, you know, that's my experience since the mid 90s of why is it that people. Continue to go to these events in a worship type of fashion, you know, where they'll go and spend hours kind of just like facing these speakers, almost like an altar and spending hours moving to a beat that's being delivered to them through this massive sound system and particularly with base, you know, and we feel base more than we feel, trouble in our bodies like some of the lower frequencies, the length of them are like the size of a building. what is it about repetitive base that allows people to feel safe enough? To go to some really sketchy places to go to like a warehouse techno party, you know, I mean, if you asked me casually, Hey, what are you doing Friday night? I want to take you to this really sketchy part of town. It's all warehouses. I'm going to take you into one of the warehouses. It's probably been abandoned for a while. There's going to be a bunch of people in there and they're on drugs and I'm going to take you to the middle of them and I'm going to ask you then to close your eyes. It's like, that's a horror movie proposition. That's like a CIA thriller, like you've been kidnapped and you're gonna be interrogated type of, but because there's repetitive base, only in my game, but I'm going to pay you like 30 bucks to get in, you know, it's, there's something really inducing about repetitive beats and, no, that's something that my theory is it has to do with the womb and that. Particularly in music and dance music, but any sort of rhythmic based music, the tempos of our dance music essentially are the tempo range possible by the human heart. So, you know, a super athlete, they get down to like 40 BPM. That's rare, but like 40 BPM under like 40, 30 BPM. Rhythmic music doesn't really feel like rhythm anymore. It starts to feel like ambient or kind of a weird abstract composition, experimental composition. And then the heartbeat can go up to, I don't know, 200 if you're in really bad shape, and above 200 BPMs, that's not really dance music. You're getting to really fast speedcore, hardcore, and it starts to become more of a tone, and you're just kind of like, kind of bouncing around, but you really can't keep up with the beat. So I don't think it's a coincidence that that range of danceable music for our bodies is the range of the human heartbeat, I see it as the foundation of all human experience with music is this repetitive beat because as soon as we're born, we're gonna have completely different experiences with music based on what our parents are listening to the neighborhood. We're in the culture. We grow up in. It's gonna be totally different, but we all have several months. Of repetitive beat training. We essentially have this subwoofer above our head. It's bigger than us for a good portion of the time. But our mom's heart, you know, just blasting us with this audio, vibration, bass waves, around 50 hertz. You know, that's the sound of a heartbeat. This is that lub dub. And that's our introduction to music. And so I think that's why we feel safe listening to that repetitive beat and music and that why we're willing to go to all sorts of places. Because Of that safety, it helps disarm, the parts of our brain that are more active and focused on functionality. And we're able to relax into a type of alpha meditation and then relax even deeper into a dreamy, theta meditation. And so if I were to close my eyes and meditate for a few minutes, I would move down into alpha and then maybe if I meditate for 20 minutes, I start to have those dream flashes where I'm no longer thinking about me or my life. These like ideas come in. I don't really know where they come from. It might be scenarios that are totally unrelated to me. You know, it's the beginning of dreams and that's Theta. So I've slowed down into more of a Theta frequency. And I think When I did test with repetitive beats in school, my first test on myself was, I listened to the same heartbeat sound. There was this kind of white noise washing and this lub dub sound. I listened to the exact same sound for a full hour. And I wore an EEG to see what will my brain do, you know, where are my peak frequencies as I listen to the same sound for a full hour. The first 10 minutes or so I was up in beta. I was thinking I was still problem solving cause I had to set up the speaker and you know, there was a light element that was pulsing with a heart rate. I set up the camera to document it. I was thinking, is the EQ right? The volume's too loud. You know, just the same stuff you have to do when you're getting ready for a podcast, like checking the levels and problem solving, making sure everything's set. And that's, Beta, you know, that's that problem solving active mind. So the first 10 minutes I was in beta and finally I settled in all the technical Aspects were working and I started to relax and I was around like 10 15 minutes That even though I had been listening to the exact same sound for the for 10 minutes I really started to hear it. I started to hear ripples of the bass, the texture of the, of the drone, of the, this white noise moving up and down, like the, the, the texture and the characteristic and the timber of it. Even though, like I said, I'd been, I had been listening to it physically for 10 minutes, but I wasn't paying attention to it. And so what I saw was that I dipped down into alpha and alpha besides being a meditative state is a very musical place. So when you're relaxed and really enjoying and listening to music and not like it's not background But when you're really like deep listening like Paulina Livero's style deep listening and music, that's alpha. It's a form of meditation It's like a listening meditation And that's where I was for the next 10, 15 minutes. I was deep in this, just so fascinated with the sound. I was like, how did I not notice this before? Like these, these heartbeat kicks are so beautiful. Just the way they rippled. It was just a state of admiration and fascination. And then around 25 minutes into the experiment. The music, it felt like physically, my perception of it, moved to the back of my brain. It felt like it was, it was no longer in the front of my brain or really in my ears. It felt like it was being pushed to the back burner in this really gentle way. And then in the front of my brain, I started to think about and experience and see and hear other places. And what that was, was I was starting to dream. And when I got there, I then realized this is the trance state, so like an ancient mind rituals when they're using a repetitive drum, the person finally gets into a trance, they've gotten to this theta dream state. And because there's enough sound, It keeps the person awake because we do pass through theta each night when we fall asleep, but we then plummet through it. We may pass through it so fast that we plummet right down into delta and go into deep blackout sleep. So what's special about using a repetitive bead or a musical element to keep you anchored is that you don't fall asleep. You get right down to that edge of being awake and being unconscious and you have access to your subconscious. It's a hypnotic place. There's very creative ideas down there. Neurotherapists like to get their patients down there to do post traumatic stress work. You can start to address and try to reform maladaptive belief systems that were absorbed during childhood. Cause you're in this very safe. Place where you don't have the normal armor that you need to function in the world and move around

Donny: 20:05

Have you ever heard of anyone using music for that reason for PTSD? Are they using rhythm, repetitive beats to get them in that state at all?

Jason: 20:15

I know there is a whole world of music therapy.

Donny: 20:20

Yeah, I'm curious.

Jason: 20:21

I can't name someone specific that does repetitive beats. Certainly every DJ at every, minimal techno party is doing that for, hundreds of people at a time, if not thousands of people. That's something that I'm looking at in what I'm developing. So I'm creating a therapeutic version of this art project I've been working on for five years. I wanted to get it into the hands of neurotherapists and therapists and psychedelic therapists and see, are the experiences I'm having, is that replicable in other people? Will they have that same benefit of getting down into that safe place and being able to do deep work? The difference between what I'm doing in traditional music therapy is that the soundscape would change in real time, responding to the person's brainwaves. And so instead of just hitting play on, you know, recording, let's say that takes 25 minutes to get you down to a theta state. If someone, was quite relaxed already, the soundscape could change with them because it can detect, oh this person's almost there already, let's just get them right down there. Or if someone's having a particularly stressed day. Maybe it takes longer than 25 minutes and that it eases them down at the rate where they are. So it responds to them in real time. So that's a really interesting, cross section that my work is in. It's partly neural feedback, which is like beeps and bloops, you know, giving or flashes on a screen telling you where your brain is. And then there's music therapy on the other side that just the power of music and what it can do to open channels and heal us and combining those to have these. It's dynamic, responsive music soundscapes based on what your brain and heart are doing in that moment.

Donny: 22:10

I think that's like the coolest thing

Jason: 22:12

I love it.

Donny: 22:13

I think it is so neat when you were first Designing this stuff and you started to hear the immediate feedback from your own brain translated through music, right? I guess what you did was you created some code and then use the EEG, to generate like some sounds based upon what was happening up there. And then when you immediately heard that back, is that when you had this moment and you just felt like it was emotionally very, strong.

Jason: 22:44

Yes. Early experiences with that musical neural feedback phenomenon, the first one happened quite quickly. So it so I developed this system during 2018 and started touring in 2019. And at my second show, I was seated on a stage. I was in a meditative position. The sound system was really big. So it wasn't a big venue, but a total gear head had set up the sound system. So it was really a big, clean sound system. So I had these big stacks. Including bass, subwoofers pointed at me in that first build, I was manipulating the EQ and the effects and kind of, the mix of loops that were pre recorded. So it was more like DJing with my brain than composing with my brain. So it was moving from track to track, not touching anything. Everything is directly from my brain. And I started to go deeper into a meditative state. And the way that I'd programmed the software was to make the sounds More bassy and dreamy the more I relaxed. And so the Dreamier and Bassier, it got the more relaxed I would get. So it was this relationship I had, this live relationship I had with the sound and I was able to relax and really I eyes closed, you know, experiencing the music and then physically feeling the base waves, that repetitive beat hitting my body and time-wise, it was pretty similar to the experiment I did with school. It was probably around 20 minutes, 25 minutes where. I started to dream. I was conscious. I could hear the music still. I hadn't lost consciousness. But I was dreaming and I was in that dream state for a little bit. And then finally I became more aware of my situation again. I opened my eyes and I completely forgot that I was performing. I forgot that I was there. I just, I moved into a theta state. I'd lost sense of time and space. It moved into a waking dream. And so when I woke up, I was like, Oh, F like I'm at a show, I like get things together and like, wrap up this set and you know, my beta kicked back in,

Donny: 24:58

I

Jason: 24:58

never gotten that relaxed during a performance in 25 years of performing.

Donny: 25:01

Were you using a Muse headband for that?

Jason: 25:03

was using the muse one at the time. So it didn't have my heart rate, but it had the EEG,

Donny: 25:07

Yeah. So what I found interesting was that they have an application and what they do is, they use auditory cues, to give you the feedback on how you're performing. So that way you don't have to open your eyes.

Jason: 25:22

Correct.

Donny: 25:23

And you essentially did the same thing with your loops during that performance.

Jason: 25:28

Right. With techno.

Donny: 25:29

And it almost like, I remember, reading about, dopamine. And then I talked to Alan Harvey about this too. And he says dopamine has a big effect. Like when you're improvising, with other musicians. There's, there's this reward system that, that gives you that, that I guess sends dopamine to its receptors or, however it works. And, it's almost like the same thing. Like when you're meditating, you're starting to hear the change in the loops. And it is giving you that feedback, which is like releasing these, neurotransmitters. to think that that's even possible like using music

Jason: 26:05

You're like improving with the music.

Donny: 26:07

Yeah

Jason: 26:08

the music itself is an entity that you're jamming with.

Donny: 26:11

I think you're doing something that's really incredible. I'd love for more people to tune into this.

Jason: 26:16

I'll share another experience, which might be useful. So I had that deep relaxation dream state. And then on that same tour, it was later in the year, I was at an outdoor festival, which I think being outdoors somehow helps because EGs were cleaner when they're not around a bunch of other electrical devices.

Donny: 26:36

yeah, that's true.

Jason: 26:37

Maybe just something about my own grounding. I was standing on the earth instead of a floor, looking at what were the different variables at this particular event that created such a different experience and what happened at this one was it was a very similar setup in terms of DJing with my brain, with this one it was an hour long set and again it was around the 25 minute mark and then came down and it happened Again around 45 or 50 minutes. So there's something about that timing these 25 minute windows So instead of relaxing down deep into a dream state I was standing and there was more just felt like there was more electricity and arrows of kind of wild music festival and instead of spiraling down I spiraled up totally sober into a state of ecstasy, and I was overwhelmed with a sense of, it was like staring into the sun, but the power of the sun, and just being like blown away by. Existence, being human, having a brain, and I heard my brain reacting to this awe in the music, and as the music changed, my brain would go further into awe, and so I was spiraling up, and I started to get really, really teary. I was gonna weep from the sense of awe, and I thought, do I need to leave the stage, like, go in the woods, and like, have a good cry, and then come back? And I thought, no, I should stay here. This is what I signed up for. The reason I use this technology is to be more vulnerable, is to be more human. Because for 25 years prior, I'd used drum machines and Ableton and synthesizers. And as long as I hit play and turn the knobs and hit the pads at the right time, the audience didn't know if I was scared. Bored, excited, because everything was being conveyed through these machines that are quantized so there was this protection. There was this lack of vulnerability in electronic music that I had become frustrated in my own practice. And so I thought, okay, I'm just going to cry. And so I just openly wept in front of everyone. And I did have to mentally come down. So I grabbed the table, I physically with my hands, held onto the table because I felt like I was going to take off like a rocket, like it was such an ecstatic, charged experience. So finally got it together enough to continue the set and you know the music's playing the whole time in reaction to this brain state and I start getting calmer again and again around 45 50 minutes. I started to go up the ladder again. And just wept again. And I thought, okay, here's this feeling again, I'm going to go with it. And so the set was 60 minutes and afterwards, some friends came up to me and we all felt like we had gone through this really intense, almost like a mini trip together. And we kind of looked at each other and we were like, what was that? I was like, I don't know. That's never happened to me. But that's only happened with musical neural feedback. I've had all sorts of sensational, interesting experiences performing on stage, but I never had that. Was just pure ecstasy flooding through my brain. So I know it was really a wash of, of a ton of chemicals. So there's that experience on the other side. And that's also something that I'm looking at my research is how do I induce that through musical neural feedback as well, like those states of transcendence.

Donny: 30:03

what's interesting is you said, that your friends also shared that same experience. And I was wondering this whole time, I'm like, has your music had that impact on other people because it's a feedback within your own brain. So it might be unique to you. And that's what I'm just assuming this whole time. And I was like, well, I wonder if other people are also in tune with essentially your brain. They're in tune with your brain

Jason: 30:28

absolutely. And that's exactly what I looked at during my thesis work, I looked at these experiences and noticed that, other people there seem to be impacted as well. And so what I started to do was these, biofeedback sound baths where it's not just me. And one of the things I looked at at school was what are my expectations of the audience? I was coming from this model of techno where I'm a performer, maybe I'm on a stage, maybe I'm behind some speakers, but I'm asking people watching me to keep their eyes open to dance to be focused on me. And with some of the compositions, particularly as they get like slower, more ambient, I don't know if you've been to many ambient shows, but they're kind of painful physically, because you're not moving, you're just kind of standing for a few hours watching someone perform. So it's kind of a painful experience for your legs and your body. Whereas to move and dance for a few hours is much easier, you know, because there's movement and flow. And so I started to look at, I'm having these. Transcendent experiences or deeply meditative experiences, my eyes are closed. I'm not looking at the audience and I'm expecting them to watch me have this wonderful experience. Is there a way that I can invite them into it? Is there a way that they can do this too? And so I borrowed the metaphor of the sound bath. Which for people who don't know sound baths, people are lying down, there's pillows, there's cushions, there's blankets, they're in a comfortable space and the performer, the musician is using often like these, instruments like a gong or like small shakers, Crystal bowls. So these really nice resonant, sounds with a lot of overtones just wash over you. And there's a physicality to it as well. So you're lying there and the bath part of it is, it feels like you're immersed in sound. Like sound is the immersive medium. And so these bass waves and these overtones like ripple over your body and it can be this really pleasant sensational experience. So I borrowed that and instead of using a gong or using bulls, I used my brain and at this point I was working with a muse that has a heart rate sensor. So I'm using my live heartbeat and I'm taking my live heartbeat and then the soundscape, mostly of drones, but this live soundscape that reflects where my brain is. Similar to the experiment I talked about where I listened to the same beat for the hour. So in the beginning of it, the soundscape is much richer and detailed because when people first come in, they're coming off, their commute or they just got off an Uber and they've arrived at a venue and, their mind is busy. They're looking forward to relaxing, but they're not in a like meditative state yet. And neither am I, because I just finished doing soundcheck and making sure the attack is working. And so my brain produces these more novel, changing, intricate type of sounds. And then as I relax, the sound gets a little bit more simple and a little more simple and a little more simple. And my heartbeat is going through a big subwoofer. So people feel it and hear it at the same time. So they feel this. lub dub hitting their bodies. And that's very womb like. And so as I go from a beta state to a meditative state down into a dream state, and sometimes I lie down or curl up near the end of these, cause I'm getting more and more relaxed. What tends to happen is everyone else's hearts and minds sync up to mine because my biometrics are being amplified as a lead and their systems, you know, start to connect to that lead and sync up. And those are experiences where people have come up to me afterwards and shared really psychedelic experiences, where they forgot where they were in the room, they forgot when it was, a lot of time dilation, you know, thinking it was 15 minutes when it was an hour, size was actually the whole room because they're hearing and feeling this heartbeat and they thought the heart was inside them. And so their body was this, the container of their body filled up to take up the whole room. There was a lot of dissolution of ego and understanding that, oh, this is a group of people and we're all one organism. Sometimes people got confused and they thought they were me. Because my biometrics were being absorbed into their system, people do these different tasks where they try to get their heart to go faster or slower, but it keeps syncing up with mine. So really interesting. And this is what that this is self reporting. So they're not wearing sensors themselves.

Donny: 35:16

That was exactly what I was about to ask

Jason: 35:17

thought I saw it. And so what I've been working on the last, 2 months is these, I call them brainwave symphonies. Brainwave symphonies. So it's not me wearing the sensor, but I grab multiple other people and I put sensors on them and their brains are what are making the composition. And I'm starting to look at, do their hearts sync up? Do their minds sync up? If so, how long does that take? And what is it like to come into a space and hear your own notes being added to the composition? But you also hear what's happening with the friend next to you. You know, I was at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn presenting this work last weekend, and a woman who was in one of the workshops said it was really special for her to hear her friends biometrics, not just her own, but her friends And I asked her, what was special about it? Can you articulate that more? And she started crying. She said it was really comforting. Like there was something really human and comforting about being able to hear the heartbeat of your friend or hear the brain of your friend, like the internal, movement from an active mind to relax mind. So there's this type of intimacy that happens when we experience each other's biometrics. And again, this is all very womb like, like we, we are very in tune with our mom's biometrics when we're in the womb. Once we're born and as we get older, you know, it's not so often that as an adult, I'm like lying with someone and I'm hearing their heartbeat. Like there's a real intimacy there. So to be able to use technology to, amplify and expand that experience for more people, it's been incredibly beautiful.

Donny: 36:58

The first time I tried to research like music therapy and things like that. I came across, Pythagoras and when I sort of read more into his. Fascination with music, a lot of it had to do with, what appeared to me as harmonics like overtones. So when you're doing these group sessions too, are you able to implement harmony?

Jason: 37:21

What I'm doing is creating real clear, musical neural feedback for each participant. So my first experience with this was, I worked with three people, it was about two years ago, and I took all their brainwave data and merged it into one composition, then did the musical output. And the shortcoming with that experiment was each participant didn't know what their impact was. They're like, I'm meditating, but are those notes mine or those notes of the person next to me? So in this recent iteration this year, what I'm looking at is how do I make sure that I know what my notes are? My friend next to me knows what their notes are. The person across the room from me knows what their notes are. How am I able to do that in a way that's clear to each person? So my first experiment, I had eight people and four of them were on the left side of the room next to the left speaker. And four of them were on the right side of the room next to the right speaker. The person in the first position on each side, they got the low octave. So as they relaxed, their brain in peaks in alpha, would fire off notes into the composition. And through my code, I would route that down to a low octave. So I could tell them, first person on the left, if you hear a low note coming out of your speaker, that's you meditating. First person on the right. If you reach a meditative state and hear a low note, that's your note. The next position was like a low mid octave, next position was a high mid octave, and the next position was the highest notes. So they're all playing the same synthesizer, but different parts of the octave scale. With that experiment, I found that the two middle people, so the people that had mid low and mid high octaves, I had confusion of, wait, is that my note or is that my neighbor's? Because the people with the low notes could always identify it because they're on one end of the spectrum and it was easier to identify that. The people on the high end of the spectrum, likewise, there's nothing higher. They knew all the high notes were theirs. So in this iteration at the Hirshhorn this last weekend, I had six people. And so the mid person had all the middle notes. Low head low, high head high, and by using both spatial relationship, like I'm coming out with a left speaker, and my notes are high, I can hear what my individual contribution is. So if I'm not hearing any high notes from the left speaker, I know that I'm not in that alpha state yet. Or as I'm moving in and out of it, which is usually how it works. We move into it and move out of it. There's a flow. I could hear my notes come into the composition and then they, and usually I get excited, like, Oh, I triggered my notes. And then that excitement makes them go away. Cause you then move out of the meditative state when you realize you've accomplished something. So it's this really fascinating, experiment with. willfulness and surrender of can I control this? Oh, I actually have to let go in order to compose the music. Oh, I've excited that I've like triggered some notes and then have to let go of that excitement over and over and over.

Donny: 40:36

one question I really like to ask that a lot of people have their own fun, unique story Have you ever experienced a coincidence involving music in some way?

Jason: 40:45

There's something about music and particularly for me, music making that feels like I'm getting access to a non physical realm that, that seems to be a theme in some of these stories of either a spirit realm or energy realm. And this is something I've experienced a lot, and more so with hardware you know, synthesizers and drum machines. There's something about the physicality of, of using those that I've had more of these experiences with than, music software. I produced all the time, I would say late nineties, got my first drum machine in 95. And I started to have these experiences where a few things that comment on one is. Just about, 10 years ago, I brought out all my old equipment, you know, I'd saved it from the 90s and I took meticulous notes on the connections, and I still had all the floppy disks with the data, the MIDI data, and I wanted to get clean recordings of each track because some of my old recordings weren't that clean. What was fascinating to me was to use these machines and load these sounds and all these old memories came back of where I was when I made that track. And so it's like this memory was triggered or was it almost felt like the memory was stored in the circuitry or in the diskette. I mean, that was the sensation of it. I know the memory was in my nervous system, but there was something really special about, you know, working through these, old sounds and loading them up. But some of the experiences I had, particularly with machines that break. And machines that aren't perfect. It seems like it allows some chance or some of these types of emergent phenomenal experiences happen where you're like, what is going on? Like, what is up with that? And as a music maker, I consistently have this experience where. Let's say I sit down and I want to make a song and I've got an idea of what that song, maybe I'm inspired by something, or I've had a dream about a song and I'm like, I want to make that. So I start working with a drum machine or the synthesizer and I'm trying to get that sound and I'm pushing towards it, but I'm really not there. I'm really not getting to the mark. I don't have that aha feeling. I'm not accomplishing what's in my head and I'm getting more willful and I'm getting more frustrated. And I get to a point where I give up. I'm like, ah, well, That was a nice idea, but I've been working with these machines for, you know, a couple hours now, let's pivot. And there's this interesting idea over here. You know, maybe on a, create a new drum pad or put in a new synthesizer. And I start working on that for a bit and I start to get really interested and I feel that Muse, you know, so it's interesting that the Muse headset is something I use a lot, but I feel that that energetic creative Muse come into me and that flow comes and I'm like, Oh, this sounds cool. And then before I know it, I've created this composition I really like, and it's exactly what I was trying to make. In the beginning, and I was like, how did I end up here? Like, this is what I was dreaming about. This is what was the idea. But I have to go through this experience of toil and frustration and then surrender and then exploring anew. And then I find it. And that's such a relationship between myself and music compositions, you know, when I work with sounds, In many ways, I just feel like I'm the hands on deck doing the physical labor, but I'm not making this. It's emerging, I'm helping birth, I'm like a doula, like a techno doula. And sometimes there will be a mistake that I make. So there was a drum and bass track I was working on in probably 98, 99. And I was trying to get a certain bass, like a big bass sound, and I just, it wasn't working, it was flat and whatever. And I worked on some other tracks and I went back to this drum and bass track and I accidentally inserted the wrong sample disk. I grabbed the wrong one off the shelf and put it in, and it played my bass line, the one that didn't work, but it played it with a different sample from a different track, is to this day the best bass line ever made. No one else was in the room, so no one else gets credit for it, but I didn't choose that. So what is that about? Like this relationship with something, a muse or this creative spirit on the other side that's making mistakes or creating these coincidences or creating these experiences and something emerges from the technology, comes out of the speakers and it feels like a message. It feels like manifestation, it feels like a birth.

Donny: 45:18

That's a really cool story because something that, this podcast is themed on is the intersection between music and spirituality. I agree that music creation feels like a manifestation of that. From nothing, but there has to be something and something that that's unique to us as humans. Is we're aware of our own mortality. Does that have to deal with how music resonates with us so deeply? And it, that's a whole, that could be a whole other rabbit hole. But what you just said. It's going to be a really good episode for this podcast. There's a lot of good sound clips that you have too. I think a lot of your experiences and what you've gone through is something that is so. Awesome, and I can't believe I'm not seeing this more often. I think right after this, I'm going to order one of those Muse headbands. I'm so glad that we connected because that was one thing too. I was like, Oh, I really want one, but I don't know which one to get. And just having that answer and feeling confident getting that one. And I thought, why do I need the heartbeat? Do I even need the heartbeat? And what you said in the beginning too,

Jason: 46:24

Mm

Donny: 46:24

About BPM of a song. I was like, Oh, that's crucial. That's crucial information. All right, final thing. What would the ultimate episode of this podcast be like for you? Someone like yourself, if you were like tuning into the podcast and you saw something and you'd be like, Oh, that is so cool. I have to listen to this.

Jason: 46:44

Oh, that's such a good question. I think something, that would like bookmark and listen to repeatedly would be a real deep dive into psychoacoustics, what sounds, produce different types of effects in us and why and what are the psychoacoustics of spirituality? So why is there similarities between different religions in terms of the music they might make, the instruments they make, the choirs that they produce? Like why is chanting, such a commonality? Why is it those sounds produce such similar effects in different parts of the world and different religions and different spiritualities? What's the psychoacoustics behind that?

Donny: 47:26

That's really good feedback. Thank you for that. Okay. Well Hey, it was great to connect with you.

Jason: 47:31

Yes. This was great.

Donny: 47:32

we'll be in touch. Thank you so much.

Jason: 47:34

Bye bye.

47:36

as we conclude today's episode, we're reminded of the transformative power of music. It can heal, empower, and even alter our brainwaves to enhance our mental and emotional wellbeing. Jason's work also emphasizes the importance of collaboration. By bridging the gap between music, technology, and therapy. He's paving the way for a future where music and science unite to unlock new potentials of the human experience In a world that often feels fragmented and chaotic. Let this be a reminder of the unifying force of music. It's a call to embrace the rhythms of life. Find harmony amidst discord. And let the melodies of our shared humanity resonate within us all. Thank you for joining us in today's conversation. Until next time. Keep listening. For those of you that heard my story on episode one. You can understand how some of the things Jason talked about resonated with me on a more personal level. After this conversation, I attended a party for a friend. Next to me at the table, there was a young woman expecting a baby boy. The music from the DJ was allowed. Uh, after congratulating her, I asked. You know,'do you think he's dancing in there? She laughed and agreed. And I shared Jason's perspective. On repetitive beats. And how her baby's first dance will likely be to her heartbeat. And I said,'you will be his first song. And she held her belly, and admired in all. Then I thought about my mom. And it suddenly occurred to me. My mom was the first song I ever heard.