Customer Reviews

Sounding the Inner Landscape: Music As Medicine/Audio Cassette

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This book is a readable introduction to the world of "sound healing" (as opposed to the music therapy discipline). Gardner discusses practices like toning, chanting, mantras, and the various ways tones, rhythms and timbres may interact with one's body in order to produce healing effects. She takes examples from different cultures and different time periods; however, not all of her evidence has a strong background, and some of her ideas appear to not be supported by evidence at all. I would recommend this to anyone interested in the world of sound healing, but if you are more interested in therapies that can be supported by emperical evidence, you'll want to bypass this one.

Solid information about the power of sound and frequencies and their physiological impact. It is too bad that the medical field did not catch on when the book was printed, the medical professional would be a lot further along in treating the cause instead of the symptom! Highly recommend the book :-)

Mickey

Kay Gardner (1941-2002) was a musician, composer, author, and musical producer involved in using music for creative and healing purposes. Her compositions include works for chamber orchestra, symphony orchestra, choir, flute, voice and piano. She was very active in promoting the work of contemporary female musicians and composers. Her musical compositions include Ocean Moon, Rainbow Path, Drone Zone, etc. She has also recorded a series of lectures called Music as Medicine: The Art & Science of Healing With Sound .

She wrote in the Preface to this 1990 book, "After more than fifteen years of teaching experiential workshops on the healing properties of music... I felt it was time to put the information into words on a page... I write this book as a composer and as a theorist who is immensely interested in the curative properties and healing effects of music... What I hope to offer the reader is an exploration into what music is as a healing force, and what music can be when its healing elements are understood and applied by composers, healers, and therapists."

Here are some additional quotations from the book:

"In 1987 seers were predicting that after a few years of chaos, militarism would cease, world political structures would change drastically, and by 2012 a new post-industrial peace mobilization would bring the full attainment of human potential. With 1989's dismantling of the Berlin Wall, rising of the Chinese students, changes in South Africa's apartheid policies, and political restructuring of Eastern Europe, it appears that the prophets and seers were correct." (Pg. 61)
"I believe that music written for instruments tuned in the old tunings ("just tuning") ... is more healing than the music written for instruments tuned in equal temperament." (Pg. 113)
"I believe that by the year 2012, as prophesied by the Mayans and celebrated during the Harmonic Convergence of 1987 ... the new age will be in full swing." (Pg. 207)