Sound Engineering Showed Me Spirituality
Music is one of the most beautiful human creations there is.
Music is therapy.
Music is life itself expressed through a melody.
When I was younger, music was my best friend. It held me on the days when I felt I couldn’t get through. When I felt alone and like I had no one to turn to.
Music also made great days even better. There’s nothing like hearing a song for the first time that you absolutely love. One that you know will stay with you for a long time.
In my teen angst phase where I would often listen to music that had very emotional lyrics to match my inner pain (I’m sure I’m not the only one who did this). I would use lyrics to mirror my current state and create my own meaning behind artists interpretation. Certain melodies would ignite something within me and others would let pain flow from the depths of my soul. Most of us have sort of a personal relationship with music to some extent. Whether it brings back key memories within your family or painful aspects of your past. Markers of your life that have faded from the forefront.
When I was very young, I wanted to be a singer. This was a goal of mine between the ages of I would say 2-15 years old. As a toddler, I would sit on my front steps and belt out my favourite songs from the Little Mermaid. It’s unfortunate that I had likely not yet grasped the understanding of pitch at that age. I’m sure my neighbours were thrilled about the unwarranted and unrelenting entertainment.
We’ve all heard that in order to find your passion in life you need to remember what you were truly passionate about as a child. This question always tugged at me while I wandered seemingly aimless through life. I thought it might be music? But I wasn’t an overly talented musician and I couldn’t focus on anything for too long. I didn’t realize until much later that my passion existed within the foundation of what music is.
Although my childhood dream of becoming a singer never materialized, I did manage to create quite an interesting path for myself. My passion for sound and music lead me into sound engineering after I graduated high school. This was an impulsive decision as I felt pressured to find a role to define myself. I figured I was going to be a psychologist but my ability to grasp complex math was limited so I just ended up taking what I thought sounded cool and interesting. And luckily for me the private digital arts school I applied to didn’t care about the fact that I didn’t pass Grade 11 math with flying colours. So I found myself taking Sound Engineering.
The program I went into taught everything from studio recording, music production, music composition, digital music production, audio for film and more. But, I never did anything with it. It was expensive and gruelling at times yet the diploma sits in a back room covered with dust.
For a long time, I resented this diploma. The student loans, the interest I was paying on them, the wasted time and energy. The concept of sound engineering sounded great until I learned that most of it was just listening to the same sounds over and over and over again. Performing tedious and monotonous tasks is not one of my strong suits apparently. One of the entry level jobs in that industry was setting up concerts and that didn’t pay half as well as my serving job at the time. I was told upon our “exit panel” prior to graduation that my portfolio was good but I wouldn’t be taken seriously as a woman… Which to be fair, I probably wouldn’t have because I wasn’t obsessed enough with the technical aspects to devote my life to them.
What I didn’t realize then however is that sound engineering would become a quiet influence on my adult life moving forward. Even while I resented how useless my diploma was.
My life changed forever with one assignment.
It was a recording arts class. My teacher had created a really interesting curriculum understanding tones, pitch and distortion relative to audio recording and mixing. For a lot of this class we would listen to distortion with a single tone and pick out which frequency it was. We would learn about the fundamentals of sound and music. It was one of my favourite classes. One day, my teacher gave us an assignment to write a paper. And the instructions were simply to write something about sound. The concept was very generic, yes, but the intent was for us to be creative.
I did some quick googling to try and figure out what to write my paper on. I really didn’t have any inspiration at the time. That’s when I found an article on sub and super sonic frequencies.
This changed everything for me. I fell down the deepest rabbit hole and learned everything I could about the frequencies that are above or below or perceived range of hearing.
As humans we perceive from 20Hz-20,000Hz (20kHz). Sub and super sonic frequencies exist beyond that threshold (Subsonic is known as infrasonic). And they are FASCINATING. This was in 2009 before people discussed frequency from an energetic understanding as we do now. This is when I learned that frequency can affect emotion or influence thoughts or be used as weapons and can even control the weather. Frequencies… Sound. How on earth can sound do all of this? How did people not know or care? I realized the more I talked about it how little people really did care. My friends thought I was crazy for going off on tangents about how incredible frequencies are and how much impact they have on literally everything around us.
In 2015, I started exploring Buddhism and ancient eastern religions. On a trip to SE Asia as I was captivated by the Om symbol. Having read about it and understanding the ancient belief that Om is the sound of creation itself.
Chanting, singing and humming are universal languages.
I started learning about sound therapy through crystal singing bowls and exploring frequency tracks with guided meditations.
It was like following a carefully curated bread crumb trail throughout my adult life. These pockets of wisdom that interconnected brought me deeper and deeper into layers of understanding.
Frequency has always been my passion. Because frequency is truly the foundation of everything.
We love music because we are music.
Understanding the depths of the potential of frequency and how it is the undercurrent of our entire existence is my passion.
To know what we truly are at the deepest fundamental level.
We exist in a symphony within the universe.
It’s our job to make sure we are in pitch.
Everything gets a lot easier when you are in tune with yourself and in harmony with the world around you.
