Experimental Artistic Production - Realm of Healing Sounds

Norwegian Wood

Merging standard music and holistic music therapy

What is the difference between music and music therapy? What is the connection of these two concepts? So what exactly does experimental music band Norwegian Wood do? We have to explain both concepts first.

Music and its intention

Holistic music therapy and standard music, although they are two different areas of human activity, have one common denominator and that is music production. However, the biggest difference is in the intention of the two productions. While an artistic musical production opens up emotional states and, like a movie or a play, has its plot, which guides the listener through the whole range of feelings from excitement and tension to disappointment or sadness to the final resolution and release. It offers a story that satisfies our need for contrast.

"When we want to feel happiness we have to experience the opposite at least for a while "

This is the reason why certain types of musical forms are so popular, which artificially create these states of tension and relaxation, which make us feel that we are enjoying life. In order to create these emotional effects, artists need a wide variety of tools that allow them to create complex melodies and harmonies, inducing different emotional states with only tiny minor changes in expression. In order for these instruments to be effectively used, the so-called evenly tempered tuning began to be used, which allows standard music to create an emotional roller coaster, created precisely by the great variability of tonal combinations that make this possible. However, the equal temperament (ET) tuning system compensates for this variability in that almost all intervals are slightly out of tune. To the human ear, this difference is tiny and we do not hear it on a conscious level, however, our body registers the discordant vibrations on an unconscious level and thus prevents the healing effect that music could have on the human body.

More about this topic on the holistic music therapy page

Holistic music therapy and its intention

In contrast, holistic music therapy is very closely related to so-called sound therapy, which is based on tonal frequencies that are closer and more natural to our body. It works only with consonant intervals, that means it uses only several intervals that can also be in harmony in so-called just intonation, which is based on fractions of small integers. That means, the intervals between notes are not the same as in tempered tuning, and it is therefore not possible to go into overly complex structures and melodies, because the more distant intervals are not in tune, and indeed so much that you can already hear it. Therefore, music therapy uses only those intervals that are in perfect harmony, so it cannot use the entire wide range of possibilities offered by tempered tuning and has to make do with only a few intervals. However, this limitation is not harmful in holistic music therapy, because the goal of music therapy is not to create a story and cause rapid changes in emotions, but to create calmness. Music therapy therefore works with simple melodies and simple, often ostinato forms that are repeated and bring listeners into states of altered consciousness (Alpha or Theta brain waves) that are characteristic of rest, relaxation and meditation. The work with a simple, constantly repeating rhythm, which often imitates the heartbeat and is again one of the elements that brings the human mind to relaxation and relaxation, also contributes to this result.

Norwegian wood - experimental music

The Norwegian Wood experimental project combines both of these approaches in an unusual musical production that is based on natural tuning in the frequency 432, but uses elements of standard music to achieve certain emotional effects.

The members of the Norwegian Wood experimental group are musicians from different countries who have joined together on this project to open new horizons in the field of the effect of music on the human organism.

Band members are

Bjorn Magne Hansen (NO) – open-tuned guitar, vocals

Pluto Guthe (NO) – el. guitar

Ladislav Schneider (CZ) – cello, bass

Richard Jones (NZ) – djembe, shamanic drum and percussion

Lubomír Holzer (CZ) – shamanic drum