Notes
HARMONIC CHANT (HARMONIC SINGING) 'David Hykes has opened a new dimension in music; he has in fact, brought us the music of the spheres. As music, these sounds retain an extraordinary mystery. It is a wondrous sound, which would, as I always say, be appropriate to landing on the moon or Mars; it d must make every listener feel humble and yet part of the great system. David Hykes is spreading a form of knowledge which joins the sciences at their most intangible level, where what appears as matter turns out to be only energy. This music which David Hykes brings us, the harmonic series, as he says, being the musical DNA, the source of the music we know, which gives us life, also provides an extraordinary 'Genesis Chapter' for music.' --the late Lord Yehudi Menuhin "David Hykes's music is haunting and transporting. It takes you somewhere completely otherworldly. It transports you to the Ancient Time. From the moment I heard it, there was no doubt.' Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche Music of the Spheres of Listening and the Quest for Re-attunement Notes on the Harmonic Presence work, 1975-2008 'All problems of life are essentially questions of Harmony.' --Sri Aurobindo A new listening... This 25th anniversary special edition of "HEARING SOLAR WINDS," arises from the wish to celebrate the historic original recording released by Ocora Radio France in 1983, cast in the light of new listening-- and much finer audio tools. Close attention to the spectra of the original work in high-resolution digital audio (96kh) sharpened the focus on the music and allowed me very subtle ways to bring out key harmonic forms in the composition. This release is also dedicated to another kind of celebration, not so easily located in time and space, that of a new level of listening awareness more and more alive in so many of us. This new listening awareness is more in tune with silence, with space, with real harmony, with openness and compassion. We aspire not only to be in accord with the music of the spheres, but with the spheres of listening. The evolution of Harmonic Chant, the contemplative musical system I've developed since 1975, is paralleled by the evolution of the broader body of work, practices and teachings called "the Harmonic Presence work," which blends art, science, meditation, and healing. This work can profoundly help our understanding of intrinsic relationships between Mind, Music, Meditation and the Medicine of deep harmonization. We don't need to create harmony, but rather to hear it at work, to recognize it, and to attune to it. Such attuned listening comes naturally to life when we are in touch with our own silence and quietness. The harmonics of sound are related to even deeper and higher harmonics-those of listening, of awareness and consciousness, of nature and the universe. The full-spectrum scale is that of all harmonics of Being. All appears from... what? From where? What is the source of the very first vibration? Where does sound come from? And our consciousness ? How to hear from where it arises? And the source of listening? Perhaps song is also listening, and listening, a song of it's own? Perhaps the song of the universe and our listening to it are part of the same music... Cosmology, the vision of the universe as an ordered whole, looks back to an original moment of Creation, the famous Big Bang, or Big Ring. At the moment of the Big Ring, that first Note, unknown forces brought this universe into being. Physicist David Bohm discussed in The Implicate Order how within a pre-Creation chaotic sea of vibrations arose a movement toward order, a coming-into-phase; from the cresting wave of that focused energy comes all this. So perhaps there is not only a music of the spheres but that music -the harmonic movement of energy- actually makes the spheres....including our own, this blessed but troubled one. Astrophysics since 1968 makes finer and finer measurements of the 'echo' of the Big Ring, the still-present cosmic microwave