The Whole Music Experience

Photo by Michael Shumate As part of the Whole Music Experience 21st Century Musical Healer series, I introduce you to sound healer/drummer/vocalist Karen Renée Robb who I met through my Linked In group, Musical Healers. Karen has participated regularly with the group as well as, doing unique sound healing work with the frame drum and vocals.  In many ways, she reminds me of Christine Stevens who also employs the drum towards peace and well-being. Whole Music Experience: You gave up your corporate career to pursue a mission of sound healing and promoting the healing benefits of drumming. What event triggered this bold move for you?   Karen Renée Robb: Music and singing have been an important part of my life since I was a little girl. I started out as a voice performance major in college, but ended up with a business degree. I spent 25 years in the high-tech, digital music and musical instrument industry. In the summer of 2012, I was researching music therapy for a techno...

Image found on Wikipedia For the past the year, my life experiences have taken a toll on my well-being.  The stress has caused me to suffer illness at times. Each time I found myself turning to music to create healing in my mind, body and spirit.  Then I realized, wait a minute, I've been doing this my entire life. For anyone with access to the Internet and YouTube, there is literally a world of music as an offering to boost well-being.  Sometimes, curiosity and delving into music from other cultures or traditions gets our minds off our worries and problems.  When we redirect our minds, our bodies heal themselves. Another practice revolves around listening to favorite songs, either current or past favorites because if the songs stoke our hearts we raise our vibration.  As you know when we raise our vibrations we heal ourselves on a deep level.  However, make sure those favorite songs do not contain negative text or any abrasive sounds in them. ...

Circumstances of the past two years have forced me to sit on my unpublished book, Whole Music.  And now I'm ready to publish it the traditional route.  I also thought it would be fun to share an audio clip of an excerpt from the introduction. I used images from album covers of artists I reviewed on this blog and Wikipedia images.  So here, I guess you can watch an unveiling of a book that was published then unpublished yet the saga continues.

I found this brilliant speaker on Ted Talks. It's true that the sounds in hospitals aren't conducive to healing. How can sound healers get involved here?

I'm continually fascinated by sound frequency, geometry, and how our minds, bodies and souls are affected by sound.  I found this video on YouTube and although it's poor quality, the subject matter is worth sharing.  You might wish to skip past 20 through 45 minutes. 

I found this video on Ted Talks. The Healing Power of Music

R. Carlos Nakai  I caught up with Native American flutist R. Carlos Nakai by e-mail recently for this World Music Central interview: Alchemy of the Desert Flute

Photo by Patricia Herlevi I found the work of Abraham-Hicks a boon in my life.  Not only that, the practice of aligning with the Vortex or the Source has shown me that all music plays a part in climbing up the emotional scale.  For the following exercise we will travel from depression/hopelessness to hope using four songs found on YouTube. I came up with this concept after watching a Teal Swan video about Spiraling Negativity I watched on YouTube.  She borrowed Abraham-Hicks' emotional scale in finding the better feeling mood.  If we feel depressed we can't take the leap to happiness.  This is why telling someone in despair to think positive thoughts proves impossible.  You can't get there from there as Abraham tells us through Esther Hicks, just like you can't get from Boston to San Francisco without traveling the route. So I'm using the example of a relationship breakup which leaves most people in despair unless they're one of the rare folks that ...

Orpheus, Wikipedia I'm including another excerpt from my book Whole Music (Soul Food for the Mind Body Spirit) .   If you are an agent or book publisher interested in this title, please contact me at wholemusicexp at gmail dot com. This exercise comes from the end of Chapter 8. The Practice--The Art of Listening The first music appreciation class I took in college featured classical music.   While you could do the following practice with any genre of music, for this session, I ask you to choose one piece of music by a single composer from baroque to contemporary classical music.   For example, you could choose a cello suite by J.S. Bach which would land you in the heart of the baroque period or you could choose Appalachian Spring by contemporary American composer Aaron Copland. For one week, listen to only listen to this piece of music.   You can listen to the music via headphones or play it within the ambiance of a room.   Listen f...

For the past two months I experienced re-set on my life.  And during this phase, I have relied heavily on frequency and Solfeggio scales featured on YouTube.  I have found the scales, tones and frequencies of sound healing videos extremely healthy.  And in fact, I have spent more time listening to the scales than actual music.   Here are some of my favorites. The following music videos are no longer available. Miracle of Frequencies 528 Hz (This is a short documentary) Here is an enchanting piece of music featuring Archangel Raphael I have also listened to music by Sabra Sibrena off her recordings,   Reiki Master Susan Wilbanks also uses beautiful music with her healings Finally, Ki Kaz provides frequency transformation videos with sound healing tones

Ana Alcaide (Photo in Google Images) Where Swedish, Spanish and Jewish Cultures Meet  In 2012, I discovered Sephardic (Jewish) songs of Toledo via Ana Alcaide, a Spanish traditional musician.  After watching Alcaide's stunning YouTube videos in which she plays the Swedish keyed fiddle (nyckelharpa) and sings Ladino (Spanish Jewish culture) songs, I thought of interviewing the musician for this blog. I encourage anyone reading this to check out Ana Alcaide's videos on YouTube because you will learn a lot from this fascinating woman who bridges the scientific world with the musical one.  I caught up with Ana via e-mail and I'm honored to include her on this blog of musical healers. WME: How do your biology studies wed with your musical explorations? I ask this question because some musicians have taken music into the natural realm or have found musical aspiration from nature. Ana Alcaide: Right! In fact, nature is one of my great sources of insp...