The Power of Music: Let’s Hear It for the Ear!

Recently, I was asked by an interviewer if there was one moment that was particularly meaningful to me throughout my successful career. Of all my achievements, accolades, and encounters, one meaningful moment stands out. It happened after a performance backstage.

I had just finished performing my Keys to the World concert at a Christian high school in Michigan. A senior boy waited patiently in line to meet me after the show. He looked very uncomfortable. He very slowly got his misshapen words out, as he said, “I love your music. I could feel it in my heart. Thank you.” He turned and stepped away.

Standing next to him, his teacher’s face went white, stunned. She said, “In the four years he’s been here, no one has ever heard him speak. He is autistic!” I teared up to realize that the power of the music I was blessed with could break through for such a child as this.

My Keys to the World album, my first, is about finding these keys in your heart and finding your special gifts within you to bring to the world. I guess my musical message got to him in such a way that he just had to speak up. I believe both of us were graced with the power of music that day.

What Is the Power of Music?

Music can be your friend. Music can cover every emotion. Music therapy is also centuries old. Think of the Greek modes and Indian ragas. For example, the Mohana raga is used in India, typically played in the morning, to relieve depression, migraines, stress, and improve focus and mental stability. That explains why I always felt better while composing and listening to my piece, “Cheerful Mohana.”

The Greeks used the dorian mode to keep feelings balanced and calm while inspiring a strong, sincere character. I used it for my piano piece “Caprice” from my new album, A Grand Memoir. When I play it, I feel strong and taken to a different mood. As a child, I’d come home upset from school, run to the piano, and play my whole lesson as loudly as I could. About 10 minutes in, it would settle into sounding like music. It soothed and regulated my emotions. Over the years, I found music always came to my rescue.

How Does It Work?

The four components of healing with sound include vibration, frequency, resonance, and intention or thought form. Regardless of the modality used, I believe there are two essential things for healing to take place: willingness by the dis-eased person to want to heal themselves to wholeness, and the intention of the healer.

Modern music therapy is a clinical and evidence-based certified profession that uses music interventions such as playing instruments, singing, and choosing specific music for listening to address physical, emotional, cognitive, and social needs of individuals. Who of us hasn’t used music to lift our spirits, lower stress, manage pain, and even evoke memories? If you want to change the mood of a room, put on some music. Change yourself? Start humming a tune or free-range it. Whistling works too, but humming gives you that vibration your brain craves. If you sing, then as the title of my memoir says, “Put Your Dress Down and SING!” Sounds like the prescription is music.

What Is Sonic Therapy?

Over the past 60 years, science-based evidence has taken this to new levels in sonic therapy, including specific vibrational frequencies to target specific conditions. Lithotripsy is used to dissolve kidney stones with focused ultrasonic frequencies. Some researchers have dissolved certain cancer cells in the laboratory within minutes by subjecting them to the dissonance of the major seventh interval. There’s so much more to learn.

As I searched for more answers about the power of music, I was led to the work of Dr. Alfred Tomatis. An otolaryngologist and psychiatrist who was the first to rightly claim to the medical community in 1954 that we hear by bone conduction as well as air conduction. He also proved that the voice can only produce what the ear can hear. Hearing is automatic, whereas listening is a conscious choice and has a psychological component.

He developed a type of sonic therapy and a device he called the electronic ear that uses carefully acoustically modulated music targeting specific frequencies the client needs while listening with bone and air conduction headphones. Simply put, this type of listening is like going to the gym for the two tiny muscles of the middle ear, which regulate brain activity and build new neural pathways.

When you understand that the ear is the master conductor of the brain and body, through the vagusnerve, you understand why this therapy works for autism, dyslexia, ADD, ADHD, PTSD, anxiety, speech and audio processing disorders, memory, sleep, singing in tune with more brilliance for the voice, and more. I was so excited about this; I became trained and received advanced certification in Tomatis-based listening therapy so I could help others improve their lives. There’s more info at my sonic therapy website, ListeningMatrix.com, and other Tomatis-based clinics.

I look forward to the day when modern medicine marries the power of music. Such a wedding that would be!

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What does music mean to you? What have you noticed change in your mood and wellness under the influence of music?