The Museum of Sound Recording

Detail from an Interview
Gary Heidt - Curator of The Museum of Sound Recording
Mr. Conreaux established Artists for Humanity Songs and Awards in 1969, Los Angeles, as a musical theatre work premiere of "Divine Union." In 1979, Paul Horn was Master of Ceremonies for the first 3 day presentation of Artists, Songs and Concerts for Humanity during The World Symposium on Humanity, Pasadena CA. We honored composer Dane Rudhyar for his musical orchestration of Alice A. Bailey's poem, The Great Invocation. The original collaboration occurred in 1938, and this was its World Premiere.
In 1997,The Museum of Sound Recording, and NEWLIFE Magazine sponsored the 3 day continuous 'for humanity' festival honoring over 50 artists and ensembles in an event called "Healing Music of The New Millennium" at the beautifully restored Rogers and Hammerstein Opera House and Grand Ballroom in NYC.
Mr. Conreaux is considered a pioneer in the field of sound for rejuvenation and stress reduction, and the role of tone vibration in expanding awareness and global unity. He has dedicated his lifework to Gong Therapy and Gong Yoga research and practice. A Kriya Kundalini Initiate and Practitioner of Yoga since 1952.
He is a former actor and director holding 2 Degrees in Theatre Arts. He is Acoustic Design Director of The World Peace Bell Gardens Initiative and Celebration Project, and presents concerts, seminars and Mass Sound (Great Gong Experience) events around the globe. He is a composer, author, educator and acclaimed musician and performing artist.
GH: Don, when you speak about the Healing Music of the New Millennium, are you referring to New Age Music?

DC: I like to refer to the music we are into today, sacred tone improvisation, as 3rd Millennium Aquarian Seed Music. New Age is at most speaking about the last 100 years of the 20th Century and the first 100 years of the 21st Century, which itself is only the beginning 100 years of the next 1000 years. The 3rd Millennium and beyond that, the entire 2160 year long Aquarian Age, embraces both the 3rd and the 4th Millenniums.
GH: You speak about the difference between improvisational and compositional music? What is 'inspired' music and inspired performance?
DC: Whenever you are inspired with a vision for a written composition you are a channel or agency for that creative inspiration. What you're seeing or hearing within yourself is a composition in your mind, and resurrected in order to be performed. When you compose while in ceremonial performance without premeditation, you are purely a 'sacred' tone improvisation artist.

GH: You speak about 'syntonic music'. What exactly is that?
DC: It is the overlaying or synthesizing of dissimilar and diverse tones to produce a universal sound field. That's why we are bringing diverse instrumentation and artists together from the 8 Earth Directions to evoke what is sacred from 'Spirit Source' and the 8 Corners of Heaven.
GH: As above, so below?
DC: Yes. Visualize an hour-glass, shaped like this... Below are the 8 directions of Earth and by bringing the music together into the "one voice of the collective all," you evoke from above the sacred music of transmutation (from the 8 corners of heaven). You are able to evoke what we call the "healing" vortex.

GH: What part does the musical philosophy of the late Cyril Scott play in this coming millennium?
DC: Cyril Scott was the one who really talked about the inspired music of the coming era and how it could be one great world song and now we know that because of computers we can do a great grand sacred tone improvisation via the Internet. That's what we would love to do at a concert, perform live on the internet so that it is possible for people around the world to improvise with us at a specific time; a holy global jam.
GH: Do you really think this can happen today?
DC: To find out how powerful this musical force really is, the music of the new millennium has to be tested out. It looks as though today's musicians have reached the point where they are ready to take this big step to synthesize humankind. Like in the famous hundredth monkey story, this world song will be an agency for synchronous and spontaneous mass social transformation; an important step that goes beyond the simple evolutionary pace. Cyril believed that with the cooperation of mass intension, this is possible.

GH: What about electronic music? How does it relate to indigenous music?
DC: While many people are using keyboard synthesizers, many more people are playing indigenous instruments. Both are happening together. When the alpha, indigenous, and the omega, electronic, come together at the same time, we know we are moving into the new millennium.

GH: How do synthesizers fit in to the healing music of the new millennium?
DC: We're not yet at the point where synthesized music has reached it's potency, but there is a growing Science of Psycho-Acoustics in Music, and soon all synthesizer jockeys are going to become research scientists, like NASA scientists, their going to take the microtonal, the inter-dimensional, and the interstellar music, and it's all going to mix together. However, we're not going to have true holophonic sound until we get rid of speakers. Now they're working on pulsating ultrasonic sound through crystals where there are no speakers need at all, it comes out of thin air, it's done through ultra sonic difference tones. For instance, if you listen to two tones of 25,404, and 25,000 Hertz you can't hear the higher tones, but you hear the A 440 and another beat tone of 4 cps.
GH: So how does improvisational music, free music, spontaneous composition, all this fit in, how does this actually fit in with New Age? I know you said it was inspired, but could you explain more fully what you mean by inspired?
There are many rules of improvisation or as we call it...laying the bearings, and there is a great myth that 4 mysterious sound masters, will come and meet in a clearing. They bring their acoustical tools and lay them out in a sound circle. They then begin playing together without a word spoken between them. All the elements of nature will come to honor them in their evocation of Sacred Tone from the 8 Corners of Heaven.
In an improvisation, we lay the bearings, setting up the guidelines for the improvisation. Let's say we agree on a particular theme. That might just be enough, for Creative Spirit to take over from there.
Master Improvisers are equal to pure scientific researchers. They both have a common perspective of suspended judgment, " We refuse to know what we are looking for until we have found it!" Everything depends on where the Soul of the Musicians are.
Right now we have to learn to work together. And who better to a set the example than the free improvisatory musicians. Many of our gatherings are for the public. When the general public begins to do it, there will be less violence. Among the people we play with, there's no violence, there's no competition. I think, as world servers, we are doing the job we are supposed to be doing. The depth of its importance will be seen in the future of the 21st Century. One thing we do know, creative freedom has been missing in the world and this is one way to cultivate and celebrate its return.
In actuality, it has already arrived. The collective is already in charge. The transvolution has begun, the entity is already established, this entity is the creative spirit that is happening in every part of the world.
The Buddhists call it Maitreya (Telepathic Resonance). Maitreya means the telepathic power of holistic musical resonance. A prediction from Gautama Buddha in 600 BCE said that the "Compassionate Diamond Mind" will return to humanity at large in about 2500 years as a form of resonance, and we'll call it Maitreya our One Voice, our Highest Self, that speaks through our heart. That's the whole concept behind this music.
Of course, we all know that inspiration is behind all creativity. We couldn't exist without inspiration. So, when we merge with the source of inspiration we become one with the essence of all creativity. In pure improvisation you go out on a limb, no rules out there, we are totally tuned into the flow and you're automatically in the right place at the right time. The CHI, or the flow of creativity goes through you without your ego or personality causing limitations and conditions that block it.
GH: You also say that the power of Syntonic Music is the result of Combination Tones; why is that?
DC: Syntonic music is the world's greatest transformational music because it models the creative and generative power of the universe. The gong is like an engine that releases floods of functional tones, tones that are non-harmonic but exchange energy in a highly functional way.
When you strike a flat disc-shaped gong repeatedly, the tones, suspended in time and space, overlay. They all exist in the same space. The tones of equal volume mate and produce tone progeny (overtonal children). The population of harmonics increases through this outpouring into the acoustical envelope (inside a space). It is because of this prolific tone cell mitosis that a thickened standing scalar wave develops, and this happens according to the universal law of nature that produces the perfect spiral and golden ratio. This immaculate proportion is called PHI.

GH: How does this theory relate to healing?
DC: All tones generated by the gong's great ability to be a 'sonic space-filling agent,' have a dynamic effect on our physical cells and our psyche.
GH: How does it affect the psyche in relationship to spiritual awakening?
DC: You might say that PHI, a ratio of 1.618, a Minor Sixth in music, is the secret path of inter-dimensional soul tone travel because this magical proportion of greatest beauty, strength, and line of least resistance is omni-present in the Universe.
Essentially, all offspring harmonics create combination or resultant tones. Resultant tones are of two kinds; the summation tone, or higher overtone, and the reduction tone, or lower undertone, and are referred to as "difference tones."
The ancient bronze gong is the most prolific source for emitting these combination tones, resulting in what I call an "Akashic Vortex," or a state of being which seems inside the silent sound and within the mind field.
When sufficient of these "PHI Tones" are present, it feels as if we have created a descent of an "angelic energy" that is of an etheric nature. This condition is also referred to as "akashic" or "heavenly" energy. We call it "Sacred Tone from The 8 Corners of Heaven" focused within a "Healing Vortex," a "Mysterium Tremendum- Sanctum Sanctorum" or "Acoustical Holy of Holy."

GH: How difficult is it to learn to produce this kind of music?
DC: Nature made it very simple. For instance, if you gently stroke a gong in one spot over and over again, the sound automatically builds layers of tones. All these tones beget other tones that fill and pack the surrounding acoustical space with a solidity and density that forces a shift to take place in the acoustical chamber. Something opens up in the sound that we hear. We call this second-sound the unstruck sound, it is a sound that you are not producing. These are sounds that are not really part of the natural overtones of a particular note.
These sounds cause a pulsating chord. We refer o this as "sound of the angelic choirs," a resonating chorus of OM. In Sanskrit, this outpouring is called the VAK (vach). Yogis call it the song of the Gandharvas, an "angelic chorus of spiritual warriors from the past."
When you hear this second sound, also called Nada or Shab'd, you know that the gates of heaven are open, inspiration is coming, and although we have our individuality, we feel part of a greater being, a Universal Ensemble releasing the Spirit of The New Age and Aquarian Renewal.

GH: How does Healing Sound Work? What are people going to see when they come to your event, and what will they be encountering as far as music is concerned? How is this music going to transform lives when they come?
DC: The new music is here to activate the creative freedom within the audience. To release this creativity that may have been blocked for very long, enabling a freedom of choice, an ability to be free of old patterns and old habits. To create such an abundance of inspired music is to create a fountainhead of healing energy that bathes an entire place and brings people to a sense that they are full of resonance and can express what is sometimes referred to as Spiritual Will, the power of free individuals to control their lives and to disentangle themselves from that which is obsolete, to become a "sacred tone artist" who can walk out on a creative limb and be free.

GH: So, it's going to teach people how they can change the world?
DC: Yes, everybody in this New Millennium is going to be, like it or not, a channel or agency through which the Divine Creative Spirit will flow. You know when that Spirit flows through there are no divisions between us. We all become The Musician, The Shiva, the One Entity. And, Humanity is a single entity, as well. So the feeling of being a planetary citizen, of one global intelligence, to be one beating Earth-Heart together, that's the purpose of this new music.
Surely, there are differences to be found in music, but somewhere there must be a "Holy of Holy," a "Sanctum Sanctorum," an inner space or place where musicians gather, as people go to church, where it's pure pre-conscious sound and can be like research into spontaneous Holistic Resonance.
When musician's show up, they leave their preconceptions behind, they leave their egos behind, and they participate like Masters. Through telepathic resonance, they evoke a great healing spirit upon humanity, that is already taking place worldwide in the form of simultaneous, synchronous events.

GH: And on the Solstice...
DC: Every Solstice, and Equinox; its finally becoming continuous like the ancient concept of the 24 hr choirs, when thousands of Saints chanted in shifts around the clock. Though that has gone, it's coming back by way of the internet to be continuous again.
We've reached a new level of planetary awareness, it's called 4th Dimensional insight, where distances and time do not matter anymore. There are no limitations in cyberspace. Inside hyper-space is where the human being can now travel. Mythically we have in fact become holograms within virtual reality.
People enjoy going into 'Time Warp' so that we can visit the past, because we're already visitors from the future. We all have come from a distant time we haven't reached yet. We are like the lightning that comes down to Earth and travels up at the same time.
From an esoteric level look at this Millennium Initiation we are all going though. It's erasing the boundaries between the living and the dead. As soon as we become aware we've been asleep while we were awake, that realization is going to erase the boundaries, we'll no longer fear dying.
It is also meaningful that we are now discovering that periodically almost the entire world is wiped out by asteroids and comets that are not yet predictable, except when we look back in the past and examine time periods when they've been here. The dilemma is that all of humanity has to realize that at some given point we might all pass away at the same time. So, the inner search will go on at the same time we are looking to migrate toward a safe haven in outer space.
Today the important thing is to remove violence and the need for vengeance from the animal part of us. It is not wrong to say we are "Star Seed," and visitors from the future. We are the Atman embodied, and we are the One Self.
Our existential problem has been that the survival of the fittest has stubbornly prevailed in our consciousness. The Universe that we know is not only survival of the fittest but also the luckiest. In our search for immortality, we are ready to go to inter-dimensional travel. The doorway to inter-dimensionality opens when our consciousness goes into a de-materialized state.
Buddha said that the best meditation for our present humanity is to listen to sound, so much so that at that time he had inscribed the Mandarin Chinese words Tai Loi (a secret code) on all the Bells and Gongs of the Orient and the Far East. He also proclaimed his next incarnation as 'loving kindness and musical resonance' at that time.
On the face of every gong is inscribed "Tai Loi," a reminder that "Happiness Has Arrived" and "Matter has been Spiritualized." In other words, we have been empowered with the force of functional harmony; as in the Universal Greeting we use as our calling card, it is the realization that "You are my own True Self! Let us Work Together!"
"The gongtone leads the way to the music of the rushing river within."
It might seem difficult to get people to close their ears and listen to the "Rush of the River Within." But it's one of the most powerful techniques. What the gong does, when you listen to it long enough, is allow you to listen to inner music with your ears open. In this way you always have with you the inner and the outer OM sound of the universe.

GH: How to know if you are an Artist for Humanity?
DC: To be an Artists for Humanity is to know that you are an agency for a great creative power that is transforming society in a humble way, with the totality of your soul force, of coming from the heart, to bring together, synthesize, and celebrate harmony. Bringing Spirit Down! That's the exciting part of our adventure.