Book of Days (An Experiment)

Ever get a song stuck in your head? I was washing dishes yesterday when Lori yelled at me to stop humming. My first thought was "Who's humming?" Then I realized I'd been humming Enya's Book of Days for the past ten minutes.

I found a MIDI version of the song a few weeks ago. Somehow it made its way from my hard drive to my brain, with continuous looping turned on. I've recreated the experience for you in the web version of this issue. Those of you reading in email can gain the full effect at http://manifestation.com/sounds/book_of_days.mid

I caught myself humming the song again and again, like the music would do anything to break out of me. I suppose I could have stopped it, but I enjoyed it. There was only one thing left to ask. My brain had created a consistent behavior. A pattern. So how could I hack it? I found my answer last night as I drifted off to sleep.

As far as I know, anybody with vocal cords and lungs can hum. Some of us do it better than others, but we all can do it. Yet how did we learn? No one - not even in voice class - ever told me to move these muscles in this way in order to make a note. No one told me how to vary my pitch. I couldn't tell you which muscles to move myself. Yet somehow I'd learned to coordinate all those muscles and produce beautiful music to annoy my girlfriend and make the dishwashing go by quicker.

That's when I thought of my electronic keyboard. It's been sitting on my shelf for years. I know a few fragments of songs, and I'm pretty good at tapping out melodies. I can even read a little music. But I've never taken time to really learn how to play.

I figured that if my unconscious mind can coordinate all the muscles in my vocal system to produce music, why shouldn't it be able to coordinate my fingers to the same end? Rather than thinking of a keyboard as an external device with rules to be memorized (this chord consists of these keys, etc.), what if I simply treated the keyboard as an extension of my body? My brain could orchestrate the nerve impulses to my fingers, and all I'd have to do is pay attention to the sounds that emerged.

I tried it out. I sat up in bed, put the keyboard in my lap, and put on some headphones, and felt for the keys in the dark. I told myself I would just play, and not worry about getting any notes right. I'd keep Book of Days in mind and see how close I could come.

I started with random notes. If someone else had played it for me, I would have suggested they find a new hobby. But since I was just playing, I didn't worry about how good or bad it sounded.

Pretty soon I added rhythm. The tones were all wrong, but I matched the note lengths to the song I wanted.. As I played, I was no longer hearing the music in my mind. I only had a feeling of familiarity or strangeness - "yes, this is close" or "no, I'm way off".

As my fingers moved up and down the keyboard, I'd occasionally hit a note that sounded right, and gravitate towards it. I found chords like Enya's chords, and melodies like Enyas's melodies. Pretty soon I was playing whole bars of halfway-decent Enya imitation.

About that time, I became aware that I was really tired. I opened my eyes, and discovered I'd lost all track of when and where I was. The trance lingered for a few minutes as I put my keyboard under the bed and drifted off to sleep.

Unconscious piano recitals are fun, and produce a deep, relaxing trance. With a little more time, practicing them could help build some amazing musical skills. Personally, I'm going to experiment some more. In the meantime, try it yourself and tell me how it goes!

HTB Lab Notes

Hey all. I thought it was time to try something new. This issue is two experiments in one. First, it's something you can try yourself. Second, it's a much shorter, more direct format. I hope you liked it.

Some of you asked me about quitting my job last issue. What do I want to do instead? I want to do web design and some professional writing (fiction, commercial copy, whatever) and tutoring on the side. I looked at the money I'd saved up over the past few months and decided to take a couple weeks off of work in order to learn more about webmastery. I'm studying java, javascript, dynamic html, etc. I'll be adding quite a bit to manifestation.com in the days to come. Meanwhile, if anyone needs some web design, let me know!