From dasanu@interaccess.comThu Dec 15 20:06:38 1994
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 1994 16:09:23 -0600
From: Dasanudas Adhikari 
To: sustag-principles@ces.ncsu.edu,
    Joerg Khalid Bashir 
Subject: Observed Effects of Justly-intoned Music

       Psychophysiological Effects of Justly-intoned Music

          Copyright (c) 1994 by Dasanudas Adhikari
                    All Rights Reserved.

Background

Justly-intoned music uses intervals or scale-tones derived
from the harmonic series. The harmonic series is found in
nature in every kind of vibration, from earthquakes to
X-rays, and in the sound of the human voice and musical
instruments. Every vibration (except for certain special
kinds of "noise") is composed of one or more fundamental
frequencies, each accompanied by a series of harmonic
frequencies, or harmonics for short. These harmonics alter
the sonic perception of a tone and therefore carry
information about the source of the tone. For example, the
harmonics give a musical tone its timbre, allowing us to
tell the difference between a bassoon and a trumpet playing
the same note. Similarly, differences in the relative
amplitude of the harmonics distinguish the various vowel
sounds of human speech.

The frequencies of the harmonics fall exactly at integral
multiples of the fundamental. Thus, if one plays a note at
100 Hz (about low B flat beneath the bass clef), the
harmonics will appear at precisely 200 Hz, 300 Hz and so
forth.

A musical scale made up solely of intervals appearing in the
harmonic series of its fundamental tone, with a preference
for intervals using lower-numbered ratios, is called
justly-intoned. Just intonation or just temperament was the
style of tuning of all ancient music, both eastern and
western. Western music adopted equal temperament, a
mathematical compromise designed to facilitate modulation
on keyboard instruments, around the time of Bach.

The ancients ascribed sacred significance to justly-intoned
musical intervals because of their cosmic universality. The
Vedic civilization, for example, was quite aware of the inner
harmonic structure of timbre, and felt that the various
harmonic intervals symbolized the sacred emotions of love for
Godhead. Thus justly-intoned music was a central element in
Vedic colleges of sacred lore. The ancient Greeks expressed
similar ideas as found in the writings of Pythagoras and
others.

Interestingly, over the past few years a movement back
towards just temperament has begun, mostly on the basis of
the more pleasurable sound of justly-intoned music.
However, this music has more profound benefits that are not
readily apparent to the direct observation of the senses. My
own research work, performed in 1968-71, observed definite
improvements in the state and performance of various living
beings by exposure to justly-intoned music.

First Series of Experiments

My experimental work began by exposing simple plants to
various kinds of sound vibrations and measuring the
results. I worked with sprouts because they grew fast and
were easy to design experiments for. I exposed various
kinds of seeds to a wide variety of music available on
commercial recordings and measured the germination rate,
sprouting time, growth rate, rate of weight gain,
chlorophyll content and time to second-stage growth
(appearance of leaves).

To briefly summarize, after a large number of trials I was
able to determine several statistically significant trends
in the data:

1.      Plants exposed to early styles of music did better
than those exposed to modern music or controls exposed to
no music at all.

2.      Plants exposed to Vedic and other justly-intoned
music did better than other categories.

3.      Plants exposed to Vedic devotional chanting and
Gregorian chants did best of all.

I repeated the same series of trials with animals (goats and
cows) and got roughly analogous results. Things got really
interesting when I extended the experiments to people. My
principal measurement tools were the short form of the
Stanford-Benet IQ test, and the common Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory test (MMPI), both of which I had
extensive experience using in advertising research focus
groups. I also utilized simple task-oriented psychological
tests, such as pegboard insertion and pattern-matching
trials, for baseline establishment and to give the subjects
something to do while listening to the music.

I got very similar results to the previous trials. People
who listened to modern styles of music, regardless of their
musical preferences, did uniformly worse on the
psychological tests than people who listened to ancient
styles or Vedic justly-intoned music.

Upon reviewing the results of my experiments I was faced
with a conundrum. Several of them, in fact:

1.      First of all, how do plants respond to music when
they have got no ears or other sense organs to recognize
sound vibrations? Standard biological theory thus provided
no means to explain the results of my experiments. Can
music influence living beings by some means other than the
directly produced sound vibrations?

2.      Next, according to standard psychological theories
of aesthetics, a person should derive the maximum amount of
benefit from music that they subjectively like. However, I
found that an individual's subjective preferences had
little or nothing to do with their responses to the music.
Hence, the results I experienced could not be predicted or
explained by modern psychology. I searched throughout the
literature and could not find any suitable answers in
conventional theories of aesthetics or the philosophy of
creativity, art and music. What theory could explain the
observed species-independent objective effects of
justly-intoned music?

3.      Finally, if modern music was proven to be less
beneficial than other styles, and even less beneficial than
silence, this means that modern music contains some
actually harmful qualities or poisonous properties.
Conversely, if ancient styles of music are proven to be
more beneficial, they contain some life-nourishing
ingredient. What is that ingredient and how has it become
changed or polluted in modern music? Why does modern
society produce and propagate such harmful music, and what
can be done to rectify the situation?

Second Series of Experiments

My next series of experimental trials addressed question #3
mentioned above. I began by studying the fundamentals of
Vedic music with an expert teacher, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.
After thoroughly understanding the fundamentals of Vedic
music, I then broke the music into its structural
components, isolating the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic
aspects of Vedic music from each other. I made recordings
of these components using various instruments. Finally, I
made a new set of experimental trials on plants and
people.

The results of these trials showed that, while all the
elements of Vedic music showed some beneficial results, the
least of these were from the influence of the rhythm. A
greater proportion of benefit was obtained from the melody
alone, but the greatest by far was derived from the
harmonic aspect of Vedic music. I then concluded that the
element of Vedic music most responsible for the beneficial
effects I had observed was its harmonic structure.

Someone may object that Vedic classical music has no
harmonic chord structure, only a single-line melody over a
sustained drone. This is true, however the harmony I refer
to here is precisely the relationship between the melody
note and the drone.

In order to check this conclusion I made two identical
series of recordings of early Western classical piano
pieces, one using conventional Western equal-temperament
intonation, and the other using the integral harmonic
values of Vedic classical music. When used in experimental
trials, the piano that was tuned to Vedic scale intervals
produced almost the same beneficial result as pure Vedic
classical music during the first set of trials. My theory
and interpretation of the previous experimental results
were thus confirmed.

The main difference between the Vedic classical tuning and
Western equal temperament is in the ratios used to
calculate the harmonic intervals between notes. In Western
music, this is a mathematical compromise developed around
the time of J.S. Bach, wherein each octave is divided into
12 equal half-steps (hence the name "equal temperament").

However, the Vedic scale follows the ancient traditional
practice of deriving the scale tones from the harmonic
series of the tonic or bass tone. Since the harmonic series
is fundamental to the structure of every vibration in the
universe (no pun intended), it is a far more universal and
cosmically significant basis for calculating the intonation
of musical artistic sound vibration, especially if the
music is intended for use in worship or other sacred
applications.

I therefore concluded that because the Vedic classical
intonation is derived from a fundamental characteristic of
the universe, namely the harmonic series, it automatically
produces better results upon living beings than a system born
in the limited mind of a human being, no matter how
intelligent.

The subject of the derivation, use and significance of the
scale-tones of Vedic music is extraordinarily profound,
complex and meaningful. As such, it is beyond the scope of
this short summary paper and is treated at some length in
my papers "Sabda Brahma" and "Sapta Svara".

                         .  .  .

Dasanudas Adhikari was a child prodigy in physics and music.
After turning down a full scholarship to MIT in Nuclear
Physics, he went on to become a successful composer and
producer of film and television scores. Later, after
becoming aware of the therapeutic properties of sacred
Vedic chants, he went to India and was initiated as a
Vaisnava monk in the Brahma-sampradaya. He currently resides
in Chicago.

For more information on this subject, contact Dasanudas
Adhikari at dasanu@interaccess.com
Your ever well-wisher,

Dasanudas Adhikari,
Congregational Development Minister, ISKCON Chicago
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