The Official Flow Time Blog

How Music Can Change Your Life

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:11:00 GMT

How Music Can Change Your Life

June 6th, 2010 by Jason Harvey

You all know the old adage – “Music Hath Charms to Soothe the Savage Beast” – in actuality, it has been forever misquoted – it’s really “…to soothe the savage breast” –but either way, there can be no denying music’s power to change moods, and particularly from a somber or angry one – to happier.

Most people intuitively know that listening to music when they are feeling down or depressed can bolster their spirits. However recent research studies have shown that music, especially certain tones can clinically reduce stress. Music can alter brainwave patterns, as can yoga, deep breathing, and meditation – and bring on what is known as the Alpha State. Alpha is described as a state of deep relaxation, where the mind is totally stress-free and more open to problem solving. Using music to relax when dwelling on a particular problem then, may not only elevate your mood – but could help you reach that “a-ha” moment and find a solution.

Music has also been shown to increase the level of neurotransmitters such as serotonin, which are linked to mood. In this way music has been shown not only to make you feel good – but also, to be a great motivator. For example, during exercise, listening to music can keep you going, or get you to exercise more by helping you to ignore negative feelings of fatigue and focus on the pleasurable feelings you get from being absorbed in the music.

From Gregorian Chants to Gospel Music, there is a spiritual aspect to music that is undeniable. There is not a human culture in existence now or in antiquity that has not had music as part of religious ritual. There is even a belief that each of us has or can find his or her own “Power Song” that can help us to achieve all we want in life.

But beyond “The Search for the Lost Chord” – or the scientific rational of how or why music can change mood– music is at its most basic essence recorded emotion. When we listen to a piece of music we share the artist’s feelings on a visceral level. True, that can be sad, and who among us hasn’t put on a painful love song to share in the misery after a bad break-up. But, by the same token, we can share in the elation of songs of joy and happiness, or any song or piece of music that reminds us of a particular happy time in our past.

So next time you are feeling down, put on Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” – or dust off your Bob Dylan albums – you may, or may not connect with the “Harmonic Vibrations of the Universe” but I bet you will feel a whole lot better about whatever it was that was bothering you!

Jason Harvey is the author of “Achieve Anything In Just One Year: Be Inspired Daily to Live Your Dreams and Accomplish Your Goals.” He is a Certified Life Coach and founder of the Limitless Institute, a non-profit organization that funds research into human motivation and personal development. Jason’s blogs offers advice, lessons and tips on personal development, motivation and happiness

Clarinet Therapy Digest, May 16th 2010

Mon, 17 May 2010 22:14:00 GMT

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The Hidden Art of Achieving Creative Flow

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 15:57:00 GMT

The Hidden Art of Achieving Creative Flow

Flow in the present moment.

Have you ever had a creative evening when time suddenly flew by? A day when you executed a difficult project at work flawlessly? A brief moment in time when your challenging exercise routine felt effortless?

All of these times you were in a state of flow.

Flow is a concept developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of the University of Chicago, who has studied the phenomena his whole career. Daniel Pink reintroduces the concept in his new book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

Many people flow through their lives in an effortless fashion, while countless others have a difficult time achieving a flow state.

Why flow is hard to achieve
Flow is a moment in time when you’re both challenged at the activity that you’re doing, and when you also have complete autonomy in the task you’re conducting.

We engage in flow under your own volition, with a skill which we’ve had some amount of experience.

If you’re not flowing, it’s probably because you aren’t allowing yourself to be challenged, you’re completely overwhelmed, or someone else is holding you back.

The majority of my experience with flow has been with dance and writing. I’ve studied dance for many years, and one of the technical skills that dancers work on is called improvisation. Improv is very tricky in dance. You have to turn off your mind and simply dance with your instincts.

When you’ve mastered improv dance, you’ve reached the sweet spot between your brain transferring commands to your nervous system. There is no longer any thinking involved, as thinking in improv dance will make everything stop. There just isn’t any time for brainwork when you are constantly moving.

Csikszentmihalyi hypothesizes that these moments of flow occur because we’re simply activating too many neurological functions. Because of this we no longer have capacity to be aware of what functions we’re engaging in. So the ‘conscious of me’ part of the mind switches off, your awareness of yourself slips away, and you just do.

You’re simply flowing in the the present moment
I have also experienced flow in writing. I think it’s very important for writers to engage in flow. A lot of writers stop and meticulously edit their work after every sentence, but writing this way (for most people) is counterproductive.

Why? I believe it’s because of the same reason that dancers can’t stop dancing in improvisation. If you just keep writing for 30 minutes without stopping, you give your mind a chance to turn off the ‘conscious of me’ brain functions. This in turn grants more brain power to challenging the boundaries of your writing ability.

You cannot edit while you’re producing work. If you do, you’ll be constantly switching between your right brain and your left brain. Your creative center will be switching off and on and it will be harder to produce anything meaningful.

A classic example of real world flow
Ray Bradbury was a freelance writer who was trying to support his family. However, he was working at home with his cute little children. This proved to be incredibly distracting, so he had to find somewhere else to write. So, he headed over to UCLA’s Lawrence Clark Powell Library.

In the basement of the library there was a number of typewriters that gave 30 minutes of writing time for a dime.

Ray was very poor at the time, and needed all the money he could to support his family. Whenever he popped in the dime, he wanted to get his month’s worth. This forced him to write at a frantic pace until his time was up. The most frustrating element of writing the novel was when the typewriter keys tangled, because it meant that he was wasting valuable time.

In between these 30 minute typewriter banging sessions, he would wander the halls of the library studying books and contemplating what he would write for the next 30 minutes.

The novel Ray finished was classic sci-fi novel Fahrenheit 451. He created this novel in record amount of time, and recalled feeling as if the flow of time had accelerated. The novel wrote itself, effortlessly.

Think about how important it is to flow
I really believe many people miss this aspect of engaging in their work. If you aren’t flowing, you’re not reaching the peak of your ability. There is so much untapped hidden potential in flow, just waiting to be retrieved.

People who have learned flow are challenging themselves and creating work at their best.

We no longer have dime typewriters at the library, but there are a number of ways to practice flow without them.

9 simple ways you can bring yourself into flow

Pick a enjoyable, challenging activity. The easiest way to enter flow is by doing something you love. The activity also needs to challenge you, one you are extremely passionate about, that you enjoy doing, and that causes you to grow. If the activity is boring to tedious you won’t enjoy it, and so there is no way you can engage in flow.
Eliminate distractions. Turn off your phone, log out of twitter, switch off gmail. If you’re constantly flipping back and forth between different tasks you’ll never be able to achieve flow. A foreign distraction will quickly bring you out of the flow mindset.
Think before you do. Do any research or preparation before you engage in the activity you wish to flow in. If you stop and do research while writing, or have to grab a bite to eat in the middle of a run, you’ll throw yourself out of the grove. Preparation is the only way to avoid that.
Isolate yourself. The best way to achieve flow is alone. If you’re in a room full of people, your mind will constantly be drawn away from what you’re doing. Shut the door, put on headphones, or find another way to isolate yourself.
Let go. Give up any expectations that you have for yourself. If you enter a flow situation with preconceptions about the results that you’ll get from the practice, you’ll inevitably disappoint yourself. You also run the risk of narrowing your focus to a point where you can’t change coarse naturally if your flow takes you down a road less traveled.
Give yourself a time limit. Like Bradbury, set a timer on your activity. Give yourself 30 minutes of uninterrupted flow time and just go at it with everything you’ve got. Forget about how much time you’ve been doing the activity, and how much time you have left, just flow. You may just find that you lose track of time completely.
Keep moving. Continuous motion is key to flow, don’t give your mind a chance to start second guessing what you’re doing. Keep moving with the activity you’re flowing in. Go at a pace that’s challenging for you, but not overwhelming. You want to be calm and collected, but also have forward momentum.
Don’t think. Switch off the part of your brain that observes what you’re doing. This is your self-consciousness, your ego, your sabotage. Why flow is so important is that it circumvents the necessity to constantly critique yourself. This can be hard, if you’re used to constantly second-guessing everything you do, but it is so important to successfully entering flow.
Practice. Like any useful skill, flow takes time to master. Don’t stress if you can’t do it right away. If you’re interested in achieving a state of flow, you need to practice regularly. Set a time every day that will be dedicated flow time. Eventually you’ll start to recognize when you’re flowing, and when you’re not. After many hours of practice, you’ll eventually become a flow master.

The Trends in Music Recording Careers

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:43:00 GMT

Economic trends means there may be a number of students out there who are weighing options after graduation. Is college an option? Or are there other ways to get into the music recording business?

Working in the music recording industry means a chance to work with top recording artists and musicians. There are many different careers in the industry. Music producers guide the shape of sound, while a sound engineer captures sound.

The music business is moving online, so it's important to learn as much about the music recording side of the business as you can. Digital music distribution over the Internet has really changed the landscape of the music business. Music technology has also grown quite a bit. Musicians today have to have a good knowledge about technology -- some of which is software based. The virtual world means having to be famaliar with software, plus there is still some hardware based technologies.

Donny Baker is a music producer and studio engineer at Elephant Symphony in Glendale, California says he likes teaching via the mentor approach because once his students graduate, they are engineers. Technology is constantly changing but in this industry it is changing backwards.

Baker's mentor approach works, and the best part is that you'll get a real world learning experience in a New York music recording school or one in Los Angeles.

there are a number of students who went to college, then did a mentor perogram afterwards to learn. At one Los Angeles music recording school, a student from Atlanta said, "During my apprenticeship I got to meet P. Ditty, Master P. and Jermaine Dupri. I had the honor of working with David Banner in Atlanta. I can't even explain to you how much this program did for me. I thank you and bless you."

There is just tons of stuff that the mentor programs teach that you just don't, or can't get in traditional schools. The curriculum qualifies graduates for positions as a music producer or a recording engineer.

The best thing is, students are taught in one-on-one private sessions in a real recording studio. It's an apprentice type program - under the direct supervision of a music industry professional working on real-world projects. Plus there's no experience necessary, and students can take classes part time during night or weekend sessions.

Teachers who are mentors in the music recording business know how to succeed in the very competitive engineering field - so they end up passing their knowledge and experience on to their students. It is a win-win situation.

Writer and social media expert Kristin Gabriel works with the Entertainment Career Connection, Inc. (http://www.recordingconnection.com) a fully accredited academic institution certified by the National Private Schools Accreditation Alliance. The school provides educational apprentice programs for the film, radio, television and the music recording industries in more than 100 cities in 50 states. The schools provide the entertainment industry with graduate apprentices and entry level employees.

The History Of British Music

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:34:00 GMT

British music in the early seventeenth century was similar if not the same as that on the continent. The main types of music were Church music, Minstrelsy and secular or non-religious music. Although the latter should be called, semi secular if there is such a term, because it still had a religious flavour to it.

English Church music of the pre-reformation period necessarily moved on the same lines as that of the Continent, although probably existing in a far less advanced stage of cultivation. Minstrelsy, however, was highly regarded among English, Irish, Welsh, and Scottish; and among the Irish and Welsh the bardic caste enjoyed a degree of power and influence probably unknown in any other country of the world.

Thus in Ireland the three grades of minstrels or bards of the legendary period, the Oblansh-Re-Dan, or Filidhe, the poets; the Breithanhain, or Brehons, promulgators of the law, and the Seanachaidhe, the historians and genealogists exerted a tremendous influence among the princes and chiefs of Ireland. A similar, although lesser, measure of power and influence was 'enjoyed by the Welsh bards.

Unswayed by the imperfectly understood system of the Greek theorists, which, thanks to Boethius, were perpetuating a species of artistic cramp among Church composers, the folk-music of this country, governed solely by man's natural sense of fitness, made astonishing progress.

Giraldus Cambrensis, who lived in the twelfth century, in his Cambriae Descriptio says-

"In the northern parts of Britain, beyond the Humber and on the borders of Yorkshire, the people there inhabiting, make use of a kind of symphoniac harmony in singing, but with only two differences or varieties of tones or voices. In this kind of modulation, one person sings the under part in a low voice, while another sings the upper in a voice equally soft and pleasing. This they do not so much by art as by a habit, which long practice has rendered almost natural; and this method of singing is become so prevalent amongst these people, that hardly any melody is accustomed to be uttered simply, or otherwise than variously, or in this twofold manner"

With this should be combined another extract from the same writer, as illustrating the wide-spread taste for music in the British Islands at that early period. In 1171 Giraldus 'Cambrensis, or Gerald Barry, Bishop of St. David's, to give him his proper name and title in English, visited Ireland in the suite of Henry the Second; and in his Topographia Hibernia there are the following impressions of Irish National Music :-

"The attention of this people to musical instruments I find worthy of commendation, in which their skill is beyond comparison superior to that of any nation I have seen ; for in these the modulation is not slow and solemn, as in the instruments of Britain, to which we are accustomed, but the sounds are rapid and precipitate, yet at the same time sweet and pleasing. It is wonderful how, in such rapidity of the fingers, the musical proportions are preserved, and by their art, faultless throughout, in the midst of their complicated modulations, and most intricate arrangement of notes, by a rapidity so sweet, a regularity so irregular, a concord so discordant, the melody is rendered harmonious and perfect, whether the chords of the Diatesseron, or Diapente, are struck together; yet they always begin in a soft mood, and end in the same, that all may be perfected in the sweetness of delicious sound. They enter on, and again leave their modulations with so much subtility, and the tinglings of the small strings sport with so much freedom under the deep notes of the bass, delight with so much delicacy, and soothe so softly, that the excellence of their art seems to lie in concealing it"

English literature of the Middle Ages is full of references to minstrels and minstrelsy, and abounds in quaint and curious details of their life and manners; and for the present-day reader, with a great desire for information concerning the early music of this country, no better authority exists than Chappell's entertaining "Popular Music of the Olden Time."

More distinguished in the Middle Ages for the cultivation of folk-music than that of the Church. Medieval England yet produced a very respectable body of theoretical writers, and to England belongs the credit of possessing the oldest piece of polyphonic and canonic composition known to be in existence, the old Northumbrian round, "Sumer is icumen in," which was transcribed by a monk of Reading called John of Fornsete, in the early years of the thirteenth century.

The earliest writer of music was an Englishman called Walter Odyngton, an Evesham monk, who was born in the year 1180. He wrote a treatise, "De Speculatione Musicae," of which the only known copy is now in the library of Christ's College, Cambridge. Other writers were Simon Tunstede, of Norwich, born about 1310; Robert de Handlo; John Dunstable; John Hamboys, the first to hold the degree of Doctor of Music; and John Hothby, a Carmelite monk, who, however, lived on the Continent, and died at Florence in or about the year 1480.

With the coming of the Tudors, a new day began for English music, a day whose brightness was to culminate in the splendour of the Elizabethan Age.

Michael Shaw is an organ and keyboard teacher and sells sheet music and tutor books at his websites http://www.keyboardsheetmusic.co.uk and http://www.mikesmusicroom.co.uk and

Flamenco Music

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:55:00 GMT

The flamenco is a time honored musical and dance genre that originated in Spain. Flamenco developed in Andalusia due to the interaction between Arabic, Andalusian, Sephardic and Gypsy cultures in the area in the 19th century, although forms of the music and dance were noted earlier. Flamenco music is characterized by intricate guitar playing and flamenco dancing refers to the corresponding dance, performed with easy to hear footwork.

Flamenco emerged from a complicated cross section of musical and cultural norms in the area. The dance was originally performed only by the gypsies in their communities, but musical members of the surrounding areas eventually joined in, adding their own flavor.

Flamenco music changed greatly in the late eighteenth century, when musicians changed instruments. Though flamenco was originally played on a classical five string guitar, flamenco enthusiasts adopted the six string guitar, which is now one of the most characteristic aspects of the genre. The added string allowed further diversification among players and styles. Most traditional flamenco guitars are made of Spanish spruce or cypress, and are smaller than normal guitars. This provides for a sharper sound while playing.

About a century after the addition of the sixth string to the guitar, flamenco music reached what is known as "the golden age." Cafes cantantes became popular between 1870 and 1910, allowing flamenco artists to hold ticketed concerts. This also paved the way for the popularization of flamenco dancing who performed at these concerts.

Flamenco musicians from this era, like El Loco Mateo and Silverio Franconetti, became popular and their music is still played today.

The Etapa Teatreal, or the Theatrical Period, followed the Golden Age of Flamenco. Flamenco music become commercial and was considered decadent. Flamenco music was broadcasted to the people through large venues, but traditional players believed this damaged the players' integrity.

The flamenco is an incredibly emotional dance. Flamenco music does not use choreographed music, instead focusing on the emotion behind the movement and the feeling of the beat. Dancers also use their feet as percussive instruments, creating the rhythm. Flamenco musicians also improvise while playing, rather than pay attention to the beat of the rhythm.

In today's version of the flamenco, artists are heavily influenced by other cultures. Many flamenco songs are derived from Arabic music from Yemen. Modern forms of the flamenco borrow greatly from Latin American and Cuban musical forms. This is called the rumba, and cajons are often played during performances of the genre. A cajon is a percussive instrument used to mark the beat. This hand drum acts as a stool for the player, who sits on top while slapping the frontplate of the cajon. The drum is equipped with guitar strings or snare strings that rest against the frontplate, giving the acoustic drum a range of sounds. The compas, which separates beats and musical accentuations, is often accomplished through the use of the cajon.

X8 Drums is your destination for all things djembe, cajon, didgeridoo and more. Hand drummers at any level can get personal assistance finding the right gear plus tons of free instructional material.

Music Download Sites for the Music Lover

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:45:00 GMT

Your world will not be complete if there is no music. However, gone are the days when you have to buy those large black discs which are as big as your plates or those hideous cassette tapes. You do not even have to buy cd's because if you are a true blue music lover, you just need an mp3 player which you can fill with songs downloaded from music download sites. Indeed, these sites prove to be a rich treasure chest of songs for every music lover out there. You only need to make a few clicks with your mouse and then, voila, you will have the music of your choice.

Though the music download sites are everywhere, you need to be very cautious of them. You also have to be aware of the copyright regulations of the music which are offered in the sites. Though it is but easy to download and enjoy the music offered in these sites, you would not wish to face a recording industry lawsuit which may just take away all of your savings because you forgot the copyright regulations since you were so excited with your newly found music haven. Some of these download sites offer free music downloads; on the other hand, some require payment before you can download the tracks or the songs. Before you click and agree with the terms and conditions of the site as well as before you provide the information about your credit card, you must first know if the music offered in the sites are legal. Checking if the music is offered legally will ensure that you are not wasting your money but instead, getting its worth. Even if the sites which offer unlimited music at no charge are such a temptation, sometimes, it pays to be wary of these sites and eliminate them from your list. More often than not, a new and hopeful artist will post his music on the Internet and you can download the songs for free. You still have to be wary since there is always the possibility that the artist or someone will sue you for downloading that music. Aside from the music of these upcoming artists, you also have to exercise caution when faced with the list of download networks or sites which allow complete and totally free access to the songs of famous bands and artists. These sites smell fishy, don't they?

So what are the best music download sites for the music lover? If you are really a music lover and your world will stop revolving if there is no music around you, you will not have second thoughts in downloading music from sites which charge costly download fees. Once you have checked if the download site is legal, you may go through the various membership and purchase options offered by the site. Go through these options and select what you think will work best for you. Some sites do not ask for membership fees since they offer a per download charge to their customers. To make sure that you are getting your money's worth, you may make use of the sites features such as the free preview of the music short clips.

The article written by Zarqoo Zaimoo. Please visit Music Download Sites for more information and other download site visit http://www.ezydownload.net