Genetically Modified Music (by E. Powell)

To be aware, truly aware, of the nature of life and our world, it has been said, is the key to enlightenment. However, awareness can often bring depression, skepticism, and hence a desire and tendency not to look deeper than the superficial. It is my feeling that this can be the result of "looking" only slightly below the surface... I feel that to look very deeply reveals that even the things which seem terrible, finally can have positive meaning when seen in the GRAND scheme of things. I wanted first to make this point before embarking on a description of something which might appear frightening.

First of all, let's face it - we live in a very modern world. We are surrounded with technology. Surrounded by machines and products of very advanced industry and science... in fact, it has reached the point where our very lives have become dependent on technology. Human life has not always been this way. Think and try to imagine what life was like 200 years ago, 500 years ago, 5000 years ago, 5 million years ago. Life was very different back then, but why? What was the real difference? What happened in the last 2000 years which ignited the changes which resulted in the world we now live in which is a world only vaguely resembling what was in our not so distant past?

In the course of our daily life, how often do we stop to think about the nature of what is around us? For example, when we buy fruits and vegetables in the supermarket, do we take a moment to reflect on the fact that none of the plants we are purchasing and eating are plants which exist naturally in nature? None of them. All vegetables available now were created by scientists in laboratories. When at home with our dogs and cats, or in the country witnessing our farm animals, do we stop and reflect on the truth that these beloved animals which nourish us with love, or as food, also would never be seen today without the existence of bio-experimental science. Pigs, dogs, horses, cows, etc. never existed before in the form we now know and love them.

Again, we may ask; how did this happen, and why?

We may also ask; what other areas of life have been "modified" and "de-naturized" by science, and industry?

How many people are aware that even music, our beloved modern music, has been affect by the industrial mind-set. Of course we all are aware of recording studios and the possibilities of sound modifications, equalisation, and special effects etc... but who is truly aware that at the fundamental level, the deepest level, the actual rate of vibration of the most basic musical pitches, as we now know them, like the denatured tomatoes and kittens, are also modern creations never before existing naturally in nature! Yes, modern Western musicians, composers, scholars, and instrument builders have actually, gradually, over the last 500 years, profoundly altered the speed of vibration of the fundamental musical pitches as we know them now. It means that the music we grew up with, that we hear on the radio everyday, that we studied in school, is out of tune.

What does this actually mean, "out of tune"? To be "in tune" means to be in harmony. In harmony with what? In harmony with life, and the grand forces of nature and the universe of which we are a small part. Every child is told that no two snowflakes and no two leaves are identical. No two drops of water, no two clouds, no two sunsets, and no two people are exactly the same. What this means is that in nature, no two things are exactly the same. This is also true with musical notes. In nature, no two musical intervals are exactly the same. But look at the fingerboard of a modern fretted guitar... it is immediately clear, from looking at the equally distanced fret placings that this is an instrument intended to produce semitones of exactly equal distance from each other. But as we just determined, nothing in nature is identical, and to be truly in tune, semitones must NOT be equally spaced. Observe the fingerboards of instruments designed to play music which does not employ the modern system of "equal temperament", instruments such as the sitar, the oud, or the saz. Either the frets are tied on with movable (hence, tunable) threads, or there are no frets at all. When there are frets, look closely, they are NOT spaced equally.

So, our music is out of tune... our vegetables are out of tune... our animals are out of tune... our air and water are out of tune... could it be that the result (or the cause), is that "we" are out of tune?

Please let me refer back to the first paragraph of this article, and let's be reminded that in the GRAND GRAND scheme of things, nothing is out of tune, nothing is bad or good, everything has a purpose --- and no matter what will happen on earth, 20 trillion years from now the universe will destroy and then recreate another one just as wonderful as the one before.

So just for the sake of awareness, let us simply face the fact that yes, we are "out of tune". Life is music, and music is life... we can be forgiven when we are ignorant, but when we have awareness then it is our choice--- we always have choices. We do not have to play equal tempered music on equal tempered instruments. Wonderful alternatives exist.

Edward Powell - November 2005.

(c) 2012 edwardpowell.com