Crafting Musical Inductions: Class Notes

digitalswitchgamine:

Crafting Musical Inductions was first taught by @digitalswitchgamine and @enscenic at Entranced 2017. Please enjoy our notes and feel free to write us with any comments/suggestions you may have. Thank you for our demo subjects who helped make our first edition a success by being our human xylophone: @minddiver, @lily-ackerman​, @arihi​, @hypnokittencalico​, and @sex-obsessed-lesbian​ A special thanks to @minddiver for his help with musical fractionation, and being the guinea pig in our Music in Trance experiments.

Auditory Modality

Auditories are people who experience the world most strongly through sound. They may remember sound particularly well or be able to recreate sound easily in their heads.

Describing Sounds in Induction: using the description of sounds to set the stage for a description i.e. sounds that one might hear on a beach.

ASMR- Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response: this response is usually described as tingling or a lovely, relaxed, meditative state. Sounds a lot like trance, right? It’s usually triggered by whispery voices, ambiguous touch, crinkling, ticking, tapping, etc. It can be useful in getting trance response in certain people

Binaural Beats: When two different tones below 1500 Hz are played, one in each ear, the brain will detect an auditory illusion of a third tone. There are some studies that suggest that binaural beats can induce a non ordinary state of consciousness or make someone more suggestible to hypnosis.

Inductions

Auditory fixation induction: Using sound as a point of fixation instead of a visual focal point. You can also use a visual and auditory fixation i.e. spoon in a teacup, or a metronome. 

Pattern Interrupt 

• Transderivational Search: The “what-the-fuck” moment when the pattern that your brain anticipated isn’t completed. It is a moment lasting about 1-2 seconds where the brain is prime to any suggestion to complete the pattern. Here are some ideas to induce transderivational search in a musical induction:
• Railroad Tracks
• Coming in on 2 unexpectedly. Ex: Wait for It- Hamilton. Learn- Alanis Morrissette
• Not completing a well-known melody or musical pattern that you’ve established. Ex: Who Framed Roger Rabbit
• @sex-obsessed-lesbian‘s “Hamilton Induction:”@sex-obsessed-lesbian demonstrated how to interrupt “Alexander Hamilton,” from the hit musical, Hamilton on the word “drop.”

Overload/Confusion

• An induction that seeks to overload or confuse the mind until it gives up trying to make sense of things
• Cacophonous overload of complicated harmonies and rhythms
• Swelling dynamics that can create overtones that confuse the brain. Ex: Bach Again
• Panning in recordings that make sound swell from one ear to the other.
• Post-hypnotic suggestions that include the perception of panning volume from one ear to the other

Sensory Deprivation

• The cessation of sound as trance inducing
• Ex: @deeperforme‘s “Noise Canceling Headphone Induction,” where he uses the cessation of ambient noise, to send subjects into trance. This works best with headphones that have a noise canceling button.

Deepeners/Awakeners

• Scalar motion can be used to signify deepness vs. awakeness. A scale can be used with anything that happens on a spectrum. Ex: intelligence
• Ascension vs. Descension: some folks prefer low numbers to be going down into trance, some people prefer it the other way around. The same applies in music. You can ascend or descend into trance. Whatever you’re into.
• Word Painting: the technique of writing music that reflects the literal meaning of the song. Ex: singing “up” or “rise,” over an ascending line
• Cadences: chords that compose the end of a phrase or song. Often V-I or IV-I. These can be used to signify the end of trance.
• Experimenting with timbre: the quality of the sound. Ex: Glockenspiel vs voice vs whatever Instrument
• Rhythmic deepeners and awakeners: the slowing of rhythmic snapping. You can also adjust speed of speech or song
• Fractionation- The process of bringing someone in and out of trance in quick succession, causing them to deepen more into trance each time. You can use a scale to fractionate someone by dropping them to different degrees of the scale and jumping around within the scale. Try using different types of scales (major, chromatic minor). Try playing/singing in staccato and legato.

Increasing Suggestibility

• You can use music to enhance emotional content of trance
• You can use trance to enhance the emotional content of music

Triggers

• Reinduction Triggers- You can use a phrase or short melody to reinduce trance quickly.
• Physical Triggers: Ex: take my breath away for breath play
• Lyrical Triggers: Triggers within the lyrics of a song