Description
An unprecedented perspective on the healing nature of Western modes, The Gift of Healing Modes empowers the musician with seven clear and distinct scales each with their own unlimited shades of musical color. The emphases are on the feeling emoted by the music, and how to elicit the mood using the principles and science supporting healing modal theory. Musicians expand their intuitive skill as they recognize which mood to set, or match, to support the ailing. This book gives the healing musician a new repertoire designed to progress the art of playing healing music at the bedside. The guidance is described in a fashion to help take the musician off the score sheet and into the intuitive perspective for a more efficient way to create a healing environment.
Play naturally, play simply and play powerfully are the three declarations that summarize The Gift of Healing Modes music book. It’s impressive what can be done with only seven notes. But, far beyond this is the way each mode, or scale, is distinguished from the next, conceptually, structurally and audibly. Each mode has its own relative mood quality. “It’s how the music makes you feel, and where it takes you that counts,” said author Stella Benson. She wrote, “Although it may seem simple to you, if you can hear a mode and know which mode is sounding, without looking at the music, then is when you have mastered the modes.”
Stella Benson connected the science with her assertions to support why pure intervals, harmonic series, Natures Chord, and the human voice frequency range are critical, and perhaps overlooked, aspects of therapeutic music.
The explanations, instructions, and music in this 161-page book will allow all levels of musicians to enter the world of healing music, including 77 modal scores and a section on modal improvisation. Of particular interest are explanations of how to heighten or lesson the modal character and quality of any given mode, strengthening or weakening the ambience.
About the Author
Stella Benson was a pioneer in the application of healing music. She brought more than twenty years of study and teaching of Western modes. She was Director of the Healing Musician’s Center, past Executive Director of the Music for Healing and Transition Program, and served on the board of directors of the National Standards Board for Therapeutic Musicians. Her educational materials consists of the book The Healing Musician, a guide to playing healing music at the bedside , the Healer’s Way companion music books, Volume I, Soothing Music for Those in Pain and Volume II, Calming Music for Anxiety. Stella Benson’s Healer’s Way recorded series is heard in hospices and hospitals internationally, as well as in the home.
