"The Sound of Salvia"

[Orphia Nay]

A "scientific researcher" claims he can simulate the effects of the drug Salvia Divinorum through music.

http://ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/SalviaDivinorum_FrequencyEmulation/

You can download a free 10 minute sample of the simulation here:

http://www.spiralstarz.com/salvia.htm#free

Yes, the track sounds like the ghastly plinky-plonk music added to the page.

If Salvia Divinorum makes you think you've just tuned into the sound effects of a computer on a Doctor Who show from the 1970s, then this project is a success! ;)

Here are some testimonials from some of the people who have listened to the "music":

http://www.spiralstarz.com/alteredstates.htm

Upon this verdict of observation and experience, I began listening a little more closely to your frequencies and relized it little, if nothing had to do with musical theory and everything to do with cosmically astute math and dynamic. With that being said, as a musician I can hear distinct melody and rhythm (especially the peace harmony feel good elixir) in the frequencies.

Still seeing more and more of those little blue specks/flashes of lights, on a pretty regular basis. Still wish I knew what those little blue specks are.....anybody ?????

-------------------

Re: [undergroundlab] Underground Lab Week 2



are they electric blue? if so, Kundalini awakening is occurring...I get those also...hope this helps... ml&l--Andrea

-------------------

i Donna!


This is the first week of using the full combo of frequencies. Generally starting with a lower exposure to see how this works with my field. I'm waking up at around 2-3 am on the days I listening. Am also continuing to see the blue spheres every now and then and also other colors are starting to show up like greens and pinks in different shapes. Can feel my third eye pulsing strongly particularly at night. Also aware of more synchronicities happening.

:)

[Gate2501]

I am really stoned right now and listening to this.

I am about 5 minutes in and I definitely feel... the urge to pee.

[Orphia Nay]

I am really stoned right now and listening to this.

I am about 5 minutes in and I definitely feel... the urge to pee.

:)

Are you sure it's not just an urge to leave the room? Anything to get away from the horrible noise. ;)

[JFrankA]

I'll have to hear this when I get home from work.

The little video, though, with the "almost adam and eve" people was enough to convince me to NEVER EVER TRY THE STUFF EVER!!!! :)

[Orphia Nay]

:newlol The Tree of Knowledge was a magic mushroom! I think that explains the Bible. ;)


I'm just having a look at their "scientific" experiments "proving" the effects of the Salvia frequencies...

http://www.spiralstarz.com/data.htm

[Spektator]

From the title, I thought this was about the flowers called salvia.

Hello, flower, my old friend,
I've come to hear you speak again,
Near the border of your green bed,
I close my eyes and I tilt my head,
And the voices that were echoed in my brain?
Down the drain--
I hear the sound of salvia.

[calebprime]

That's a synth with the frequency being modulated randomly with a sample-and hold function, or something similar, with lots of reverb.

(I used to teach this stuff.)

No.

I lasted 5 seconds, had to turn it off.

I've tried Salvia--it was either a complete freak-out (being enveloped by one of the balloons from The Prisoner) or a feeling of slight 'aerial view', with a sense of detachment.

Not ghastly random frequency modulation.

No desire to try it again.


I do think you can trigger some weird sensations with a low buzz-tone, between 20 and 50 hz. Hopefully done in some way that it's not gawd-awful ugly.

One way to do this is to comb-filter any audio--maybe conversation, whatever. Simply copy the signal and delay it repeatedly by the appropriate (consistent) amount against itself.

Hear a buzz, get a buzz. Like looking at a strobe-light. Messes with some timing function in your brain.

The harmonic series, being a 'buzz', has a sort of psychedelic effect on me.

(Look at a strobe, get a seizure, or a migraine?)

[Elizabeth I]

:newlol The Tree of Knowledge was a magic mushroom! I think that explains the Bible. ;)

Or at least the Book of Revelation...

[Orphia Nay]

That's a synth with the frequency being modulated randomly with a sample-and hold function, or something similar, with lots of reverb.

(I used to teach this stuff.)

No.

I lasted 5 seconds, had to turn it off.

I've tried Salvia--it was either a complete freak-out (being enveloped by one of the balloons from The Prisoner) or a feeling of slight 'aerial view', with a sense of detachment.

Not ghastly random frequency modulation.

No desire to try it again.


I do think you can trigger some weird sensations with a low buzz-tone, between 20 and 50 hz. Hopefully done in some way that it's not gawd-awful ugly.

One way to do this is to comb-filter any audio--maybe conversation, whatever. Simply copy the signal and delay it repeatedly by the appropriate (consistent) amount against itself.

Hear a buzz, get a buzz. Like looking at a strobe-light. Messes with some timing function in your brain.

The harmonic series, being a 'buzz', has a sort of psychedelic effect on me.

(Look at a strobe, get a seizure, or a migraine?)

Thanks, calebprime. Maybe this guy has sampled the "freak out" effect of Salvia. ;) Although that wouldn't explain most of the testimonials.

Do you know of any dowloadable examples of a buzz tone we could have a listen to?


Or at least the Book of Revelation...

Yep, I definitely had that book in mind. ;)

[FreshHat]

Still seeing more and more of those little blue specks/flashes of lights, on a pretty regular basis. Still wish I knew what those little blue specks are.....anybody ?????

Macular degeneration?

[Orphia Nay]

Macular degeneration?

Spoilsport. ;) Kundalini awakening is a much more fun explanation. :oldroll: :)

[Beanbag]

The sound of saliva is usually a gross, hocking sound, followed by a wet splat.

Hey, I'm dyslexic. That's what the thread title looked like to me.

Beanbag

[calebprime]

Do you know of any dowloadable examples of a buzz tone we could have a listen to?



grr, first attempt crashed my browser.


Some possibly not-entirely-authentic Tibetan music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNxSf7eMBZ8&feature=related



didgeridoo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g592I-p-dc




and a deliberately debauched piece of my own,

http://www.box.net/shared/m37jhti1og#/shared/m37jhti1og/2/21216706

go to page 2, middle of page if you're not there. List is alphabetical. You can download or listen right from box, if your connection is fast enough.

Only the Searing Incomprehensible --hopefully aptly named.

I recorded an outdoor performance of the 1812 Overture at Harvard with my parabolic mic,

also a steel-drum-marching band,

and recorded my students on the last day of class filling out their evaluation forms for the class,

layered, sliced, diced, combed, delayed, EQ'd, reverbed and flanged,

one student reads a sort of poem:

"Mind is a disease of semen. It is blotted out in orgasm...
yadda yadda...
Only the Searing Incomprehensible"


The weekdays at the college didn't turn out like I planned,
The things that pass for knowledge I can't understand

Listen as I violate the boundaries of the students right before your ears!

Actually, the kid reading the poem is the one who introduced me to Salvia.

pretty good sax-player, fun to have in class.


I calculated a delay-time that matched the key of the 1812 overture (Eb).

You can hear the comb-filtering going in and out--the piece is supposed to sort of nod off. Imagine a former teacher, stoned out of his mind, recalling his class fondly.

For some reason, they started singing national anthems and Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles.

My student ratings were good that year.

I am in an extremely small minority (numbering exactly one) who like this piece.

[calebprime]

I've had trouble finding good YouTube drone examples.

This one is ok minus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHPzD7T_huU&feature=fvw


So, I'm a little frustrated that I can't easily find an illustration of something so basic, or bass-ic.

The examples on YouTube are all too high-pitched or too strident or too too.

feedback at around the 7th partial. Bb minus over low C.

Then the didgeredoos up around a major third. E-ish. Conch on E minus, not quite E.

Groove never quite jells...

This isn't great music, hell, it's not even good, but I'm having trouble finding something I like....

[calebprime]

I'm now sort of obsessed with trying to make a good drone.

Just trying to get it to sweep through the overtone series in a somewhat musical way.

I'm using Logic Pro, which I still suck at. (at which I still suck?)

1st attempt:

http://www.box.net/shared/m37jhti1og

called bigbuzz.mp3

turn down your speakers, this has some nasty near-dc bass, I think.

[Verklagekasper]

That music gives me a headache. I'd rather call it the sound of Jägermeister. :eye-poppi

[calebprime]

That music gives me a headache. I'd rather call it the sound of Jägermeister. :eye-poppi

Yeah, so far, no good.

I'm not going for music, just yet, but trying to just make a good drone.

Resonant filter sweeps of some low harmonically-rich bass with some chorus or flange should do it, but I can't get what I'm hearing, just yet.

As for drugs, I've heard a buzz once from mushrooms, once from nitrous oxide, and once from too much cannabis. They all sounded a little bit different. fwiw. which ain't much.

I think the eerie quality of overtone sweeps comes from the combination of harmonicity and some unusual pitches, especially the primes 7, 11, 13, 17, 19.

7, iirc, is around 30 cents 'narrow'.
11 is around 50 cents 'narrow'
13 is around 60+ cents 'narrow'--compared to 12-tone equal temperament.
17 and 19 are pretty close to et, especially 19, which is almost exactly an equal-tempered minor third.

I'll check the numbers on my next post.

I also think that the right low drone somewhere between about 20 hertz and 50 hertz has a strobe-like effect, and a possibly desirable eerie quality.

Eerie is good.

[calebprime]

That music gives me a headache. I'd rather call it the sound of Jägermeister. :eye-poppi

btw, be specific about what you were listening to.

Otherwise I'll be afraid that you hated everything.

If it's stuff in my box you're responding to, there's some stuff there that's sketches, or for documentary purposes. There's also stuff that's really polished, took a long time to make. There's good stuff, ok stuff, commercial stuff, non-commercial stuff. There are some fugues, some rock, some jazz, some 12-tone piano music, some science-doc scoring. It can't all be Jagermeister music.

But don't insult me generally.

[calebprime]

...


7, iirc, is around 30 cents 'narrow'.
11 is around 50 cents 'narrow'
13 is around 60+ cents 'narrow'--compared to 12-tone equal temperament.
17 and 19 are pretty close to et, especially 19, which is almost exactly an equal-tempered minor third.

I'll check the numbers on my next post.



7/4 is 969 cents or 31 cents narrow
11/8 is 551 cents
13/8 is 840.5 cents or 59.5 cents narrow (all compared to 12-tone et.)

17/16=1.0625=104.14 cents, pretty close to et.

19/16=1.1875=297.5 cents, also pretty close to et.

[ThatSoundAgain]

But don't insult me generally.

I'm not sure Kasper has gotten far enough in the thread to listen to your stuff - the (very little) context leads me to guess his post was a response to the link in OP, but who knows.

[calebprime]

I'm not sure Kasper has gotten far enough in the thread to listen to your stuff - the (very little) context leads me to guess his post was a response to the link in OP, but who knows.

Yeah, you're probably right.

I'm paranoid.

He's probably responding to the OP.

[Verklagekasper]

btw, be specific about what you were listening to.

Otherwise I'll be afraid that you hated everything.

But don't insult me generally.
My post was related to the OP, I listened to the first two samples on ....salvia.htm#free. Now I listened to Overtone Orchestra, liked it and gave it 5 stars, and I like bigbuzz.mp3 too. So no bad feelings ok :)

[Orphia Nay]

grr, first attempt crashed my browser.


Some possibly not-entirely-authentic Tibetan music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNxSf7eMBZ8&feature=related



didgeridoo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g592I-p-dc

Thanks! Those were very nice to listen to, but did not trigger any weird sensations or psychedelia, thank goodness. I didn't expect them to, as I don't think music can simulate the effects of drugs. I think music and sound use building blocks we are familiar with, whereas drugs short-circuit the machines that make the building blocks. :) I'm sure that could be explained much better than that.


and a deliberately debauched piece of my own,

http://www.box.net/shared/m37jhti1og#/shared/m37jhti1og/2/21216706

go to page 2, middle of page if you're not there. List is alphabetical. You can download or listen right from box, if your connection is fast enough.

Only the Searing Incomprehensible --hopefully aptly named.

I recorded an outdoor performance of the 1812 Overture at Harvard with my parabolic mic,

also a steel-drum-marching band,

and recorded my students on the last day of class filling out their evaluation forms for the class,

layered, sliced, diced, combed, delayed, EQ'd, reverbed and flanged,

one student reads a sort of poem:

"Mind is a disease of semen. It is blotted out in orgasm...
yadda yadda...
Only the Searing Incomprehensible"


The weekdays at the college didn't turn out like I planned,
The things that pass for knowledge I can't understand

Listen as I violate the boundaries of the students right before your ears!

Actually, the kid reading the poem is the one who introduced me to Salvia.

pretty good sax-player, fun to have in class.


I calculated a delay-time that matched the key of the 1812 overture (Eb).

You can hear the comb-filtering going in and out--the piece is supposed to sort of nod off. Imagine a former teacher, stoned out of his mind, recalling his class fondly.

For some reason, they started singing national anthems and Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles.

My student ratings were good that year.

I am in an extremely small minority (numbering exactly one) who like this piece.

:newlol And I'm afraid you remain so. Sorry, I do like bits of it, but mostly it reminds me why I don't take drugs anymore. :)

[Orphia Nay]

I'm now sort of obsessed with trying to make a good drone.

Just trying to get it to sweep through the overtone series in a somewhat musical way.

I'm using Logic Pro, which I still suck at. (at which I still suck?)

1st attempt:

http://www.box.net/shared/m37jhti1og

called bigbuzz.mp3

turn down your speakers, this has some nasty near-dc bass, I think.

That was pretty good! I like how it moves from left speaker to right speaker. (It would be even better if I'd used headphones.) That gives you a visceral experience, but again, it's not "spiritual" or "psychedelic" as per the OP.

[sadhatter]

You know i once got bored and tried a few of the " get high for free" things on the net, none of them seem to work. Which bummed me out because well i enjoy inebriation.

As far as salvia goes i sold some for a while before the craze ( legal, i don't really like to take chances with my freedom) and didn't think it was too awesome. But on a trip to ottawa, a friend fo mine picked up some that blew the stuff i had out of the water.

I remember the distinct feeling that god was real. Not in the sense of thinking it through, or anything just this overwhelming certainty, and moreso that i was going to be meeting him very soon.

Now some ( i would say a lot but i like to hold out some faith for humanity) would take a moment like this and give up all skepticisim. ( i actually had a wekk long debate with someone over a similar situation in which it turned them into a hardcore believer). One of my favorite things about the experience personally, is that i remember, after the initial shock, being just as ready to react with indiginity to this diety, for the crappy job its been doing in minding the earth. Which on a personal level i find awesome.

But it kills me that a good number of people convert , or even affirm thier faith through psychadelic drugs. I am no sage, far from it, but if i were to pass on one piece of advice to people it would be that " drugs are made to screw with your mind, if you experience something life changing, chalk it up to the fact that your using your mind as a chemistry set. Not that your drug use just happens to co-incide with some life shattering event."

[popscythe]

I completely agree: re conversion after getting really high (or after something else really powerful happens). They don't think that the patterns on the walls creeping and flowing around is real, but hidden normally and revealed by drug use, but they're willing to accept that God is real and hidden, but revealed by drug use. Amusing, but silly.

As for the get high for free look at this pattern or hear this noise... None of that crap ever works for me either.

[Fnord]

When I read the title of this thread, I thought that my computer would start producing the sound of gravel pudding being sucked through a leaky straw.

"The Sound of Sylvia" ... she must be stopped, y'know ...

;)

[popscythe]

I was thinking the sound of a cash register, for sylvia I mean.

[sadhatter]

I was bummed out that that the blindingly intense high started to taper off right before my halucination had me "seeing" god. I would like to have known what my first complaint would have been.

[calebprime]

That was pretty good! I like how it moves from left speaker to right speaker. (It would be even better if I'd used headphones.) That gives you a visceral experience, but again, it's not "spiritual" or "psychedelic" as per the OP.

I agree.

Btw, none of the students in The Searing Incomprehensible were taking drugs, and I wasn't taking drugs when I assembled the sound collage.

I've listened to the piece in many states of mind, and I enjoy it a bit more when I'm sober than when I was smoking weed.

I like it because it's another little time capsule, something I can listen to in my dotage.

As you probably know, heavy smokers develop a tolerance anyway, so cannabis just made me relaxed and sleepy.

As for hearing a buzz, I think that might be hearing one's own neural machinery somehow, and that interests me.

I basically find almost all popular music completely horrible to listen to, because it isn't complicated enough or richly textured enough, and too much of it is the same.

My interest in the 'psychedelic' thing is that it's a bit like 20th century modernist music in general--a feeling of aloneness, of strangeness, of having your defenses stripped away. A challenge. You, the listener, alone. Not a communal experience.

My idea of a good time is Chuck Ives or Bartok's Music For Strings, Percussion and Celeste--that is, music with recognizable tonal content, but strange.

After it became possible to pitch/tempo match anything with current software, I became more interested in having near-matches--for a rougher, more chaotic effect. In the sound collages I did in the early 00's, I wanted things to clash, beat against each other a little, and nearly mesh, but not quite.

As for buzzes, that one I did isn't really close to what I remember.

There's a somewhat more powerful effect there, I swear. Something right around the flicker-fusion threshold.

But that buzz didn't do it.

Comb-filtered voices, like in OtSI, sound good to me, but I'm a real lover of the harmonic series, and 11-limit extended just intonation, so my ears are a little warped.

That is, what to most people sounds a little sour (read the comments on YouTube about some microtonal pieces) sometimes sounds right to me.

But not every microtonal scale sounds good to me, by any means. Many of them sound gawd-awful.

Almost anything in the strict harmonic series will tend to fuse into the fundamental pitch on which it's based, so the pitches lose their individuality, and become part of the buzz.

[sadhatter]

As for a bit of a half on topic response.

Go check out the artist Jandek.

The closest thing to a paranormal phenomenon i would say exists ( though with the addendum of up untill recently where he has been doing shows, though still random and spooky with little to no warning.).

I am not usually about this kind of music, but i am a huge fan of his. I find he captures in reality what a lot of bands i enjoy try to capture fictionally, spookyness. ( though to be fair he has some upbeat songs, and one that is strangely ramones esque).

While were on the subject of wierd noises, just thought i would throw this one out there.

[calebprime]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jandek

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veR2neO8K_w

listen ma, 1 hand!

Eminorsus7........................................ .......:D

awwoooooooooooooooo!

Hey, that's one I can start beginning students on! Fingering not too hard!

He's even a stalker. Gotta love him.

[Orphia Nay]

But it kills me that a good number of people convert , or even affirm thier faith through psychadelic drugs. I am no sage, far from it, but if i were to pass on one piece of advice to people it would be that " drugs are made to screw with your mind, if you experience something life changing, chalk it up to the fact that your using your mind as a chemistry set. Not that your drug use just happens to co-incide with some life shattering event."

Well said! :clap:

[leonAzul]

Caleb, you would probably enjoy this:
http://www.lucytune.com/

[calebprime]

Caleb, you would probably enjoy this:
http://www.lucytune.com/

Yeah, I'm part of a Yahoo group that does microtonal tuning.

There are some real experts in that group that are way beyond me--they are creating a lot of sophisticated tuning systems that are hybrids of equal-temperaments, mean-tone tunings, and Just Intonation.

Lucy is an enthusiastic participant.

He's a bit of a huckster for his kind of tuning, and he's trying to 'improve the world'--always a bad sign.

He's got a patent. Having a patent on a tuning is like having a patent on an element, or something. I have the patent on Helium!

from the Wiki--which he and others keep re-writing, acrimoniously:

LucyTuning is a meantone temperament musical tuning system, derived from π, in which the fifth is 600 + 300/π ≈ 695.49 cents ( Play (help·info)), approximately 4.5 cents flatter than that of 12-tone equal temperament

and

88-ET can be used as an approximation to LucyTuning. Using 14 steps as the Large interval (L) and 9 steps as the small interval (s), 88-ET gives a close approximation to the diatonic scale LLsLLLs of Lucy Tuning.

Lucy explicitly dislikes Just Intonation--pure ratios, because, well, they're not Lucy Tuning--they won't Improve the World.

I'm a Just Intonation guy--I spent ten years practicing an extended 11-limit Just Intonation with 36 unequal-sized steps per 2/1 ('octave'). This turned out to be basically the same as Partch's scale +- a few pitches.
A fairly simple concept, although it seems complicated if you're used to thinking in 12 steps.

So Lucy and I are in opposing camps, in a way. Narcissism of small differences, and all that.

I dislike self-promotion, or anything-promotion, so that's my little beef with Lucy.

However, I've heard some decent pieces. Some sound pretty much like 12-tone et, mostly.

Lucy doesn't think you'd ever want more than 12 distinct pitches available at any given time, so the rather meager microtonal tuning implementation in Logic is fine with him.

The basis in Pi is, as far as I can tell, pure woo.

[Elaedith]

. "I am no sage, far from it."

Pun intended?

[leonAzul]

Yeah, I'm part of a Yahoo group that does microtonal tuning.

The basis in Pi is, as far as I can tell, pure woo.

Thanks for the elaboration.

The bit about Pi only makes sense in the scale's original application: setting up fretwork on a stringed instrument. Being able to use a simple geometric construct is much more scalable than numerical calculations and precise measurement.

[George152]

I am really stoned right now and listening to this.

I am about 5 minutes in and I definitely feel... the urge to pee.

It's going to be the urination of you !

[calebprime]

Thanks for the elaboration.

The bit about Pi only makes sense in the scale's original application: setting up fretwork on a stringed instrument. Being able to use a simple geometric construct is much more scalable than numerical calculations and precise measurement.

oh.

btw, I tried to go back through my emails, Lucy linked us to some good pieces in LucyTuning, but I couldn't find them.

[ThatSoundAgain]

I completely agree: re conversion after getting really high (or after something else really powerful happens). They don't think that the patterns on the walls creeping and flowing around is real, but hidden normally and revealed by drug use, but they're willing to accept that God is real and hidden, but revealed by drug use. Amusing, but silly.

Well put.

As for the get high for free look at this pattern or hear this noise... None of that crap ever works for me either.

I've had some success with binaural beats applied to brown noise. Now, I may have been self-suggesting or otherwise mistaken, but at the time it seemed that it helped me improve my sleep.

This was a while ago, I remember getting into it because some functions (and a long article) were included with my audio app of choice, Cooledit. This means it must have been when I was on Win 98. I remember recording an hour-long deep alpha program to a minidisc, and using that for falling asleep. Bleeding-edge tech, I tell you.

I've just looked it up and found an app called Gnaural that I can run on my current computer. I might give that a go.

Mind you, that was more of a subtle nudge towards a more efficient transition into deep sleep than a high in any way. Definitely a downer rather than an upper.