Reflecting Nature | Music for Psychedelic Therapy (3)
Motivations and ways that nature has been translated into our music - both in terms of compositional structures and effects on listeners.
Please note:
Exploring Our Creative Process: This essay is part of a series that, for the first time, reveals our approach to music composition at Wavepaths. Rather than delving into our scientific research, this series intentionally focuses on the creative, therapeutic, and occasionally philosophical motivations that shape the processes and principles behind our music compositions for/as psychedelic therapy.
Music for/as Psychedelic Therapy: To enhance readability in these articles, I’ll primarily use phrases like “music for psychedelic therapy”, “music for therapy”, “therapeutic music”, or “music for/as psychedelic therapy”. Unless otherwise specified, these terms can be understood interchangeably. Broadly, they refer to our wider work composing music for varied therapeutic settings, encompassing not only psychedelic therapy but also methods such as breathwork, body work, experiential psychotherapies, and more.
Prelude
In the previous part of this series I talked about our valuing of the creative urges of musicians. In this article I will introduce a different music composition principle that we defined: The intention to create music that reflects nature and, in various ways, behaves like nature.
This principle impacts both structural (syntactical) characteristics of music compositions, the intended impact on listeners, and the ways therapists themselves can interact and intentionally modify these nature-like characteristics in the music dynamically in therapy sessions.
This article shares how we pondered and studied the influence that nature can have on therapy, and how we ended up integrating these insights into music. I’ll begin by examining the context behind this idea, concluding with a few examples of how this manifested in our music.
Nature as Therapy
Most of us will be highly familiar with experiencing a variety of positive effects of nature on our well-being and consciousness. Either intentionally or instinctively, we may make frequent contact with the natural world. Or when we find ourselves living in urban environments, many will seek frequent refuge in green spaces such as city parks.
In 1984 the biologist Edward O. Wilson presented The Biophilia Hypothesis, suggesting that humans have an innate tendency to be close to nature and other life-forms. The hypothesis posits that this "love of life" or affinity for nature is biologically embedded in all human beings, as it evolved as an important survival mechanism. Furthermore, it argues that human well-being, mental health, and physiological functioning benefit from regular interaction with natural environments and elements.
Building upon this theme, the Attention Restoration Theory (ART) was developed by Rachel and Stephen Kaplan in the 1980s, positioning that nature has a set of distinct qualities that have unique effects on our cognition: being restorative to our attention, bringing mental clarity and energy.
What in particular sparked my interest in the relationship to music-composition for therapeutic use, is the notion in ART that nature can enable a “softening” of cognition. For example, the sensory qualities typical for the flowing of water in a river, or the rustling of leaves, facilitate "soft fascinations", facilitating a state of increased flexibility and effortlessness in cognitive processes.
Might natural environments be ideal to facilitate the changes and improvements we seek for our clients in psychotherapy? Martin Jordan did an excellent job reviewing this theme in his book “Nature and Therapy”.
Listening to Nature
Only a small handful of researchers have so far studied the restorative effects of nature soundscapes on cognitive processes defined by ART (For example Ferguson et al), as well potential brain mechanisms (for example Stobbe et al 2023).
One other source of inspiration to compose that reflects nature, is the field recording practice that I maintained since 2005. Broadly speaking, field recording refers to the art of capturing environmental sounds. While field recording takes many forms and can be used in a variety of creative ways, it quickly evolved into something more than an artistic practice for me .
Deep listening to nature started to foster a deeper relationship with my environment. It created an increased attunement to the ocean of sound that we are enveloped by - constantly and everywhere. And it stimulated a number of hypotheses that informed my work in music composition for psychedelic therapy.
For example, how do certain acoustic dynamics of nature soundscapes influence my consciousness? How are they different? How might sound and music impact psychotherapeutic processes beneficially when it has a close kinship, a strong resemblance, to the organic aliveness of the natural world?
Music as Nature
Rather than directly playing nature sound recordings for careseekers, one important starting point was exploring how the defining characteristics of nature that yield certain positive effects, might be translated into musical characteristics.
For music to become “like” that breeze in the wind, the vastness of a canyon, the gentleness of a small creek - How might that be expressed musically ?
This intention to reflect nature in music was not only a creative motivation. It has been motivated by recognising the importance, in any form of psychotherapy, to balance the concrete with the abstract, the explicit with the implicit.
For example, playing nature soundscape recordings to patients in therapy sessions might indeed bring certain benefits, yet one un-avoidable consequence of this will be for the listener’s mind to be directed to the various mental associations these very concrete sounds would bring. Again, this is not something inherently bad, it may even be therapeutically constructive, but it is a consequence that requires awareness.
Importantly, by trying to reflect the organic characteristics of a natural soundscape, while simultaneously conveying strong subjective experiences due its musical qualities - such “Music like Nature” might bring a multitude of benefits simultaneously. Could the former help facilitate cognitive flexibility, while the latter imbues it with therapeutically significant music-evoked meaning? (you can read an elaboration on my definition of music here).
These were key considerations, eventually leading to a number of creative directions for musicians, as well as design decisions in our algorithms, that we have since scrutinised and refined on an ongoing basis. Both through our research programs, as well as in response to the creative inputs of various collaborators and musicians.
The work and ideas of innovative artists such as Brian Eno, Francisco Lopez and Chris Watson formed another source of inspiration guiding this principle. The collaboration with our lead Composer Robert Thomas has been instrumental in fine-tuning and translating this principle both from an understanding of music theory and its algorithmic implementation.
Examples
Below is a selection of examples demonstrating how our exploration and compositional principle—reflecting nature in music—has manifested in our work.
1. Gradients of Predictability
In nature, sounds often carry a repetitive quality that brings a sense of predictability. However, these repetitions are rarely fixed to a rigid temporal structure, such as a specific beat per minute (BPM). Instead, natural sounds feature a degree of randomness and (subtle) variability. For example, while a bird’s melodic phrase or a cricket's chirping pattern may repeat, there is a rhythmic looseness that gives it a natural, organic character.
In our music, we have designed a gradient in which musical elements, like chord progressions or melodic phrasing, range from "structured" to "unstructured." On one end of the gradient, compositions are loose and fluid, while on the other, the music adheres to a clear BPM and structure.
The therapeutic role of this “gradient of predictability” is tied to its impact on ego integration (ranging from disintegrated to integrated states) and cognitive flexibility (from flexible to rigid). On our music platform, therapists can dynamically adjust this variable to evoke these psychological outcomes.
2. Gradients of Complexity
In nature we find a remarkable acoustic complexity (Or we could say richness or density), determined by factors like the diversity of sound sources (e.g., a rushing river vs. a bird), quantity (such as the number of animals), environmental characteristics (e.g., the reverb of mountains vs. the sound-dampening effect of dense foliage), and weather conditions (like air humidity or wind).
In our music, we created a gradient of complexity based on specific acoustic and compositional features. At one end, compositions are extremely sparse, while at the other, they are densely layered.
The therapeutic role of this gradient lies in its influence on emotional arousal. But its role is much more nuanced than this. For example, music has a degree to which it directs and narrows a listener's awareness, and this also informs specific therapeutic functions of music (which I will introduce in a later article). Through our platform, therapists can adjust complexity to control variables such as the emotional intensity of the music and the therapeutic function of the music.
3. Gradients of Evolution
In nature, we find a vast diversity of life forms, each reflective of different evolutionary paths and environments to which they have adapted. For example mangrove trees have evolved complex root systems that can tolerate saltwater. Insects living on these trees might in turn have evolved visual patterns that mimic the unique colours of the trees providing them with camouflage. And this list of examples can of course get large.
In our music, musicians continuously interact with existing sounds , resulting in an organic musical ecosystem, with some areas creating variations on the same theme, with other domains becoming a clear (species-like) boundary. This enables musical elements to evolve over time, creating a sense of evolution with the session but also between the separate sessions . For example, a melody might begin in one form and subtly shift into a different but related texture, harmony, or rhythm, later on.
The therapeutic role of this gradient of change is linked to the experience of psychological continuity and congruence for the listener, while simultaneously implicitly conveying an experience of growth and change. Instead of being like a city with fixed architectures that are the same on each visit, our platform represents an organic eco-system that is familiar and relatable on each visit, sonically reflecting the journey of each individual care-seeker.
Postlude
Reflecting on nature’s influence on consciousness and therapeutic processes, this article has illustrated how we translate nature soundscape characteristics into music. The choice to mirror specific qualities, such as gradients of predictability, complexity, and evolution is rooted in our ongoing effort to understand how such qualities can be utilised therapeutically in unique ways.
By designing music that “behaves like nature,” the hope is to create new therapeutic atmospheres that goes beyond our conventional ways of thinking about music. The result might be defined as a style that is specifically designed for influencing or altering consciousness therapeutically, while being fully contemporary and genre-agnostic.
These are some of the points that I will elaborate on more in the next articles in this series.
Curious if there’s a paradox that comes with understanding this while trying to experience it