The 11th album of Meditation music in the frequency specific solfeggio style synonymous with Andrew Brel’s music is now released five Months after conception. Going straight to #1 on my Playlist

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PRESS RELEASE:
Approaching the conceptual theme for my 11th album in the genre of meditation music, I revisited the Continent of my birth as an African-American; to retrace the musical memories and my first steps, 35 years ago, towards adopting the benefits of a meditative lifestyle.

“There is a unique voice in the land that you will find in the African bushveld. All soil speaks in a language of vibration. As a child growing up in Africa, in a 3 acre garden adjoining many miles of open Bushveld, I would walk miles in solitude towards a tree, in a cluster of generously proportioned trees, where on Sundays, choirs would gather to sing in harmony. On many days I would enjoy the walk through the African sun to that tree, where I could sit in contemplative meditation, projecting from the moment  I was in, the sights and sounds and smells around me, towards a life that lay ahead filled with all the possibilities for goodness this planet offered.    My experience with meditation and music began there.

    Thirty- five years later, having enjoyed life’s journey as a Greek, South African, English citizen, on my fourth Nationality as an African-American Californian, I was out hiking in my local hood, Alta Laguna, thinking of starting a new album project, when I felt a deja vu reminder of those African moments of meditation that first attracted me to my contemplative life and resolved to revisit those first footsteps in a musical form.

    Concurrently, back then, in my early teens, I was learning to play the guitar and learning music in a way that enabled me to pursue musical choices that benefited my own wellness. Especially helpful in my case when I became parentless at age 10; a depressing experience immeasurably improved when I found my succor in music.  I was intuitively drawn to certain frequencies that only subsequently I learned are recognized as ‘Healing Frequencies‘. I learned then that “Music was my first love. And it will be my last.”

   Similarly my style of play was intuitively led more towards a pace and pitch that I have measured by meter most prominently feature  432hz or 528hz, than to trending popular music. Writing and recording this project African Meditation began during my travel to Africa in January 2020, where each of the 7 pieces were recorded using a two-track recording device. One mono track being the picking guitar drone part; played live with no forethought, just whatever came to mind when thinking back to my formative years as a beginner in everything. I set out to play 15 minutes of various improvised repetitive parts that I knew from experience would lend themselves to editing and looping.
And the other, the second performance, played while listening to the first recording on headphones, is the emotional melodic guide for the listeners subconscious, playing off the first drone guitar energy.  
There is an arrangement element in terms of time, key, and duration but my goal is the writing performance is to not conform to any preconception above my memory contact with the moment I am looking to convert into sound waves.

    Back in California; in March 2020, I edited out the bulk of the performances, and added production elements, including a recording I made in the bushveld. using a 15 minute birdsong recording I made in the early 80’s, which I mixed through a Manley EQ, focusing bird song at 528Hz.

The music you hear incorporates only ‘positive’ frequencies, using 1.5Hz Delta Waves (Binaural Beats). Delta Waves provide healing using the Solfeggio frequency  (a mathematically considered consistent resonance) and isochronic tones (motions and vibrations occurring at the same time, equal in duration .

I have leaned heavily on the 963 Hz solfeggio frequency, because I like the way it makes me feel and because it helps me feel connected on a higher plane through a focused meditation process I think of as connecting to ‘the highest good’. 

The intentional quality of this tone brings harmonious relationships into a positive light and places discordant ones into appropriate context for distancing; positively guiding relationships with friends, family, and society. This 963 Hz frequency is associated with the Root Chakra, the color red, and the musical C-note. It is well received by the sub conscious during the sleep cycle. (In my personal experience.)

Another solfeggio frequency expansively used on this album, especially on “Zambezi Sunset” is the 396 Hz tone. Although lower in resonance, 396Hz affects a higher level of communication as well as increasing tolerance and love. All the Solfeggio Frequencies provide great assistance for grounding, cleansing fear, helplessness, sadness, anxiety and worries that can create a victim mentality.

    Most of the tracks on this album are in the key of C, G or D. Unsurprising given their origins, starting on a guitar using open tuning in which this composer can most musically adapt the specific frequencies into the melodic intention.

The Solfeggio Frequencies are commonly used for meditation across all forms of healing practices across the world. Each frequency tone is said to raise vibration. The different Solfeggio Frequencies that appear on this album are:
174 Hz : For the relief of Pain & Stress. The opiate frequency that when used with confidence can effectively mitigate pain
285 Hz : Heals Tissues and Organs
UT 396 Hz : Eliminates Fear by promoting calm
RE 417 Hz : Attacks Negativity with its converse, positivity, which is all that remains after this battle between the two
MI 528 Hz : Repairs DNA and Brings Positive Transformation, usually following deep restorative sleep
FA 639 Hz : Brings Love and Compassion. It is the law of attraction in sound
SOL 741 Hz : Repairs Cells and Organs. The most healing frequency, works well with 285Hz to heal advanced illness
852 Hz : Awakens Intuition and Raises Energy at Cellular Level. Ideal for studying purposes
963 Hz : Connects to Higher Self.  An ideal sonic landscape for the journey to self

All Solfeggio Frequencies when applied appropriately, are known for producing a positive outcome to the listeners being and healing energy, eliminating negativity and cleansing your aura. They promote powerful connections to the higher self and encourage the breakdown and release of problematic and emotional blockages.

    Ultimately though, for myself, the process is free from any science. It is an accumulation of sounds performed intuitively, without any written direction, whose intention is simply to assist wellness. To place harmoniously resonant sounds into the ether that is our Earthly atmosphere. Where they can act in equal and opposite reaction to the energy they create.

Delta Binaural frequencies apply to;

• Release of Anti-Aging Hormones Decrease cortisol (stress hormone associated with illness)
• The experience of deep bliss in delta meditations
• Healing physical injuries
• Boosting the immune system
• Sharpening intuition to help with deeper connection to self
• Stimulating the release of Human growth hormone (bone, muscle and body growth)
• Deep relaxation of body and mind (as in REM sleep)
• Revitalizing the physical, mental, and emotional Aura
• Enhancing Inner peace & balance

In my previous ‘Andrew Brel Music’ albums, I have found certain examples arrive more frequently than others. One is the 396Hz Solfeggio Frequency. This is a well-known grounding, cleansing and balancing frequency; powerful in the process of cleansing fear, helplessness, sadness, anxiety and worries. It helps with building up and maintaining physical energy and vitality, as well as encouraging a feeling of safety and security despite all the fearsome news items that attack us from the TV.  It has an encapsulating cocoon like defensive ability to insulate and deflect harmful energy away from our core. Achieved as a sonic surround, rather than the more visual description of a thick glass dome surround.  This frequency is an asset in finding your place of peace, security, and power within, no matter what your surrounding circumstances are.

Used wisely, (and its abuse can have unpleasant consequences) it will boost confidence, boost problem-solving abilities and boost energy levels. Enhancing the feeling of belonging and knowing your place in the planetary arrangement, where you should feel important and valuable; feeling love for oneself through thick and thin; connected and grounded to Mother Earth and your earthly purpose. Staying grounded within this frequency dissolves fear, anxiety, helplessness, and victim mentality.
This frequency is also associated with the Root Chakra, the color red, and the musical C-note. It is a pathway to learning that the purpose in life is to be happy and the way to be happy is by making others so.

The A=432Hz is known as Verdi’s ‘A’. Named after Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi, one of the earliest proponents of what is now the genre of New Age Music.
Verdi, Mozart and many other composers of high achievement, including my seminal influence, my musical father figure J.S. Bach, tuned their music to this frequency because they recognized the “feel good” properties that resonated with their audience. Like emotional candy. It may be that 432Hz works on the Heart Chakra. Many great love songs will resonate at 432Hz

528Hz is possibly the most widely used frequency in popular New Age Music. It resonates inside the body, where, applied accurately by the composer and received appropriately by the listener, it releases emotional blockages and expands our consciousness in a proportionate measure. 528Hz allows us to tune into the wisdom of the Universe, in an ether-like repository of humanities thoughtful wisdom, sometimes described and understood contextually as Jung’s ‘Collective unconscious’.

    None of this information was available to me when I made my first intuitive recordings as a young person. I only learned many years later the science of why I was so heavily drawn intuitively to these power filled frequencies. This happy coincidence has served me well in the process of composing and recording wellness music for the variety of practical applications it serves best. Meditation at the descriptive fore, with offshoots including;
relaxation,
focus for study,
sonic landscape for practicing creative work like painting, massage and especially,
sleep hygiene

    This musical style underpins a feeling of unity instead of separation. Builds emotional bridges where once were walls.  It expands our hearts and makes us more compassionate and loving. I seldom work in composing with this frequency where I do not come away from my recording session feeling elated.

Healing Sleep Tones is the generic catch all title for those frequencies most used by composers in this style of music currently referred to as New Age Music, or Meditation music. The intention is to leave the listener relaxed in the warming comfort of these beautiful frequencies, tones and sounds;  that will nourish your body and mind and, in many cases, lull you into deep rejuvenating restorative healing sleep. This Healing Sleep Music is charged with loving intentions, using binaural beats in supporting your body and brain to activate your innate ability and blueprint for natural, effective, healthy and healing sleep patterns. Sleep is where the most significant healing happens.  The positive ripple effect in your life after a good night’s sleep is immeasurable.  Allowing you to start your day with a balanced positive outlook.

Ultimately though, my writing process is free from any science. It is an accumulation of sounds performed intuitively, without any notes, whose intention is simply to assist your wellness and encourage your creative flow. And add resonating notes to the planet in a way that is well intended. If ‘every action has an equal and opposite reaction’, then I am hoping to send good vibes into the planet. That makes me happy.

Message from release day:

Recapping as I have ended the writing process and can no longer make changes. My argument on who should ‘Buy ‘ this record.

I was born in Africa and although I left almost forty years ago, I still conflate my African American status with my Greek/English identity. In January 2020, I spent the month in South Africa, helping, where, after a long absence, I returned to the memories of growing up in Johannesburg. My musical journey that began in Johannesburg has taken me across the world geographically as well as musically.

My affection for the various genres that have been most rewarding to me, enabling the lifestyle I have enjoyed, remains undiminished with the passage of time and the presence of more knowledge. It began for me in my bedroom in Bryanston with basic folk music. Guitar and voice. Finger-picking guitar and voice. Coming at me from my environment; the raggedy old Black men strumming approximately-pitched home made stringed instruments with their intuitively motivated choir of perfect-harmony singers, that I would hear drifting thought the night air into my bedroom in Bryanston as a pre-teen, placing a pause on my fascination with my musical university; the sounds of new music from around the world coming at me from LM Radio. American folk music, Rock and roll, Blues, Jazz. The Beatles. The sounds of another world outside of Bryanston. Calling me as plainly as a written invitation in a white gilded envelope.

I took what I could from my African upbringing and sold it by the session wherever I could in England.
For decades.
What fun. Just brilliant.
The best of times.
When (in 2001) I arrived at my compositional voice with Solfeggio composition in a meditative style for wellness, I had no reference point from my African upbringing. Although I have enjoyed knowing many of South Africa’s most wonderful musicians, with the exception of the Louis Ribeiro album in 1997, I have not visited my home Continent from a compositional perspective until this year. I was lying in a bed in Bryanston, where I found myself still awake at 4AM after the 12,000 mile journey from my new home, to hear the sound of the African night. The various birds, and insect sounds that preface the arrival of each new day in Africa.

In that moment and that sound, the chaotic arrangement of Africa’s pre-dawn choir, I conflated the memory of growing up and learning music. Hearing the pitch-frequency of those nature sounds took me back to 12 year old me, putting together scales and chordal progressions motivated by what I now understand as, the mirror of my environment.

I learned a few chords, a few scales, and how to put them into a backing context with popular song. Put in 10,000 hours of practice, and that was enough to take me from my arrival at Heathrow in 1985, to a whole life of rich and varied opportunity being paid to make music. Live and on recordings. Writing, playing and producing.

A lot has changed since I began building on my 10,000 hours of practice. And that’s where I went, across the wall of time change between now and that person I was at 12 years of age, mirroring the sounds of Africa.
Wanting to know how to make music. But not why.

Students of African music who hear my album will immediately recognize the absence of traditional African music themes and sounds and that is quite right. It is my African experience, and my mirror. I confess I never heard ‘A bim oh we‘ or Lions sleeping in the jungle. Mine was a different experience of Africa to Solomon Linda.

The Black Strat on ‘African Meditation’.

All songs are played on one instrument. A 1981Casio Stratocaster, my 21st birthday present from my then girlfriend, handsome John’s mother. A work horse guitar rather than a marquee model, like a Martin or Taylor or Gibson.
Japanese, not American.
An unsuccessful effort in Guitar sales by a company not associated with quality guitars, looking to cash in on the arrival of MIDI technology.
But, somehow, that short run Casio made in solid body stratocaster guitars with a built in midi pickup in 1981 has some special component that makes it very unique. JJ Cale also discovered this same something. Much of his later work is on the same Casio Strat.

Mine was heavily used during my gigging years during the 80’s. Until, I finally had a bit of money to indulge my passion for top-of-line great wood guitars. Rejected by a better looking, more alluring, more expensive, classier looking American model, the Black Casio Strat went back into its black Japanese case, and from there to storage, where it sat, safely distant from fire or flood, until 2020. Some 30 years, in its case, un-played since the last gig it was used on some time in 1989. It came out only once, and that was to appear on the cover of Willy Finlayson’s album “Very much Alive” photographed by the legendary John Graham. (Himself a huge patron of my music.)

When I had the idea to base a meditation music recording on my African memory I decided to see if that guitar would help encourage memories from that time. To assist the writing process with a compatible sound, bearing in mind, all my previous albums are made exclusively with nylon strung guitar, and top end nylon strung guitars at that. Finger played nylon, that lends itself to the relaxing sound that I hear most accurately for my style of music recordings.

I sent the black strat to a local luthier in Laguna Beach. That was the first time it came out of its case in many decades. He cleaned it up, restrung it, polished the corrosion off the bridge and volume pot, and charged me $50. The seven songs that appear on AFRICAN MEDITATION all followed in the next seven days after the guitar arrived back from shop. Intuition based improvisational recording free from any arrangement.

Each day I focused on revisiting a memory from Joburg in the seventies. And played whatever came into my mind, usually based on a song I was learning at that 12 year old time. Seven tracks of that whack. Followed by another seven days of visiting each song one day at a time, with a melodic counterpoint, locating the top line within solfeggio frequencies that work for me.

That was the first 14 sessions, before I took a break, to get to know the songs a bit, before spending another day per song adding production values from my sound library of recordings accumulated through decades of sound recordings.

I located some early morning bird song recording from my Studio in Chartwell, North of Johannesburg, where I shared a 500 acre farmhouse with my musician friend Hugo Fernandes before I emigrated to London. Each song has the bird song, frequency boosted to my solfeggio choice, as a chaotic element behind the various goings on between the guitar notes and the production values; the liberally applied Lexicon 224, the algorithmic revisit of the Roland 501 Space echo that I used to use at gigs in Africa, as well as a variety of the UAD plug-ins I have really enjoyed using since I got rid of my analogue audio processors. (The Manley compressor is just great.)

I got super lucky when Covid lockdown arrived because it gifted me unexpected time and space to focus without distraction on getting AFRICAN MEDITATION to be the best album I could have hoped to make at this time.

When I finally pushed go on the release of the 7 mixes that you will hear, knowing I could no longer twiddle with this reverb or that delay on that overhanging resonant note that annoyed me when proof checking the fifteenth mix, of the third equalized master of track four, I reconciled my decision to say, enough, it’s ready to go out in the World now, with the thought that; if I could have imagined at the age of 12 how far I have been able to travel with just a few chords and a good ear for pitchiness, I would have settled for this place then.

I loved making this record. It works on my wellness. I hope it does the same for you.

Andrew

THE VENMO OPTION
You can’t buy a CD of AFRICAN MEDITATION. You can enjoy it on all streamed media, and I will get some payment; BUT If however you would like to patronize me in a way that makes a difference – proportionate to what I would have got before hard Copy sales ended, then there is a Venmo option.

For $200. (Or any higher amount of your choosing, an inverse honor system of what its worth to you) I will reply to your email request to send whatever you choose from all of my commercially released creative work;
Music and Books.
Including a Kindle/ePub copy of my 7 published books; as well as all of my albums from the past forty years of making albums. From ‘Angel Inspiration’ in 2001, up until 2020’s release African Meditation. Including a bonus album of ‘unreleased’ meditation music exclusively available on this package. A personalized CD (or USB key) containing 12 hours of my music (in high quality MP3 format) and a personalized account of of each album and the mirror it reflects.
Click HERE FOR VENMO After which I will email you for a postal address.
The Andrew Brel anthology of books and meditation music.