review of
John Beaulieu's Human Tuning - Sound Healing With Tuning Forks
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 25, 2017

My review is too substantial for here so it's truncated. Read the whole thing. Do it at work, I don't care: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/522772-self-incineration-the-easy-way?chapt...

This is, admittedly, one of those bks that I spent entirely too long reading & that I dread reviewing. From 2010 to 2011 I made one of my most ambitious feature-length movies, DEPOT (wherein resides the UNDEAD of Franz Kamin), a 3:40:39 magnum opus in tribute to my friends Franz Kamin & Sarmad Brody who died together earlier in the yr in a car crash. As an aspect of making DEPOT I was fortunate to meet John Beaulieu, the author of this bk, who'd been a close collaborator of Franz's for decades. For an edit of the Beaulieu portions of the DEPOT footage go here: https://youtu.be/1xhKN3hqedk .

In early 2012, I went to upstate NY to visit John & others to screen the finished movie for them & to give them DVD-R copies. John seemed to deeply appreciate DEPOT. One manifestation of this appreciation was that he gave me 2 sets of tuning forks that he has specially manufactured for healing purposes & the bk that I'm reviewing here to explain their intended use & the history of how he came to use them. I've always been an enthusiast for tuning forks so I was delighted by this present. I eventually made a movie called "mm 71 presents: TUNING FORKS" ( https://youtu.be/TwYDwJnHRe8 ) that used those tuning forks - but not really in the way that John intended, more as grist for the spontaneous mill.

My difficulty in writing this review is that while I respect John as a sincere & well-intentioned person who has dedicated himself to aspects of culture, esp musical culture, that I can deeply relate to, & their potential application in a healing way, at the same time I'm a philosophically very different person. I want to review this bk respectfully but find myself in conflict w/ its worldview. That's ok, I can agree to disagree w/ other people (the problem I usually find is that while I can agree to disagree w/ many people they don't extend a similar courtesy to me & wd apparently rather just see me destroyed - fortunately, that doesn't seem at all the case w/ John). 6 yrs ago I also reviewed Beaulieu's Orgone Music - Visual Harmony. You can read my review of that here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11094769-orgone-music-visual-harmony . At any rate, 'wish me luck', writing this is going to be a long process.

I 1st learned about anechoic chambers from John Cage's famous story about being in one & being surprised to learn that what he was hearing was his nervous system & his blood in circulation. Beaulieu also references this story as his 1st introduction to these soundproof rms. He then set out to investigate on his own:

"The first time I sat in the NYU anechoic chamber, I immediately heard the high-pitched sound of my nervous system and the low tone of my blood circulating. After a few minutes I heard swallowing sounds, stomach growls, mouth pops, heart beats, air entering and exiting my nose and mouth, little clicks in my spinal joints, and even the sound of my eyebrows when I blinked. Over the next two years, I spent over 500 hours sitting in the anechoic chamber listening to the sounds of my body. I tested the effects of different tuning forks as well as mantras and toning, and recorded their effects on my nervous system.

"The sound that most interested me in the anechoic chamber was the sound of my nervous system. I observed that the sound of my nervous system was directly related to different physical, mental, and emotional states. For example, if I was calm, my nervous system would make a low, even, soft sound. One day after an argument with a subway attendant, I sat in the anechoic chamber and observed that my nervous system sound was higher pitched. louder, and had a screeching quality." - p 4

Now, I've long since learned that many people make claims that closer investigation reveals to be gross exaggerations for the sake of self-promotion or other ulterior motives. As such, I might be suspicious of Beaulieu's claim of having "spent over 500 hours sitting in the anechoic chamber". HOWEVER, I believe it - partially b/c I, too, have dedicated large amts of time to doing things that most people I know wd never even consider doing for an hr & partially b/c John simply strikes me as an honest person - a quality I respect highly (& find all too rarely).

Otherwise, Beaulieu's experiences & observations in the anechoic chamber strike me as valuable & I'm grateful that he spent as much time as he did notating them. Beaulieu decided that he wanted to work w/ more frequencies than were then available in tuning forks: "I realized then that I needed more tuning forks. It was very difficult to get them in 1973." (p 5) This is the sort of practical detail that tends to attract my interest. How many people think about whether tuning forks are available in a broad range of pitches & tuning systems? Probably very few. I tend to give Beaulieu credit as a person who probably changed that situation somewhat. Since then, Warren Burt has also done so in Australia. Go to: https://youtu.be/TiCYlcBm5nM?t=2h5m52s for more info on that.

"The eight tuning forks I ordered in 1974 are exactly the same as the Solar Harmonic Spectrum set we use today (see Solar Harmonic Spectrum Chapter, page 61). My original work in the anechoic chamber was based on systematic experimentation with each Pythagorean interval. This is a form of research called phenomenological research which focuses on the effect of the tuning forks on consciousness. I approached the experience of tuning forks by keeping a journal with specific protocols to help me better understand my experience of the sounds. Each week I would sit in the anechoic chamber and immerse myself in an interval and record my experiences. I would relax, listen to my nervous system, and tune myself to an interval. I realized that each interval was a gateway into different states of awareness complete with thoughts, emotions, and sensations." - p 6

John generously gave me 18 tuning forks. 5 were organized in a velvet pouch as what he calls "BioSonic Brain Tuners", 8 were organized in another pouch as "Biosonic Fibonacci Tuners" & the remaining 5 were loose. As I understand it, these loose ones cd be combined w/ others to make different sets. As such, the Fibonacci tuners include the 256 (cps) C, the 384 G, the 426.7 A, & the 512 C - while the missing 288 D, 320 E, 341.3 F, & 480 B are filled in by the loose ones I have. As such, I have a complete set of "Solar Harmonic Spectrum" forks.

"To listen to the sound of your nervous system, find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed, sit comfortably, and close your eyes."

[..]

"The sound of your nervous system is a primary indicator of your current inner tuning. Listen to the sound as you would to the sound of a tuning fork. The sound of your nervous system carries a lot of information." - p 7

So far, so good. Why not? The above seems like a healthy practice to get into, a way of being more self-aware - something that I'm completely in favor of.. &, yet, wd I do it? Not bloody likely. I'm always busy, busy - w/ things like writing this review, eg. Nonetheless, I consider myself to be highly self-aware - so there's more than one way to feed 2 birds w/ one piece of bread n'at. It's more important to me to write this than it is to set aside quiet time for studying my nervous system. Simultaneous w/ writing this I'm currently listening to a CD called Tapestry - New Music from the Americas. I'm enjoying it, I don't think it's great, but the listening combined w/ the writing is a form of multi-tasking that constitutes my norm. Coincidentally, Tapestry is on the INNOVA label, the same label that didn't publish what was to be Franz Kamin's only commercial CD. Too bad.

SO, I've admitted that I wdn't follow Beaulieu's healthy suggestion. It's like this: I've had a fan for over 35 yrs that was well-manufactured. It's gradually gotten so dirty that the motor doesn't work right. I set it aside for cleaning, I set it aside somewhere where I'd look at it every day & be reminded that it might not take more than an hr or 2 to get it fully operational again. It sat there for yrs. Last night I finally put it out by the curb for bulk trash pick-up. I was happy to see that someone took it from the curb before the garbage collectors did. Maybe it'll get repaired now. I'm not going to put myself by the curb & hope that someone comes along to repair me. Instead, I'll work myself to death. That's ok, at least I'll leave behind a legacy that may worm its way into other people's brains - thusly affording me a form of immortality.

After the 'triumph' of equal-tempered tuning from, say, the late 16th century (EV) up into the early 20th century when composers such as the now-well-known Harry Partch started to erode its prominence away w/ a return to just intonation, there's been an increasing preoccupation w/ tuning systems in the mid-to-late 20th century & the beginning of the 21st. Beaulieu has his own spin:

"Through my experiences in the anechoic chamber, I was able to explore many areas of my mind. Each sound was a gateway that took me to different states of awareness which I preferred to call tunings. The mind is like a radio or television, and tuning forks are ways of changing the channel through tuning the nervous system."

[..]

"One day I realized that all the realities and tunings I was exploring were generated from a common energy Source. The Source was greater than my mind and was the "key' that allowed my mind to move effortlessly throughout different experiences, dimensions, and realities. It was then I knew that healing is about the constant adaption and creativity necessary to tune and retune the nervous system to the Source." - p 12

In my notes for writing this review I tell myself regarding the notion of the "Source": "Where we part ways". My dilemma here is explaining why. Perhaps the simplest way of putting it is that this notion of the "Source" is essentially the notion of a 'God', an originator, & the idea of "the constant adaption and creativity necessary to tune and retune the nervous system to the Source" is just another way of saying 'to become one with God'. I'm an atheist, I don't believe in 'God', nor do I have a desire to tune myself into a hypothetical (&, IMO, imaginary - but not imaginative) 'God' as "Source". I see this as a destruction of difference, as the homogenization & imperialist anti-thought that all religion represents to me. No thanks. I'll get into more detail about this later.

"Dr. Randolph Stone, the founder of Polarity Therapy, described the concept of strings orchestrating the universe very elegantly:

""Life is a song. It has its own rhythm of harmony. It is a symphony of all things which exist in major and minor keys of Polarity. It blends the discords, by opposites, into a harmony which unites the whole into a grand symphony of life. To learn through experience in this life, to appreciate the symphony and lessons of life and to blend with the whole, is the object of our being here."" - pp 15-16

Yuk. That passage may seem innocuous enuf to most people but to me it's utterly repulsive. 1st of all, I'm not impressed by "Dr." wch can be as much bullshit as any other honorific. 2nd, I don't think that "Life is a song" any more than I think it's a bank acct or a an excursion into outer space or whatever. "[S]ong" probably means something very different to Stone than it does to me. He seems to be evoking "song" as a 'piece of music' w/o taking into consideration that usually a song is short & has lyrics & is just about the only musical form that musical illiterates are capable of referring to - given a lack of imagination & vocabulary. Hence the world is full of mediocre singer-songwriter-guitarists & sadly lacking in people w/ contextual imagination. For me, the evocation of the song in this metaphor is an evocation of LCD (Lowest Common Denominator) simple-mindedness redolent w/ language-for-the-rubes.

3rd, Stone's vocabulary is just generic. It doesn't display any actual knowledge. We have "song", "rhythm", "harmony", "symphony", "major and minor keys", & "discords". What if I were to apply my minimal knowledge of cars in a paraphrased metaphor?: "Life is a car. It has its own spark plugs. It is a revving of all motors which exist with empty & full tanks of Gas. It takes us places, by forward & backward motion, into a parking spot which unites the whole into a grand going-out-of-business sale with our fellow consumers."

4th, this generic musical vocabulary resorts to 'contrasts' like "major and minor keys" for the probably simple-minded reason that those are the 2 differences he's heard of that can then come to symbolize a much broader range than they actually do. After all, "major and minor keys" are just part of a very simple system, one of little interest to a person, such as myself, who's grown up in the realm of possibilities exemplified by such music as Musique Concrete - in wch "major and minor keys" are largely irrelevant.

5th, Why wd we want to "blend[] the discords, by opposites, into a harmony which unites the whole into a grand symphony of life"?! Maybe the discords are just fine the way they are. Maybe it's the religious person's notion of "One Way" or "One Nation Under God" that's the trouble.

6th, I don't think that there IS one "object of our being here", that implies a purposefulness to being that I think is completely delusional, & I don't think that "to appreciate the symphony and lessons of life and to blend with the whole" is any better an idea than it wd be to jump into a giant juice blender to be mutilated into undifferentiated pulp.

"The word node is a scientific term which means "a point at which the amplitude of vibration of a standing wave system is zero.""

[..]

"In systems science, nodes are called attractors. An attractor is a region within an oscillating field that pulls everything towards it. It is an attractor that allows us to shift from one energy field to another.

"In the healing arts, attractors are called still points. They key to shifting from one mental/physical pattern to another is still point. Dr. Milton Erickson, M.D., was an expert in using hypnosis and trance states for healing. He called the state of trance "neutral" which is another term for still point. He believed that for a person to change, they must first go into a trance. The practitioner could then guide them into a new life pattern using suggestions." - p 21

What strikes me as inaccurate or misleading about Beaulieu's string of reasoning is the way he changes the meanings of the words from proposition to proposition. He starts off w/ defining a node as:

"a point at which the amplitude of vibration of a standing wave system is zero."

& I find that all well & good. Imagine a sine wave depicted on an oscilloscope. I think of the node as the point where the wave crosses the x axis. The distance between these nodes is an indication of the frequency, the pitch.

Beaulieu then goes on to claim that ""In systems science, nodes are called attractors." I know little to nothing about systems science but as far as I can tell w/in it nodes are NOT called attractors, they are things w/in attractor networks. Consider these quotes:

"In the mathematical field of dynamical systems, an attractor is a set of numerical values toward which a system tends to evolve, for a wide variety of starting conditions of the system." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor

"An attractor network is a type of recurrent dynamical network, that evolves toward a stable pattern over time. Nodes in the attractor network converge toward a pattern that may either be fixed-point (a single state), cyclic (with regularly recurring states), chaotic (locally but not globally unstable) or random (stochastic)." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor_network

As a noun, attractor's 2nd definition (of 2) on Wiktionary is:

"(mathematics, physics) A set of points or states to which a dynamical system evolves after a long enough time. That is, points that get close enough to the attractor remain close even if slightly disturbed." - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/attractor

The original node referred to exists in a standing wave, ie: in a system that's stable & unchanging. In the attractor network, nodes are not only not synonymous w/ attractors they're part of a dynamic, ie: changing, system. In the original definition of node nothing is being attracted to it, the node is a manifestation of stability. Even if Beaulieu were correct that nodes are attractors he'd still be using the word in 2 different senses as if they were the same.

But it's in the final paragraph quoted in wch "nodes" have become "attractors" have become "still points" have become "trances" have become "neutral" have become "still points" again - all to ultimately justify using hypnosis to implant suggestions I really get annoyed. Again, an attractor is part of a dynamic process & is, therefore, by definition not a "still point". Additionally, there's nothing "neutral" about a trance, there's definitely something SUSCEPTIBLE about it & there's definitely nothing neutral about susceptibility.

"Pythagoras of Samos was a Greek mathematician, philosopher, and musician who lived in 550 B.C. He discovered Pythagorean Geometry and is considered to have recorded the world's first facts in mathematical physics. Pythagoras conceived of the whole universe as a vast musical instrument. He called the vibrating strings of the universe the "Music of the Spheres." He developed a musical scale, called the Pythagorean scale, based on universal harmonies." - p 15

Right. What Beaulieu seems to ignore here is that such 'ancient wisdom' has long since been demonstrated to have serious flaws, to be ridiculously oversimplistic.

"Musica Universalis or Music of the Spheres is an ancient philosophical concept that regards proportions in the movements of celestial bodies - the sun, moon, and planets - as a form of musica - the medieval Latin name for music. This music is not audible, but simply a mathematical concept.

"The Greek philosopher Pythagoras is frequently credited with originating the concept, which stemmed from his semi-mystical, semi-mathematical philosophy and its associated system of numerology of Pythagoreanism. At the time, the sun, moon, and planets were thought to revolve around Earth in their proper spheres. The spheres were thought to be related by the whole-number ratios of pure musical intervals, creating musical harmony." - http://www.crystalinks.com/harmonyspheres.html

As some of the more erudite among you may recall, the earth is no longer commonly believed to have the sun, moon, & other planets revolving around it while it stays in a fixed position. You might also understand that a part of the reasoning behind this earth-centric idea was that Man was created in the image of God & was, therefore, the center of the universe. Astronomers who refuted this idea were later tortured & killed by the Catholic Church as heretics. ( )