Good Vibrations - Discovering Your Own Special 'Tune'

Here's an article I wrote recently that is somewhat different to my usual style. Music is an extraordinary vibrational form that can cross physical boundaries and borders - I felt that this viewpoint was worth expressing. Enjoy:

Think of the sound of a ruler on the end of a desk, a guitar string or a pair of vocal cords. When something vibrates at a regular speed, the human ear senses the vibrations as sound, specifically pitched sound.

But go beyond the sense of hearing. There is a school of thought that states that all matter is vibration.

Think of everything in the world being a vibration. Consider whatever we do as having a vibration. Think of actions as being vibrations, and the result of our actions having vibrations that spread through our world, impacting on things and people around us. Go one stage further, and think of the world as being the embodiment of all our vibrations, the result of our actions.

We are sending out vibrations every second of every day - consciously or unconsciously. There is nothing new in this thought - world religions have talked for centuries about cause and effect, "do as you would be done by", "what goes around comes around". It is a small leap of imagination to think of these vibrations as being 'in-tune' or 'out-of-tune'. But what does that mean?

When we are 'in-tune', the vibrations we send out are clear, pure, definite and have potential for growth, an inspirational life of their own. The ripples that spread outwards from those original clear, pure and definite vibrations have impact - sometimes a great impact - on the people who touch our lives.

When we are 'out-of-tune', the vibrations we send out are muddy, confused, clouded, and have a potential for destruction and disharmony, for a removal of power and energy.

These vibrations can be in the realm of sound - the words we speak, the tone of voice we use, the emotions we communicate. They can be in the realm of vision - the face we present to the world, the colours and clothes we choose to represent our selves. They can be in our attitudes - the conscious and unconscious ways we react to and interact with people, places, objects and ideas.

Discovering your own special 'tune'

To discover your own 'tune', you might begin by looking at your powerful emotions, in the extreme situations, in your automatic responses. When you suddenly realise that you won't stand for that unfair situation, when you don't act in the same way as your peers, when you are prepared to lose your job because of a strongly-held principle.

These are the times when your 'tune' creeps up on you and steps out into the public eye to make sure you follow your beliefs. Then you can recognise these moments and 'tune-in' to the more subtle signs - the gut feelings, the nagging little worries, the second thoughts. The things that go against your self but that speak softly, that can be easily overlooked.

When you have tuned in to those, you can then begin to notice the blemishes, the 'accidentals', the melodic eddies in your song - are they what you want to express or are they leading you away from your self? Is this the best expression of you that you are able to perform? You can begin to decide what your tune is and what changes you wish to make - your melody becomes conscious and you join with its creation.

But does being 'in-tune' mean being in accord with everyone or everything around us. Is there room for different tunes or should we all be singing from the same hymn-sheet?

Sometimes, when we are 'in-tune' with ourselves, the ripples we create can move against the current, stand apart from the prevailing climate, cause outrage. Perhaps those ripples disturb something that has been accepted as the status quo, something that may no longer be relevant. Or perhaps those ripples appeal to a group of people different from the group you currently inhabit. It may be time for a change... If you are genuinely in-tune with yourself and your own truth, it is the most important thing in the world. You will behave in a way that is consonant with your truth. And that behaviour will have power, simply by its own resonance with itself.

So your tune - your melody - may NOT immediately coincide with the world around you. It may cause discomfort for the people around you. It may invite their aggression or their pity or their dismissal. But if it is consonant with your own highest truth, it will be ultimately good for you to express it.

And your tune will attract others who appreciate and mirror it, people with whom you can create harmonies, chorales. This attraction works for any level of understanding and growth - junkies can attract junkies or those who support them, and when a junkie changes their tune (their personal beliefs and resonances), those supporters of their previous life melt away to be replaced with supporters of their new beliefs and expressions.

Possibly only a few people will understand your particular resonance - but you will be greater and happier and more at peace through expressing it.

And not everyone will like your tune, not everyone will appreciate your particular melody. Your melody, once expressed, may temporarily attract those who dislike it intensely and who seek to change it. For this is a world of contrast, and a melody can only exist and be recognised against a background of counter-melody and distortion. Only by having something to decide against can we decide consciously to move towards something else.

After all, if we all liked the same music, there would be no new music, no surprises, no creation, and ultimately no respite.

Ultimately, the vibrational strength and purity of your personal melody can give others the reason to express their own melody. And the purer and more conscious your melody is, the easier it is for different melodies to fit together.

And since everyone and everything vibrates, imagine the experience of all those melodies harmonising together. Consider a world where individuals are designed to resonate individually, and once they are singing their own 'tune', whatever their tune is, the individual resonances build into a world-beating harmony. The world will literally be shaken to the core by the combined vibrations of the people on it. Because only when you express and embody what you think you are, will the world become an easier, more joyous, more fun place to live in.

So how in-tune are you?

---

Jeremy Fisher trains singers and performers to find and maintain their best. He's the author of Successful Singing Auditions, and creator of the Voicebox Videos (featured on the BBC and broadcast to an estimated 44,000,000 people). Sign up for Jeremy's free newsletter containing original interviews, pre-release offers and receive your BONUS free copy of "86 things you never hear a singer say" at http://www.vocalprocess.co.uk/