Articles exploring music therapy practice, neuroscience, neurodiversity, and mental health research.
Binaural beats are much-talked-about tools in the wellness space and possibly a bit misrepresented. The phenomenon is real, the neuroscience is interesting, and the claims made about it are mostly not supported by evidence. This article explores all of that.
What happens when a composer (or therapist) steps back from decision making and creates a process instead? Two tools above let you explore this directly: one inspired by Alvin Lucier's iterative room recordings, one by Éliane Radigue's slowly evolving drones. The article below traces the ideas behind both, and considers what generative music has to offer as both an artistic philosophy and a therapeutic framework.
Learn about timbre and explore it yourself. An interactive synthesiser lets you build sound from individual sine waves, adding overtones one at a time and watching the composite waveform change shape. Learn about the neuroscience of how the brain encodes spectral patterns as emotion and meaning and try a series of guided listening experiments.
A look at neurodiversity-affirming practice, some of the latest research on autistic communication, and the role of music therapy in supporting burnout recovery, unmasking, and emotional expression.
An exploration of the role uncertainty plays in our lives, taking inspiration from the works of John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, and Steve Reich. My thoughts on the therapeutic applications of indeterminate music. Included are listening exercises and instructions for a sound experiment you can try at home.