Music and Engaged Listening positively transform our lives like nothing else!
Join the ever-engaging Dr. Harry Dunstan as he teaches you how to lead a more engaged and enhanced life through a greater apprehension of music and sound. Dr. Dunstan discusses the basic elements that constitute music; explain show the brain, mind, and body perceive and experience these elements; demonstrates how engaged listening to music leads to a more enhanced life; and explores how music can be an effective medicine and connect you with a higher consciousness. Through the use of lectures, recorded examples, and live performances, Dr. Dunstan reveals how music and perception of sound are perhaps the most life-enhancing activities we pursue as human beings.
To Engage Dr. Dunstan for this series, or to join one of our ongoing classes, contact us HERE!
I. These are the steps of the stairway to Paradise!
What are the elements of music? This class will explain the basic elements of music and how they have evolved over time, with brief glimpses into how western music differs from that of other cultures. Before one can begin an earnest study of the musical mind, it is necessary to understand the basic elements of what constitutes music. This class will fully explain, with live and recorded examples, exactly what is: melody; rhythm; tempo; harmony; tonality/modality; texture; forms; medium. This class will enable each student to at once experience and perceive music in new ways.
II. Why does the sound of that ol’ banjo make me want to stamp my feet and sing?
This session will explain how your brain/mind/body perceives—and even seems to intuit—the elements of music. We will also examine how music exerts a profound, biological, impact on humans. Have you ever wondered why certain music makes you happy or sad? Or why you return, again and again, to certain songs? Or why certain music makes you angry? Why does some music make you want to dance, and other music put you at ease? All of these questions will be answered by a fuller understanding of how we experience the elements of music.
III. Lions & Tigers & Bears!! Oh my!!! Why does music give me goose bumps?
What is the difference between your musical brain and your musical mind? Building on concepts from the first two sessions, this session will examine how music transforms your brain/mind and how engaged listening leads to a much more enhanced life. We will discover how homo sapiens are, above all, creatures of music, and come to understand the biological basis for music in our human culture. This session will explore how we are most fully human when there is music in our lives! We will also begin to explore what types of music we should listen to in order to better modulate our minds towards happiness and fulfillment.
IV. If music be the food of love play on…and on…and on….
This session will explore how to make music your most effective medicine and connect to the highest consciousness. Every day modern neuroscience offers the latest scientific findings about the healing and regenerative powers of music. We will discover how engaged listening fuses all parts of our brains, builds new neural networks, and literally expands our brains! All of this happens when we experience music. Music has the ability to treat, and potentially cure, a full range of ailments ranging from sadness and depression to learning disabilities and infirmities associated with aging. This session will also make specific recommendations for how to listen and experience music in a way that will positively transform your life. This final class will help give the student the necessary tools to make music the most effective medicine ever for body and soul. The musical life is the happiest life!
V. Revealing the magic of how the mind processes words, symbols, and music.
What happens when the best poetry is joined with the best music? Yet, why is it sometimes better to let the music speak for itself, and the poetry to remain as its own music? Why are we humans most naturally troubadours, constantly inventing our own song? This session will reveal the neurological basis for why we are so profoundly moved by words and music and why music makes words even more powerful.
VI. The stunning, stupendous, sublime world of color.
The ability for humans to hear subtle distinctions of tone color in sound (timbre) has been our greatest survival instinct. The sonic world of humans has witnessed an amazing development over the millennia to incorporate an unlimited palette of visual and tonal/musical color. In some respects, the history of the musical and visual arts can best be understood by a new appreciation of how to perceive color in sound. This session will explain how we actually listen most attentively to color and why rainbows are Nature’s best music! You will hear and experience the world in a more engaged way.
VII. Understanding and navigating Sonic Landscapes. We encounter music in every aspect of our lives. Studies suggest that the average person hears 4 hours of music every day in commercials, radio, TV, movies, and, of course, in music as its own pursuit. Music is a constant in our existence. This session will reveal how sound editors and composers use music to fully enhance the “viewing experience” using diegetic and non-diegetic sound.
VIII. Whither music? A continuance of that great question asked by Ives, Bernstein, and others, more fully revealed.
A brief history of the origins of music and why early humans learned to sing, dance, and create art. This session will be a sweeping survey of how music is perhaps our greatest survival tool and why it is absolutely necessary in our lives. We will discover how music is truly “the only international language” and our best hope for a peaceful future. This session will reveal why you treasure the music that most moves you and how this enables you to connect to the eternal. This is about the exquisite poetry of our existence
What are the elements of music? This class will explain the basic elements of music and how they have evolved over time, with brief glimpses into how western music differs from that of other cultures. Before one can begin an earnest study of the musical mind, it is necessary to understand the basic elements of what constitutes music. This class will fully explain, with live and recorded examples, exactly what is: melody; rhythm; tempo; harmony; tonality/modality; texture; forms; medium. This class will enable each student to at once experience and perceive music in new ways.
II. Why does the sound of that ol’ banjo make me want to stamp my feet and sing?
This session will explain how your brain/mind/body perceives—and even seems to intuit—the elements of music. We will also examine how music exerts a profound, biological, impact on humans. Have you ever wondered why certain music makes you happy or sad? Or why you return, again and again, to certain songs? Or why certain music makes you angry? Why does some music make you want to dance, and other music put you at ease? All of these questions will be answered by a fuller understanding of how we experience the elements of music.
III. Lions & Tigers & Bears!! Oh my!!! Why does music give me goose bumps?
What is the difference between your musical brain and your musical mind? Building on concepts from the first two sessions, this session will examine how music transforms your brain/mind and how engaged listening leads to a much more enhanced life. We will discover how homo sapiens are, above all, creatures of music, and come to understand the biological basis for music in our human culture. This session will explore how we are most fully human when there is music in our lives! We will also begin to explore what types of music we should listen to in order to better modulate our minds towards happiness and fulfillment.
IV. If music be the food of love play on…and on…and on….
This session will explore how to make music your most effective medicine and connect to the highest consciousness. Every day modern neuroscience offers the latest scientific findings about the healing and regenerative powers of music. We will discover how engaged listening fuses all parts of our brains, builds new neural networks, and literally expands our brains! All of this happens when we experience music. Music has the ability to treat, and potentially cure, a full range of ailments ranging from sadness and depression to learning disabilities and infirmities associated with aging. This session will also make specific recommendations for how to listen and experience music in a way that will positively transform your life. This final class will help give the student the necessary tools to make music the most effective medicine ever for body and soul. The musical life is the happiest life!
V. Revealing the magic of how the mind processes words, symbols, and music.
What happens when the best poetry is joined with the best music? Yet, why is it sometimes better to let the music speak for itself, and the poetry to remain as its own music? Why are we humans most naturally troubadours, constantly inventing our own song? This session will reveal the neurological basis for why we are so profoundly moved by words and music and why music makes words even more powerful.
VI. The stunning, stupendous, sublime world of color.
The ability for humans to hear subtle distinctions of tone color in sound (timbre) has been our greatest survival instinct. The sonic world of humans has witnessed an amazing development over the millennia to incorporate an unlimited palette of visual and tonal/musical color. In some respects, the history of the musical and visual arts can best be understood by a new appreciation of how to perceive color in sound. This session will explain how we actually listen most attentively to color and why rainbows are Nature’s best music! You will hear and experience the world in a more engaged way.
VII. Understanding and navigating Sonic Landscapes. We encounter music in every aspect of our lives. Studies suggest that the average person hears 4 hours of music every day in commercials, radio, TV, movies, and, of course, in music as its own pursuit. Music is a constant in our existence. This session will reveal how sound editors and composers use music to fully enhance the “viewing experience” using diegetic and non-diegetic sound.
VIII. Whither music? A continuance of that great question asked by Ives, Bernstein, and others, more fully revealed.
A brief history of the origins of music and why early humans learned to sing, dance, and create art. This session will be a sweeping survey of how music is perhaps our greatest survival tool and why it is absolutely necessary in our lives. We will discover how music is truly “the only international language” and our best hope for a peaceful future. This session will reveal why you treasure the music that most moves you and how this enables you to connect to the eternal. This is about the exquisite poetry of our existence
