High pitched noise... Argh!

So this blog has nothing to do with the beauty of flowers or the joy I get in designing fabulous flower baskets. I put this picture in here to give me moments of zen when talking about how irritated I get sometimes with noise and commotion and too many things happening at once and stuff like that.

Because when I hit week 7 of The Listening Program my nerves started to unravel and by week 8 I wanted to hurt people. Why in the world would listening to classical music, recorded in high definition by amazing professional musicians do that to me, you might ask? Well I'll tell you. It's pretty simple. I have spent the last few decades avoiding high pitched noise. All of it that I possibly can.

My children will tell you that is the fastest way to get me to bark at someone is to play high pitched music loudly or squeal or scream even in fun. I hate it. I don't like sopranos, snare drums or piccollos. I don't like picollos so much I can't spell piccolo. Well, yes I can, but the sound of one, makes me crazy. Or violins, oboes and clarinets.

I have a low voice. It's nice and melodic and I played French Horn, absolutely beautiful instrument and I love classical Spanish guitar, but low tones everywhere is my preference. I grew up in the 70's and we cranked the bass and turned the treble off. OFF!!!

So now, I get the weeks, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, & 14... all high spectrum music, in my headphones and holy crap I don't like it! I'm using bone conduction to listen because at least I was wise enough to get the bone conduction system in the first place. Now I can use the amplifier to turn the bone conduction up to 8 and the volume down to 4 and almost tolerate it. Mozart was a young man when he wrote this stuff. If he had been over 50 he would never have done this to himself.

Now, oddly enough, perhaps because I adjusted the volume and possibly because I broke my listening into 15 minute segments instead of 30 minutes straight through and maybe because I supplemented with kinder gentler music like De-Stress and Peaceful Baby and the Full Spectrum Prelude and because I love run-on sentences, (Breathe Here!) I made it through weeks 8, 9 and 10 and didn't implode. I can listen to 30 minutes straight through as a go back through CD 10, in week 11 and not hurt people or even want to for the most part.

If you would like to know the science behind The Listening Program and why I appear to be torturing myself with it, just ask!

TLP Day 5

http://www.advancedbrain.com/images/stories/TheListeningProgram/tlp_lst2.png Thought I would blog while listening today and see what bubbles up! It's the last day of my first week listening to the first CD in the series. This CD is in full spectrum of high and low and mid-range frequencies. I should come away with a general and overall 'organizing' experience for body, mind and soul or at least emotions! Listening to this high of quality music is a trip. The sound has clarity I have never heard before and I'm picky sometimes. I've been a music person all my life. Grew up in an uber musical family and household. We all sang, danced, played instruments and performed. I started dancing at 3 years old; ballet then modern, then competitive Latin Ballroom. Piano lessons started when I was older. I was 8 when Granddaddy Coy died and we ended up with an upright grand piano. I asked Dad to teach me how to match the notes on the printed page to where they were on the keyboard, which he did before heading out the door to his patients. By the time he got home I played 'Oh Suzannah' for him, having figured it out all day, no doubt! Patient Mom! In 6th grade was when I started piano lessons and at the end of 8th grade I took French Horn lessons and joined the freshman band at Rich East High School in Park Forest IL. Have always and still do love the rich mellow sounds of the French Horn. Soothing and relaxing to me. (Just finished the 1st session of listening and am headed into the 2nd.)
I have to say listening to bone conduction is a trip! You know how your own voice sounds to you and then you hear it recorded and think, that is not what I sound like and yes it is?! Well bone conduction is like that too! It sounds like music and kind of not, which I understand is my perception. So odd or not, I'm doing it! I committed to do this for myself and to blog about it and I am. i am totally aware that I may hit a wall somewhere along the way, as that happens to people and I'm not different, just older! Maybe that will be even odder as I have old issues! Really old ones! Ask my siblings! Most of them are on Facebook and probably happy to vent about their big sis! I am the oldest person in my entire family now. So like it or not I am the biological States Family matriarch and oh well! If you like classical music you would love listening to music from ABT. I do. In reading this later, it will probably be fairly random as that's what my thoughts are doing while I'm listening and I can't possibly write down all the things I'm thinking and i won't do this again as it is distracting from listening!