Interview:

I believe the spiritual significance of music is similar to the spiritual significance of language. Music is a tool that causes spiritual effects that are dependent on the listener and the performer. The listener’s receptiveness can influence how the music is experienced. The performer’s intentions can influence how the music is communicated. Even the conscious and subconscious intentions behind the music can determine what is created. From what I have read and experienced, the brain absorbs vibrations of sound, and the effect those vibrations have on the brain can create chemical responses, emotional reactions, and trigger associations. Music affects us because we allow it into our conscious and subconscious. The resulting thoughts triggered determine our feelings and sometimes lead to actions that bring certain results in our life. I believe the musical experience is always spiritual because of the connection between our conscious and subconscious with our spirit. Whether a musical experience is spiritually positive or negative is like assessing whether the music itself is beautiful or not. Music appreciation is always a matter of individual perception.

Music can also serve as a method of meditation, and a vehicle to bring people closer to a spiritual experience. This has to do with the way the brain works in terms of how sound waves and harmonics affect our brain and our being. Science has observed how certain sounds trigger specific brain waves, and how to use these sounds to trigger desired brain waves. I listen daily to recordings based on this very science that have been engineered to specifically trigger alpha, beta, delta, and theta waves in the brain [More information can be found via www.centerpointe.com]. The recordings produce various states of meditation and encourage “whole brain thinking” among many other things. I have added these recordings to my daily meditation practice. I can also “feel” the affects and have seen the results that the science supports, including heightened awareness, intellectual clarity, and stress relief. These results and experiences are what I call spiritual. Likewise, the sounds in music can have the same effect. Creating music with State Of Man has always been about how the music makes us feel, and our hope is that this does the same for our listeners. As a music composer, creator, and songwriter, my intention behind creating music is to participate in co-creation. For me, music is a form of spiritual expression to empower, encourage, enlighten, and entertain; a means to create spiritual enjoyment for everyone.

“Music is a form of spiritual expression to empower, encourage, enlighten, and entertain; a means to create spiritual enjoyment for everyone.”
– John Stringer, vocalist and acoustic guitarist in State Of Man