The Threshold of Coolidity

Lately, I have been rather fascinated with the whole 'Om' concept, but when I get to link it to music, thats where fascination ends and passion takes over!

I must accept that I am pretty illiterate about the origin, power, and uses of Om. I have been told that Om is some sort of resonance of the cosmos. The whole Om thingie came into my life when I hurt my back and since western medicine fails miserably at these problems my parents begged me to try my hand, actually mind at something called Pranayam. Well, pranayam is some sort of breathing exercise and involves at certain points saying Om! Without trying to sound cool, I will admit that saying it actually felt awesome. I felt that I could get my voice, body to kinda vibrate (hehe), feel all warm inside, and pretty much high by practising this, a rather addcitive feeling.

Anyways, some days later, I somehow stumbled upon something rather novel. I say Om at this constant pitch which turns out to be the note 'C' on a standard guitar tuning. I found out that without fail I no longer need to have any doubts on how to restore standard tuning when my guitar loses tuning, I simply have to close my eyes, say Om and tune accordingly. Truly amazing!

Now to the even cooler part, given my daily worship of Eddie Vedder's voice, and irrespective of me thinking his voice sounds kicks-ass in whatever he sings, certain songs always struck me to sound as if his voice is reverberating (ex Man of the hour) and almost sounded like God is speaking down to you. After stumbling on my discovery I found that these songs were also on "C". I don't know whether he says Om at C, i dont know if he says Om at all, but I have played with it more and its helped me a lot with my music writing.

So, different people seem to say Om at different pitches (tried this on roommates). Songs i have written on C make my voice reverberate at the low pitch (ex Dil Chahne Laga and How many roses and my cover of wishlist and man of the hour). The moment I move to a higher chord the reverberation ceases. When I move to a lower chord, there is vibration but the beauty and intelligibilty (if there is a word) go way down. I will use this new power! And in some weird way it makes sense to me. For meditation and healing people are adviced to say Om coz it is the frequency at which ur whole body vibrates as one and that has healing effects: So I assume that the same vibration extends to one's vocal chords and thats the pitch at which the voice stands a chance of sounding its best.

I hope some great music comes out of all this. In the meantime, I have decked my room up with all sorts of hippy Om accessories and they truly elevate the mood of the room (pronounce 'rum' as in ruminate)!