Building Microphones Out Of Shells, Standing On The Shoulders Of Masaru Emoto

When’s the last time you did something for the first time? For me, it was today when I tested out my new Electret Conch Microphone and realized I want to study Cymatics for the rest of my life.

I’ve recently been working on a new healing sounds project with a brilliant retired MD here in Queens who provides meditation classes out of clinics, schools, hospitals and libraries etc. He also uses modified Conch shells to provide 30-minute water therapy sessions, of which I recently experienced. He has discovered that the golden ratio inside of the shell’s spiral acts as an old German centrifuge and separates the molecules as they speed down the tapered tunnel. This essentially “cleans” the molecules and makes them perfect again when they spiral up and down the shell on the oceans floor throughout out the eons.

My first water therapy session was gifted to me through a family member. I skeptically laid down for 30 minutes and prepared to be bored. I figured I would take advantage of the opportunity to relax and meditate. He warned me that my sense of time would be interrupted. I didn’t know what that meant but after about what felt like 5 minutes, I started to feel uncomfortable under the treatment’s water system and asked him if we could do 15 minutes instead of 30. He calmly replied, “It’s already been 45 minutes.” Stunned and in disbelief, I was turned on. I stood up and walked around the building. I felt hyper focused and calm, it was an incredible momentary feeling. I had discovered a new message God left us in a bottle. It literally felt like only a few minutes had passed, I am still baffled and amazed whenever I think back at what happened to my mind during the treatment. I had to know more!

 

 

Something magic is happening. As you probably already know, human water cells make up 70% of your body. When exposed to certain frequencies known to create perfect patterns seen in cymatic science, (only specific tones such as concert A  432hZ, mind you), all your cell membranes in your body become visible to the cymatic scientist. Your cells stand focused, at attention, in beautiful patterns and their previously chaotic, messy forms are momentarily transformed. Over time, the adaptations become what you and I call human evolution.

You probably are also already aware of the 440Hz vs 432Hz battle raging behind recording studio doors since the global decision in 1953 to change from 432Hz to 440HZ for standrad A tuning (…conspiracy theorists of the world unite). It is proven that 440HZ tones makes us more sluggish and “open to suggestion,” while 432HZ heals our cells over time and realigns us.

According to music theory, A=432 Hz is mathematically consistent with the universe. This is known as Verdi’s ‘A’ – named after Giuseppe Verdi, a famous Italian composer. Music tuned to 432 Hz is softer and brighter, and is said to provide greater clarity and is easier on the ears. I have experienced this for myself and it is not a slight difference in “feeling” but rather quite intense. 440hZ is grating and cringe worthy while 432hZ is calming and focusing. There are endless YouTube videos trying to unlock this mystery and modern “sound healers” have experienced a recent boom in demand.

We are constantly being crushed by gravity. Our bodies shrinking and our bones deteriorating. Sound healing is also a new and relaxing way to rejuvenate your body’s physiology! Jimi Hendrix was onto this too. When I worked at Electric Lady Recording Studios, I discovered he was building an “Electric Church” of healing using these frequencies too… before he was found dead, drowned by a gallon of red wine in his lungs. He was onto all kinds of new discoveries that threatened many people’s realities. I’d like to think that if he were alive today, his discoveries and gifts to mankind would have become his true legacy, possibly eclipsing his own music.

During Covid, I studied Masaru Emoto‘s recent published works featuring cellular membrane photography under the affect of specific frequencies. I also did some laborious investigative studying into the shoulders he was standing on and found about 7 generations of cymatic sciuentists published works! It was an amazing adventure that led me back to Mr. Emoto.

I discovered that sound waves can also be manipulated in similar ways that water or light can be. The sea shell mic also has a profound innate anomaly that increases the signals amplitude during the centrifugal process. After I cut the end of the shell off, I held it to my ears and softly rubbed my finger tips together. Because of the shell’s innate design, the sound was deafening on the other end in my ear! I thought, how could this be? I decided to build the same apparatus the doctor I met had created, but I tailored my design for sound waves instead of water. I tried LDC and SDC mics, even a small ribbon but nothing captured the shells output properly. I found the 1.5V “electret” style mic captured frequencies in a way no other could. These electrostatic capacitor-based microphones are great at picking up more sensitive sources so it was a perfect match.

The tiny diaphragm on the 1.5V miniature diaphragm pics up fine details in close proximity and at low volumes. Because it captures it’s own unique range of frequencies, it serves a recording similarly to the long ribbons for blending mics (a la RCA 44BX, Beyers, Reslo’s or Royers). Meaning, it is not intended to be a primary mic but rather blended into a complimentary microphone to get the whole picture. For instance, I put the shell and a Neumann U67 on a sound source and have something VERY special. Add a long ribbon and you have a full sound spectrum you simply cannot get anywhere else on earth. I was able to capture these tones in a very unique way I am using on a new kind of healing music.

I cut the end off the bottom of three conch shells of different sizes, shaved the flat surface down until the small speaker like hole was exposed (about .5″). I made sure it was even and flat, apoxy’d a fitting to hold a special hyper sensitive Philmore DC200 microphone in place against the shells small opening. I then made a shock mount based on the doctors own design of PVC and threaded stand mount.

The results are astounding to say the least. It sounds like… well, you’re in side of the ocean but you can hear everything clearly. It’s how I imagine sea life may hear their surroundings in the ocean? When the signal is cleaned up similarly to a long ribbon that needs a Cloudlifter and some EQ, you are left with a jaw dropping result that must be heard to be explained. In conservatory I had access to over 400 world class microphones and I tried them all. Having worked in dozens of top tier studios, I’ve tried many more and yet nothing I’ve ever heard sounds anything like this shell microphone.

I’ve begun to record and curate a professional program of long play meditation tracks in hopes to help heal the human body. The work is recorded in relative 432hZ tones (seen HERE) for meditation healing and yoga. They’re mostly the Moog Voyager manipulating these relative 432 tones, along with buried, light percussion. It’s extremely immersive and super interesting but mostly it’s just calming and overwhelmingly transportative.

The primary resonance of the planet and the entire universe actually, is about 8 hertz—eight trips around the planet per second. It’s said to sound like sitting inside a ringing bell which is very similar to the sound I am getting from my shell. 432hZ is said to be more “empowering” since 440hZ leaves you sluggish and disconnected.

The new mic sounds like you’re swimming underwater and the separation of sound is unreal. I’m still investigating what is happening to make the sound feel so intimate. It is audio that is not just nontraditional, but strikingly calming. 440HZ is known to leave people “open to suggestion” and sluggish (your bodies water cells also become a nasty chaotic messes under observation of 440hZ), think about that! And why did we change to 440hZ in 1953?

If you’re new to this it might be fun to dive in HERE to read other people’s interpretations of what they’ve found. What I keep coming back to is the immediate feeling I get from a basic sine wave or tone generator that plays 440 and then 432. It’s just a massive different feeling of “ouch” vs “ahhh.”

So I have a bunch of amazing new friends that just popped up in my life suddenly (…of course), who all provide meditative sound healing as their full time jobs around the US. We are collaborating on some special classes coming up in Brooklyn if anyone’s interested. By capturing this molecular sound rearrangement, I’m standing on a very thin ladder of scientists standing on each others shoulders. Have you seen the violin bow played against a metal plate or slab of slate with sand on top (below is an electrical model of the same principal)? If the plate is tuned to resonate at the correct frequencies, it creates beautiful patterns like snowflakes! If it is incorrectly tunes, it is just a pile of sand moving chaotically. Humans have been performing variations of this experiment for thousands of years.

I purchased some Tibetan singing bowls about 25 years ago when I first became interested in these specific frequencies and found them very calming and focusing. Sound healers place dozens of bowls all over shakra points of your body to open up your energy and focus. Did you know there is no actual scientific proof that acupuncture works at all? But as anyone who has had miraculous healing can attest, it most certainly helps. Millions of people experience relief from pain and illness every day. Sound Healing reduces stress and can place the listener in a meditative state. Practitioners offer their services as an alternative treatment for problems like anxiety, chronic pain, sleep disorders, and PTSD. Sound healing is rapidly growing as a viable alternative to medication and has become a popular modern derivative of ancient practices dating back to early human civilization. 

I reeeally need to get a good gong btw. Sound healers scrape them lightly with metal and can get any frequency they wants with technique. That’s next for me this winter! I’ll emerge in my new studio (JML Studios just opened yall!) with this new program of healing audio. PM me if you’d be interested in getting a copy or using it in your yoga, meditation, etc. How cool would it be to reinvent yourself as a sound therapist? To actually heal people with resonant tones? This just may the new conduit of music we’ve been looking for!

I am so excited to see where this adventure takes me and please do check back because I will be posting a series of WAV and MP3 files of my findings. I’m using stringed instruments as well as rich analog synthesizers a la Moog Voyager, Roland Juno, Oberheim modules, Korg, many types of softsynths and percussion (Available spring 2022).

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THE TEST!

This incredible Shell Mic test (below) was made by my four year old boy Jayden and I usingay Meinl Ocean Drum in about 3 minutes this morning at JML Recording Studios. Lots of rough edits (pretty chaotic, sorry for it not sounding like “a song” yet, it’s just a super rough test) but you get the idea. However, once we started taking pictures of the setup, we noticed a strange green disc:

What on earth are those green orbs in the room?? There was no green light on anywhere, only white track lighting. All other equipment was off too. Look closely at the bottom near the mouthpiece of the trumpet on the floor!I zoomed in while I was making the thumbnail for this blog post when my hair stood on end and my eyes filled with water… what on earth…??

If you watch the video you can see me trying to capture the strange orb on camera again, my hair on end. I have an identical story working in a major studio in Manhattan with D’Angelo where about 6 people in the control room all collectively saw an orb float through the live room glass into the control room and disapear into the wall. They all ran out onto the street and refused to come back inside. Was it happening again? Was I being observed in my studio as I tried to reach deeper into space and time with my new techniques? Am I on to something new and very special here? I hope so! Whatever it is, the light seemed to come out of nowhere and disappear suddenly. I’ve never seen anything like it and there was no cause for neon green glowing light in the closed off room at that time. Just a fun little experience I thought I’d share at the risk of sounding totally insane.

In my test recordings I kept all effect settings very nominal to let the shell’s natural sound come through. I know it looks like a lot of signal flow below but I assure you, my Amphion One18 reference monitors have shown that my minimal processing has not changed the sound or color much at all.

 

Signal Flow:

My Meinl Ocean Drum into my new handmade Electret Conch Shell cymatic microphone into -> a Neve 1073 mic preamp-> handmade 500 series prototype spectral enhancer to widen the signal’s soundstage a tiny bit -> SSL 500 series preamp to bring up clean Line signal -> UA X16 DAC to convert it -> ProTools (PT) Daw to capture it.

ProTools chain also had very light treatment to bring the natural sound forward and clarify the source:

–> Izotope Imager -> EMT140 -> very discrete settings on Shadow Hills Mastering bus comp -> ATR-102 to glue it all together so it sounds cohesive on any playback system.

The raw audio actually sounds almost identical just a bit more boxed in. I liked the natural sound of the reverb so I left it on for this preliminary test. I’ll post actual tracks on here as soon as I finalize and master them. I want to experiment with the coloration of my Neve 33609C buss comp vs my SSL 4000 buss comp and other types of trials to see what kind of space and width I can create. The deeper I can get into the recording the better so Ihave a lot of work to do before the tracks can be created.

There’s an interesting video using cymatic analysis (the science of visible sound) in which the YouTuber claims 8Hz doesn’t have much, if any  effect on the cell. We vehemently disagree. You see, cymatic science is based on the principle that if sound waves travel through any type of membrane, it renders the object visible. Humans have been testing this for thousands of years by placing sand on rigid surfaces and vibrating the surface. This is a fun video that suggests that sacred geometry is embedded in our DNA and we have been experimenting with cymatics for thousands of years.

440Hz shown here as “Intuitive,” I would also say “Tranquil.” The feeling of a 432Hz sine wav around 50db is astoundingly powerful.

432HZ traditional A is still the worlds oldest note of “Intuitive” design. Tranquil and giving, this tone immediately makes me feel relaxed and disarmed, yet totally in control (unlike 440HZ which immobilizes me). In short I really do feel at peace. Hitler was said to have discovered that 440Hz renders people “Open to suggestion” and therefore easier to manage and control. In 1953, America agreed enough to spearhead a global switch to 440Hz. It is unclear why we made the switch. Google why if you’d like to jump down that rabbit hole, I digress.

I often ponder all the great mathematically cryptic messages that have been left behind by God, speaking to us directly and openly from beyond the veil of all things seen and unseen. Apparently, there’s quite a bit if we simply look. The lessons and metaphors we are given are like volumes of beautiful books of poetry, great theater and wonder.

Using this shell mic like my RCA44BX’s, they basically exist to capture frequencies other SDC’s/LDC’s simply cannot. When blended with other mics to achieve the whole spectrum I experienced a rich width and space in my test recordings. Listen to the audio recording in the video below for the very first shell mic test I created with my son.