Everything about New Age Music totally explained
New Age music is peaceful music of various styles that's intended to create relaxation and positive feelings. Some but not all new age music is associated with
New Age beliefs. New Age music is typically relaxing and inspiring, and is often used by listeners for such activities as
yoga,
massage,
meditation, reading, as a method of
stress management or to create a peaceful atmosphere in their home or other environments.
The harmonies in new age music are generally
modal,
consonant, or include a
drone bass. The melodies are often repetitive, to create a hypnotic feeling, and sometimes recordings of nature sounds are used as an introduction to a track or throughout the piece. Songs of up to 30 minutes duration are not uncommon.
New Age music includes both
electronic forms, frequently relying on sustained
pads or long
sequencer-based runs, and
acoustic forms, featuring instruments such as flutes, piano, acoustic guitar and a wide variety of non-western acoustic instruments. In many cases, high-quality
digitally sampled instruments are used instead of natural acoustic instruments. Vocal arrangements were initially rare in New Age music but as it has evolved vocals have become more common, especially vocals featuring
Sanskrit,
Tibetan or
Native American-influenced chants, or lyrics based on
mythology such as
Celtic legends or the realm of
Faerie.
History
New Age music has its basis in the work of 1960s European and American electronic and acoustic musicians exploring music for creating expanded consciousness. In the late 1970s, music began to be recorded specifically for the purposes of meditation and relaxation. During the early 1980s, the term "New Age music" was introduced more widely to the public by radio stations and then by music retailers and some record companies, as a marketing tag applied to a variety of non-mainstream instrumental music styles. Radio stations in major markets (such as "the Wave" in Los Angeles) defined themselves as "New Age", while playing some New Age music and using nature sounds in their station-id's, yet those stations also heavily featured styles musically and philosophically unrelated to New Age music, for example,
Smooth Jazz. The first true New Age radio station is the U.S. was KLRS (Colours) in Santa Cruz, CA with a non-stop playlist of New Age music and is considered the first New Age station in the world. Most major
cable television networks have channels that play music without visuals, including channels for New Age music, such as for example, the "Soundscapes" channel on
Music Choice.
..New Age Music is designed to alter your state of consciousness, in the same manner as alcohol or drugs. "Stress Management" techniques that employ New Age techniques, are practicing the same techniques in a lot of cases as "
grounding exercises" ]practiced by Wiccan's or witches. These excersises are designed to "center" your inner self to the earth, and remove you from this world, into a more "peaceful world", for example altered consciousness, visualizing [(creativevisulization)]
(External Link
) somewhere else, emptying ones self, and is commonly used to seek "spirit guides". It is eastern in origin, practiced by shamans, witches, and people who do Yoga. It is commonly taught in schools, and big corporations, especially upper management. It is an Occult practice, when used with these techniques.
Definitions
New Age music is defined more by the feeling it produces rather than the devices used in its creation; it may be electronic or acoustic, or a mixture of both. New Age artists range from solo or ensemble performances using
Western instruments such as piano, acoustic guitar, flutes, harps and many others, to
electronic musical instruments, and
Eastern instruments such as sitar, tamboura, tabla; and instruments from all other parts of the world, the human voice singing in languages from all around the world.
Some New Age music artists openly embrace
New Age beliefs, while other artists and bands have specifically stated that they don't consider their own music to be
New Age, even when their work has been labeled as such by record labels, music retailers, or radio broadcasters.
There is a significant overlap of sectors of New Age music,
Ambient music,
electronica,
World music,
Chillout,
spacemusic and others. The two definitions typically used for New Age are:
- New age music with an ambient sound that has the explicit purpose of aiding meditation and relaxation, or aiding and enabling various alternative spiritual practices, such as meditative healing, chakra auditing, and so on. The proponents of this definition are almost always musicians who create their music expressly for these purposes. Prominent artists who create New Age music expressly for healing or meditation include Aeoliah, Deuter, Deepak Chopra, and Steven Halpern.
Music which is found in the New Age section of the record store. Similarly, pianists such as Yanni and Bradley Joseph both use this term as well, although they use keyboards to incorporate layered orchestral textures into their compositions.
Adult Contemporary: This term, used by Jim Brickman; it's a type of radio format that plays mainstream contemporary pop music, excluding hip hop and hard rock; this music is intended more for adults than teens.
Contemporary Adult Instrumental: This term was suggested by Steven Halpern in the June 1999 issue of New Age Voice as an alternative catch-all label for music which is classified by retailers as "New Age", but which isn't expressly spiritual in nature.
Further Information
Get more info on 'New Age Music'.
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