FRI., MAY 02, 2008
Post Spotlight to FacebookIn This Feature
Magazine Archives:
In Search Of The Lost Chord With Alan Howarth
by Robert Phoenix
You may have never heard of Alan Howarth, but you have no doubt heard his work. Howarth is a Hollywood effects master who's conjured up over 50,000 sounds. He created every bleep, blap, buzz and blast for all of the Star Trek films, and has had a long-term working relationship with sci-fi and horror master John Carpenter. His Real Hollywood Sound Effects record on GNP Crescendo is one of the best-selling sound effects records of all-time. Howarth is also a gifted sound engineer. In the '70s and '80s he toured with the jazz-fusion giants Weather Report, mixing for the tempestuous Jaco Pastorious, the demanding Joe Zawinul and the exacting Wayne Shorter. To roll with Weather Report night in and night out, he had to know something about sound.
I spent some time with Howarth at The Global Healing Conference in Glendale, California, at the beginning of February. The event was organized by David Gibson, a sound healer and engineer. It was the second of two major conferences that Gibson has put together; the theme of this latest gathering was "Bringing Sound Healing into the Mainstream." (Recently, I’ve been seeing a recurring ad on my Yahoo! home page touting the virtues of using sound to lower blood pressure. The tipping point may be approaching very quickly.)
While Howarth was developing some of his own rather esoteric theories on sound, he ran across the writings of a true eccentric named Wes Bateman. According to Howarth, Bateman used to be in contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence — a galactic governing body of sorts, to be more precise. During the early and mid-'60s, Bateman gave weekly talks in LA about what the galactic council was sharing with him. In his small lecture group, a Hollywood producer and his staff of writers were always in attendance. That producer's name was Gene Rodenberry; much of Bateman’s material was later used by Rodenberry and his team to craft the concept for Star Trek, which they then pitched as a pilot to NBC. According to Howarth, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigations were also among the attendees.
By the time Howarth had discovered him online, Bateman had turned his gaze towards more earthly designs. The former galactic contactee had immersed himself in Egyptology — the study of the Great Pyramid at Giza, to be specific. Bateman had discovered through his mathematical equations that the Great Pyramid was more than just the purported eternal resting place of mummified royalty. He found that the structures contained the mathematical components of the Egyptian musical scale, and that all of the proportions of the pyramid reflected the geometry of its space and sound. Howarth thought the idea more than just titillating. He reached out to Bateman and asked him if he would be interested in going to Egypt to prove his theory, using some of Howarth’s sonic measuring equipment. Bateman agreed and the two of them, along with the noted esoteric researcher, JJ Hurtak (who wrote the paradigm-shattering The Keys of Enoch) set off to test their theories in the Kings Chamber.
The three of them managed to secure just over two hours to haul their equipment down the cramped, stuffy shaft that leads into the Kings Chamber, where supposedly Aleister Crowley had spent his wedding night and communed with the spirit that would give him the precepts for his sex-magic order, the OTO. Once they assembled their gear, Howarth shot pink noise into the chamber and began to read where it reverberated, and by how much. Using his data, he was able to discern that the King's Chamber was a geometric scale of the overall pyramid in miniature, and that Bateman’s calculations were on the money. As a result, they were able to determine that the Egyptian scale began roughly at 424 megahertz with A as a starting point, whereas the Western scale as it was set in the 1800s uses 440 megahertz with A. It became Howarth’s contention that everything composed post-Beethoven is off, that what we hear when we listen to music is not in accord to the natural sound frequencies or what Howarth and Bateman have named “The Ra Frequencies.” Howarth claims that if we returned to the natural scale, our music would be closer to nature and thus more harmonious with the overall pattern of wellness and creativity. He’s even gone as far as to create patented software that would allow a music collector to upload their entire collection to his technology and convert it into the RA Frequency. Current composers, producers and artists could do the same and offer their works moving forward attuned to the natural patterns of nature, no matter what type of music they had created.
In some ways, it mimics Jose Arguelles’ theory of time and the switch from the solar-based Gregorian calendar to the Mayan lunar calendar. Arguelles’ theory is roughly the same: that by using the twenty-day, thirteen-month, 260-day calendar we can re-harmonize ourselves in a more organic, natural law of time. If Howarth’s and Bateman’s ideas and implementation could be embraced as the industry standard, it could theoretically shift our autonomous systems just slightly enough so that we could relate with our surroundings in a different tempo and pitch. Our thoughts and feelings would be slightly different as well, attuning ourselves to the ability to listen in space and extend our auditory field deeper into the body. Howarth’s theory of the "natural scale" is loaded with potentially tectonic repercussions. Its central idea is revolutionary: that simply listening to music the way it was meant to be heard could have a broad and healing impact on the whole of mankind.
You can listen to examples of converted sound and upload your own tracks and convert them into Ra frquencies here.
I spent some time with Howarth at The Global Healing Conference in Glendale, California, at the beginning of February. The event was organized by David Gibson, a sound healer and engineer. It was the second of two major conferences that Gibson has put together; the theme of this latest gathering was "Bringing Sound Healing into the Mainstream." (Recently, I’ve been seeing a recurring ad on my Yahoo! home page touting the virtues of using sound to lower blood pressure. The tipping point may be approaching very quickly.)
While Howarth was developing some of his own rather esoteric theories on sound, he ran across the writings of a true eccentric named Wes Bateman. According to Howarth, Bateman used to be in contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence — a galactic governing body of sorts, to be more precise. During the early and mid-'60s, Bateman gave weekly talks in LA about what the galactic council was sharing with him. In his small lecture group, a Hollywood producer and his staff of writers were always in attendance. That producer's name was Gene Rodenberry; much of Bateman’s material was later used by Rodenberry and his team to craft the concept for Star Trek, which they then pitched as a pilot to NBC. According to Howarth, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigations were also among the attendees.
By the time Howarth had discovered him online, Bateman had turned his gaze towards more earthly designs. The former galactic contactee had immersed himself in Egyptology — the study of the Great Pyramid at Giza, to be specific. Bateman had discovered through his mathematical equations that the Great Pyramid was more than just the purported eternal resting place of mummified royalty. He found that the structures contained the mathematical components of the Egyptian musical scale, and that all of the proportions of the pyramid reflected the geometry of its space and sound. Howarth thought the idea more than just titillating. He reached out to Bateman and asked him if he would be interested in going to Egypt to prove his theory, using some of Howarth’s sonic measuring equipment. Bateman agreed and the two of them, along with the noted esoteric researcher, JJ Hurtak (who wrote the paradigm-shattering The Keys of Enoch) set off to test their theories in the Kings Chamber.
The three of them managed to secure just over two hours to haul their equipment down the cramped, stuffy shaft that leads into the Kings Chamber, where supposedly Aleister Crowley had spent his wedding night and communed with the spirit that would give him the precepts for his sex-magic order, the OTO. Once they assembled their gear, Howarth shot pink noise into the chamber and began to read where it reverberated, and by how much. Using his data, he was able to discern that the King's Chamber was a geometric scale of the overall pyramid in miniature, and that Bateman’s calculations were on the money. As a result, they were able to determine that the Egyptian scale began roughly at 424 megahertz with A as a starting point, whereas the Western scale as it was set in the 1800s uses 440 megahertz with A. It became Howarth’s contention that everything composed post-Beethoven is off, that what we hear when we listen to music is not in accord to the natural sound frequencies or what Howarth and Bateman have named “The Ra Frequencies.” Howarth claims that if we returned to the natural scale, our music would be closer to nature and thus more harmonious with the overall pattern of wellness and creativity. He’s even gone as far as to create patented software that would allow a music collector to upload their entire collection to his technology and convert it into the RA Frequency. Current composers, producers and artists could do the same and offer their works moving forward attuned to the natural patterns of nature, no matter what type of music they had created.
In some ways, it mimics Jose Arguelles’ theory of time and the switch from the solar-based Gregorian calendar to the Mayan lunar calendar. Arguelles’ theory is roughly the same: that by using the twenty-day, thirteen-month, 260-day calendar we can re-harmonize ourselves in a more organic, natural law of time. If Howarth’s and Bateman’s ideas and implementation could be embraced as the industry standard, it could theoretically shift our autonomous systems just slightly enough so that we could relate with our surroundings in a different tempo and pitch. Our thoughts and feelings would be slightly different as well, attuning ourselves to the ability to listen in space and extend our auditory field deeper into the body. Howarth’s theory of the "natural scale" is loaded with potentially tectonic repercussions. Its central idea is revolutionary: that simply listening to music the way it was meant to be heard could have a broad and healing impact on the whole of mankind.
You can listen to examples of converted sound and upload your own tracks and convert them into Ra frquencies here.
© 1992 - 2010 All Media Guide, LLC