40 Days and 40 Nights began one summer night in San Francisco in the mid 1990s.
Once upon a time, I went to a lecture in San Francisco where Stewart Brand sponsored Laurie Anderson, Spike Lee and Brian Eno to do a sort of free-form discussion on the nature of creativity. I left that discussion with many valuable insights. One of the most significant for me was that Eno described how personal computing had come to a point where we could create regenerative music for ourselves and our environments. This meant that we could create parameters for acoustic textures and our computers could spin out endlessly unique sonic patterns for our amusement and entertainment.
This came as a revelation to me. The reason was that I had been working on a question in my mind for many years and I had no idea how to solve it. The challenge was that I had discovered an objective mathematical relationship between the structure of DNA and the theoretical basis of acupuncture via the inner binary mathematics of the I Ching. My idea was that since this objective relationship exists, then the basis for an objective informational language must also exist on a biological level. My idea was to explore and experiment with this language, but I had no idea how to do it.
The fact that personal computing had reached the point where we could create regenerative musical compositions helped me to bridge the gap. Whereas Eno was experimenting whimsically but systematically with variations on musical themes, my goal was to represent and express information that would align the participants with a deeper principle or natural coherency. It could be argued that the very randomness of Eno’s regenerative creations are in fact aligned with the highest order of the spontaneous manifestations and coherency of life itself, whereas my idea was a somewhat medieval attempt at controlling or at least influencing my environment and participants with a pale shade what I considered to be a divine pattern. I could buy that argument. Nevertheless, whereas Eno fully embraced randomness and whimsy, my idea was to use indeterminacy in a controlled way to introduce what I believed was a deeper level of natural order in the form of nature-based information into the environment as an element of coherency. Its purpose was to form a seed-pattern for chaos to align toward a new order. My hope was that this influence could be recognized and utilized by natural systems as a bridge to natural order and a healing state of coherency.
This information didn’t have to be presented as sound. One of the greatest challenges of my discovery was that the information could be presented in any form whatsoever. The important thing was the coherency, the internal consistency of the system that would allow living forms to register and utilize the patterns of information for their benefit. I chose sound for the following reasons:
- Because of my medieval orientation to life in general (some would call it experientially-based natural science.)
- Sound was easily reproducible and could be distributed virally.
- Sound has a fundamental permeating effect on the environment that it’s influencing.
- Music enjoys a very organic distribution pattern over the earth based on human desire.
- Music has long-term pervasive effects.
- Ancient scientific systems regard sound and vibration as the fundamental stuff of creation.
- Modern scientific systems regard vibration (and by extension sound) as the fundamental stuff of creation.
- Contact with music and sound is innately satisfying.
- I’d had a conversation with Joe Strummer in the summer of 1982 on the nature of revolution, world-changing and music’s role in shaping history. Joe insisted that if I had anything to offer, I’d better make sure it was original. His words and haunting, hollow eyes both stymied and challenged me. (They still do.) I felt that if I could pull off what I was planning, I would finally have something that would conform to Joe’s injunction.
My plan, then, was to create regenerative music using algorithms that were based on patterns that were rooted in natural order as a way of seeding the environment with coherent natural catalysts. I believed this would induce a healing impulse into the environment at an organic level that would operate at a very deep level of order.
The question was how. I wasn’t technologically savvy at the time, and had no idea where to go or what to do. I shared my idea with some friends who were computer programmers. One thing led to another, and I eventually would up with a copy of a software program called Max. Max is an object-oriented tool that allows you to take any information, convert it into mathematical streams, and then output that information as MIDI streams. You can then stream that MIDI information into any MIDI-based device to be translated into whatever form you want, live. Max was just what I needed.
It took several months to learn the program, create the algorithms and come up with something that worked. During the whole process I had no idea if I would be successful in my attempts or what the thing would sound like when I was done.
I’ll never forget the day that I finally got it all working. I hooked my geekish contraption up to a Yamaha electric piano, got all the connections right, said a prayer, held my breath and pressed go. At the first sound I ran out of the room like a boy who had just lit the fuse on his first cherry bomb or stick of dynamite. After all, this was like my own Manhattan Project. I had no idea what was going to happen. As I ran into the living room, I had visions of the house imploding into a black-hole-like vortex, or scalar waves emanating from my neighborhood that would catalyze the end of life as we knew it.
None of that occurred, but what I heard was very, very beautiful. It was at once mysterious, inviting and rapturous. I got lost in the sounds of this natural order and felt a wonderful feeling knowing that I had succeeded. The question remained to be discovered what exactly I had succeeded at.
An interesting scene greeted me when I finally went back into the sound lab. There was a wolf that lived in my community who was something of a clan protector and friend for those who lived in the area. His name was Jack. Jack had opened the window of the sound lab, jumped through it, and was sitting in front of the piano listening with his head cocked in exactly like the old RCA Victor label. It was all the confirmation that I needed.
I spent the next several months working out variations on the basic algorithms to emphasize various qualities and mathematical progressions that were important differentiators in this process. Questions of rhythm, pacing, timing and tonal quality came into play. I conformed to what I agreed with in what was known in the field of sound healing at the time. I also added the results of my own extensive research into the effects of sounds and the psychological effects of different qualities of sound.
The most important thing was to create a system that reinforced the systematic coherency of the information streams. I wanted nothing arbitrary. Any glitches in the consistency of the presentation would cause confusion and mis-messaging on an informational level. This is why everything you’ll hear in 40 Days and 40 Nights is very intentional. The length of held notes, silences and tonal qualities all convey the information held in the organic data streams.
How did I present an objective musical representation of this biological information across a musical spectrum, especially considering the completely arbitrary and unnatural mathematics of the even-tempered scale? This was the biggest issue. Even though it seemed impossible from everything I knew about tone values and scales, something kept telling me that it was possible. I persevered.
One day I had a complete breakthough and saw the problem from a different angle: I transposed a probability curve that contained the entire model of what I was doing across the even-tempered scale of the piano. Since this information naturally falls into the parameters of this curve and the even-tempered scale is at least consistent, it can work as an effective vehicle to present coherent information if you manage it properly. Voila! Problem solved. Also, since we’ve been culturally entrained to the even-tempered scale for several hundred years, it adds another dimension to our perception of the coherency. But that’s not central to the accuracy or the effectiveness of the expression.
For pacing, I decided to use a variable rate that corresponded to cardiac, respiratory and intestinal rhythms at the same time rather than heart rhythm alone. The heart rhythm carries an urgent sense of expectation with it. I use that sense of expectation as a dramatic factor in the creations. When you listen to 40 days and 40 Nights, you’ll be able to hear rhythmic pulses of sound, slower wave-like structures and very long, slow reverberative cycles that correspond to the workings of our own physiological systems.
The next phase came once I had the working algorithms. I then had to discover how to create a tool that could pass on the algorithms, provide a way to output them with sound, and then be mass-produced and distributed. At that time there were very few options. That’s because computer devices and programming were almost exclusively visually based at that time. Working with sound involved more information than the technology could handle. Plus, the people who were working in the industry just had more of a visual sense than an acoustic one, so that was the kind of technology that they developed.
We ended up pushing the envelope of available technology by using a program called Director. Director was actually for making movies. The final product (which we called Concorus) also had a visual component, and Director spun out little movies of representations of the algorithms along with very complicated recombinant soundtracks. The user was able to choose among many variables, including entering an intention of their choice for the program to work with. They were also able to choose among different algorithms that I had cooked out of the structure itself to bring out various qualities in what the program was creating.
All in all, Concorus was considered to be a very interesting and innovative invention from the technological side and was a success on that level. What really interested me, though, was what would happen once people got it into their hands and started experimenting with it.
The feedback was that Concorus was creating some kind of magic, but it was difficult to describe what that magic was. About half of the users got overwhelmed with the combination of complexity of the process and its indeterminate outcomes. The process itself invariably flummoxed their minds and begged the question, “What the hell am I doing with this thing?”
The other half of the users got just plain scared when the felt and observed what was going on. Concorus was indeed spinning a level of information into the environment and the environment was responding. The anecdotes were synchronous, spooky and amazing. Whether these effects were happening at physical, psychological or other combined levels, no one could or can say.
To satisfy my longing for web distribution I also created another, simpler, device called The Webhealer. A user would type an intention into The Webhealer and then press a button. The program would then generate an instantaneous homeopathic pulse of light and sound that was based on the coherency of the Concorus system. The Webhealer became a very popular award-winning device that enjoyed hundreds of thousands of downloads at that time. It may still be out there.
Getting lost in the complexity of it all was part of the experimental intrigue of the Concorus system. I knew that only the fullness of time would reveal the true extent of how life would use this tool. So I let Concorus go on its way and do its thing.
Meanwhile, my own experimentations had led me to distill a number of patterns out of the mathematical complexity of this system that I believed were very important healing tools. These tools allowed the user to do 5 different things:
1) Bring her/himself and his/her environment to a basic level of energetic balance.
2) Catalyze healing.
3) Resolve energetic patterns that color or prevent fresh life energy from flowing into the system.
4) Bring on and integrate a period of positive and life-giving transition. The user can also use this pattern to harmonize with a period of transition that’s already in progress.
5) Catalyze new, creative and improved life energy to flow into the system once the first four stages are complete.
Although I say these 5 things are different, they’re all related in the progression of the information. They form a kind of alchemical process. I discovered that this process works best when the user initially performs it over the course of 40 days and 40 nights.
I spent the next two years inside the guts of a Roland synthesizer and a Macintosh computer to create what I wanted. The end result was 5 CDs. Three of them were initially released to the public under the titles Vulcan’s Child: Environment, Healing and Resolve. Two of the CDs were not released. These were called Transition and Shining Path. I really enjoyed the ambiguity of the Shining Path title, which led some people to question whether or not Vulcan’s Child had something to do with the Maoist Freedom Fighter movement in Peru of the same name. These questions became even more pointed in light of later work that I did to promote the repopularization of ancient indigenous religious practices of Mexico.
Since the energies of the first 3 CDs were appropriate for general healing purposes, I released those first. Due to the complex nature of the tonal processes on those CDs and the potency of the energies that they contain, I insisted that we wait at least 10 years before we released the other two CDs. I anticipated that by that time, technology would have advanced to the point where we could deliver these tracks over the internet- something that every computer genius at that time insisted would never happen. I also wanted to wait for a substantial population of users to develop with the initial material and/or for the world situation to get to such a razor’s edge that we needed to use every possible tool to get ourselves through.
Feedback on every level has been very positive over the long term. It’s been 10 years. Now it’s time to release all of the 40 Days and 40 Nights for general use to anybody who wants to use them.
There are many ways that you can use these tonal processes, and I will leave that up to your personal preferences and experimentations. My suggestion is that you first use this system in the following way to initiate their intended alchemy, familiarize yourself with the tracks and begin the process:
1) Listen to the tracks in order.
2) Listen to only one track per day.
3) Listen to each track once in the morning when you wake up, and again before you go to sleep. This will take approximately 8 minutes each time.
4) The next day, go to the next track, etc., for a total of 40 days and 40 nights.
I also suggest that during the first 8 days, you leave the track of the day to repeat continuously at your home when you’re not there. This is because the first 8 processes work with balancing your environment.
After your 40 days and 40 nights are complete, I encourage you to repeat this process during significant times in your life, on your birthday and at the solstices. I also encourage you to use this palette of 40 tonal journeys in a variety of creative ways once you’ve gone through the full adventure.
I look forward to hearing from you and learning about the results of your experiences with these very powerful and sophisticated healing tools…
40 Days and 40 Nights
A Healing Adventure Using the Power of Sound
How to Access 40 Days and 40 Nights
- Click on any of the titles below.
- You'll access each section of 40 Days and 40 Nights individually in the order Environment, Healing, Resolve, Transition and Shining Path. Just click Buy Album for each section.
- You can also access each day individually if you prefer. Each day goes in order beginning with Environment 1 (Day 1), Environment 2 (Day 2), etc. If you want clarity on the order of the tracks, see the listing below.
- Allow for sufficient time to download iTunes (if you don’t already have it) and the tracks themselves.
Listen to 40 Days and 40 Nights in the following order:
Days 1-8
Balance/Environment
Days 9-16
Healing
Days 17-24
Resolve
Days 25-32
Transition
Days 33-40
The New Way
(Shining Path)
In other words, follow this sequence:
Days 1-8
Balance/Environment
Day 1/ Night 1
(Environment 1)
Day 2/ Night 2
(Environment 2)
Day 3/ Night 3
(Environment 3)
Day 4/ Night 4
(Environment 4)
Day 5/ Night 5
(Environment 5)
Day 6/ Night 6
(Environment 6)
Day 7/ Night 7
(Environment 7)
Day 8/ Night 8
(Environment 8)
Days 9-16
Healing
Day 9/ Night 9
(Healing 1)
Day 10/ Night 10
(Healing 2)
Day 11/ Night 11
(Healing 3)
Day 12/ Night 12
(Healing 4)
Day 13/ Night 13
(Healing 5)
Day 14/ Night 14
(Healing 6)
Day 15/ Night 15
(Healing 7)
Day 16/ Night 16
(Healing 8)
Days 17-24
Resolve
Day 17/ Night 17
(Resolve 1)
Day 18/ Night 18
(Resolve 2)
Day 19/ Night 19
(Resolve 3)
Day 20/ Night 20
(Resolve 4)
Day 21/ Night 21
(Resolve 5)
Day 22/ Night 22
(Resolve 6)
Day 23/ Night 23
(Resolve 7)
Day 24/ Night 24
(Resolve 8)
Days 25-32
Transition
Day 25/ Night 25
(Transition 1)
Day 26/ Night 26
(Transition 2)
Day 27/ Night 27
(Transition 3)
Day 28/ Night 28
(Transition 4)
Day 29/ Night 29
(Transition 5)
Day 30/ Night 30
(Transition 6)
Day 31/ Night 31
(Transition 7)
Day 32/ Night 32
(Transition 8)
Days 33-40
The New Way
(Shining Path)
Day 33/ Night 33
(Shining Path 1)
Day 34/ Night 34
(Shining Path 2)
Day 35/ Night 35
(Shining Path 3)
Day 36/ Night 36
(Shining Path 4)
Day 37/ Night 37
(Shining Path 5)
Day 38/ Night 38
(Shining Path 6)
Day 39/ Night 39
(Shining Path 7)
Day 40/ Night 40
(Shining Path 8)
40 Days and 40 Nights contains no subliminal messages.
40 Days and 40 Nights
A Healing Adventure Using the Power of Sound
Access 40 Days and 40 Nights
Questions? Comments? Please submit them by email to: qc@40daysand40nights.net
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Thank you.
