When I composed the first sonic meditation, I realized that I was composing the direction of attention.
Something that I did, and I developed out of that sonic meditations, which were pieces that I composed in the '70s that now are very well-known and used in many classrooms all over the world, but at the time were outrageous.
It was around the end of the '60s, when I began to compose sonic meditations. Before that I was doing a lot of reflecting on myself, and listening to long tones.
That was at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival in about 1989. There were 6,000 women there, and they were out in a meadow, and I offered the tuning meditation and they did it.
I wrote my sonic meditations and started using them with students. I took a bunch of UCSD students out to Joshua Tree and we did the sonic meditations on the boulders.
[Students] they did the sonic meditations, I would observe them in their ensembles, and the ensembles improved incredibly. So I knew I had something to do and something to say.
