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How To Reduce Stress With New Age Music

New Age music is an umbrella term for various downtempo music intended to create artistic

inspiration, relaxation, and optimism. It is used by listeners for yoga, massage, meditation, and

reading as a method of stress management or to create a peaceful atmosphere in their home or

other environments, and is often associated with environmentalism and New Age spirituality.

New Age music is an umbrella term for various downtempo music intended to create artistic

inspiration, relaxation, and optimism. It is used by listeners for yoga, massage, meditation, and

reading as a method of stress management or to create a peaceful atmosphere in their home or

other environments, and is often associated with environmentalism and New Age spirituality.

New Age Music For Healing has an enormous appeal due to its hypnotic often repetitive

melodies. The "drone" effect of these compositions are valued for theiur ability to induce a

calming state. Where body an mind are still and relaxed. This state of serenity and well being is

frequently enhanced by nature sounds. Such as softly chirping birds or the gurgling of a brook.

New Age music includes both electronic forms, frequently relying on sustained synth 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 the beginning New Age music was almost exclusively instrumental. Featuring artists such as

Yani, Kitaro and Paul Horn. However, as the genre progressed and evolved, vocal music by such

artists as Enya, lorenna Mckinnit and Scotland's Mary McBride with her landmark CD -"Mary'sMessage" enlarged the genre. These arists, who base their compositions on Celtic Legends and

references, fall under the general classification fo "Celtic New Age Music.

Popular themes in New Age music include space and the cosmos, environment and nature,

wellness in being, harmony with one's self and the world, dreams or dreaming and journeys of the

mind or spirit. Titles of New Age albums and songs are frequently descriptive: examples include

Shepherd Moons (Enya), Straight' a Way to Orion (Kitaro), Touching the Clouds (Symbiosis), and

One Deep Breath (Bradley Joseph).

New Age music was influenced by a wide range of artists from a variety of genresfor example,

folk instrumentalists John Fahey and Leo Kottke, classical minimalists Terry Riley, Steve Reich,

and Philip Glass, synthesizer performers Pink Floyd and Brian Eno, and impressionistic jazz

artists Keith Jarrett, Paul Horn (beginning with 1968's Inside) and Pat Metheny. Many different

styles and combinations of electronic experimental and acoustic New Age music were introduced

in the 1970s including music from Asia, such as Kitaro and Yellow Magic Orchestra.

Steven Halpern's Spectrum Suite, released in 1975, is generally credited as the album that began

the New Age music movement. New Age music was initially produced and sold only by

independent labels. The sales reached significant numbers in unusual outlets such as bookstores,

gift stores, health food stores and boutiques, as well as direct mail. In 1981, Tower Records in

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Mountain View, California added a New Age bin. By 1985, independent and chain record retail

stores were adding sections for New Age music and major labels began showing interest in the

genre, both through acquisition of some existing New Age labels such as Paul Winter's Living

Music and through signing of New Age artists such as Kitaro and jazz crossover artist Pat

Metheny.

Though some would argue otherwise because of it's often repetitive nature, New Age Music has a

much greater variety than many traditional genres. This is a result of the wide variety of

instruments and ensemble variations that it employs. Eastern musical influences, via the sitar,

tabla and tamboura can be heard alongside electonic instruments as well as the traditional

acoustic guitar, flute, harp and piano.