A musical method to take your attention back!

How many seconds can you sit still and focus on your breathing, without your mind wandering? If you’re like most people nowadays, your answer to that question is somewhere under 10 seconds. Seriously. And that’s the “new normal”.

Ever since the neolithic revolution, when humans first began to live in an unnatural way, we’ve had restless minds. Buddhists call this the monkey-mind, but I think we can update that to the scrolling-mind.

While short attention spans have been a problem for a long time, the issue has gotten exponentially worse since the invention of smart phones. It’s horrifying how addicted most people are to their phones! And nobody’s talking about this, because it’s the “new normal”. But it’s not normal, and we need to stop pretending that it’s okay to waste our one precious life staring at screens. Nobody on their death bed will ever wish they spent more time scrolling on their phone.

Perhaps you’re thinking: What I spend my time doing is my business! On the surface, that sounds fair enough. But when we explore this issue at a deeper level, we realize that phone addiction is not only ruining our lives, it’s ruining our societies, too. When we can’t focus for more than a few seconds, we can’t create anything worthwhile. And you can see where this is heading…

Most people are addicted to consuming content on their phones, which means most people can’t focus long enough to create anything. So what happens when there’s a never-ending demand for new content, but there’s nobody to create it. No problem, says AI. Yep, we’re about to enter a new reality where robots are the “creators”, and humans are the consumers. How screwed up is that?! And then, what happens next?

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Phone addiction is such a recent phenomenon that we have absolutely no idea what the world will be like after another decade of this. Whatever that future looks like, though, it’s not good. But we’re not there yet! If we all start taking our attention back today, we can avoid that dystopian future. And there’s an easy (and fun!) way to do this, which I’ll share with you next. But first, we need to understand the problem.

There are many interwoven causes behind phone addiction, but essentially people are distracting themselves to death. The precise reasons why each person uses their phone to keep themselves distracted is unique to them, and discovering those unconscious reasons is the next step in our healing process. However, we can’t do that without first taking our attention back.

There’s a general awareness that we’re struggling to focus nowadays, which is why the internet is flooded with mindfulness practices. And everyone’s trying to sell you their meditation app. But if mindfulness and meditation worked, then why is almost everyone still addicted to their phones?

I think it’s because the addiction is too powerful, so people aren’t able to meditate properly. Just because we sit on a cushion and close our eyes for half an hour, doesn’t mean that we’re meditating for half an hour. It’s like going to the gym for 30 minutes but only doing 3 minutes of exercise. The total time is irrelevant. The only time that counts is when we’re actually exercising.

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If we’re sitting with our eyes closed while our minds wander for half an hour, that’s not meditating. Every single time our attention strays, we need to bring it back to the breath. That’s exhausting, though, and that’s why most people give up, or don’t even bother trying in the first place. But fear not, because that’s exactly why I created my new meditation app! No I’m just kidding, apps are part of the problem, not the solution. The real solution is Music.

Music has a power that nothing else has. Music can focus our minds, and music can heal us. If we surrender to music, mindfulness becomes effortless.

What’s unique about music is that when we listen to it, we’re not consuming, we’re communing.

To commune is “to share your emotions and feelings with somebody/something without speaking” (according to the Oxford English Dictionary). How deep is that? To share your emotions without speaking! There’s no better description of our relationship with music than that. Communing.

When we open ourselves up to music, we’re in a mutually-resonating relationship with it. Without a human, music is nothing more than vibrations in the air. With a human, though, music comes to life. We bring music to life by listening to it, and when music is alive, its life-force energy is within us. And don’t worry, this is not woo-woo speculation. Music has life-changing psychological and physiological effects, which the music therapy field has been scientifically measuring for decades.

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So, sometime today, and every day from now on, do the following: Go somewhere private (even if it’s the bathroom), load up a piece of beautiful music, get your earphones in, put your phone on flight mode (that’s essential!), hit play, close your eyes, and surrender to the music.

You can listen to whatever you want, as long as it’s mesmerizingly beautiful. I recommend the EP Vivaldi: Stabat Mater by Jakub Józef Orliński. When I listen to this record, I can feel the chemistry in my body changing within seconds, literally. It’s miraculous. Try it for yourself, and expect miracles.

The first movement is just under three minutes, so start your communing with just that one track. It’s so beautiful and captivating, though, you’ll struggle to stop after it. Feel free to commune with the second movement, too. But then stop. It’s better to leave yourself wanting more.

There are nine movements, and the whole piece is only 18 minutes long, so work your way up to communing with all nine tracks. Do this exercise every day, and it will change your life. There’s no comparison between meditating for 18 minutes and communing with this music for 18 minutes. Music is a force of nature. Let it move you. Let it change you.

But remember, this is communing, not consuming. And it’s not meditation either. All you have to do is relax and let the music do the work. If you surrender, it will hold your attention. If you surrender, it will heal you. Simply surrender, and expect miracles.

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And now that you’re taking your attention back, if you’re feeling inspired to learn how to make music yourself, or if you’re already making music but want to improve, then I invite you to help yourself to our many free downloads. If you’re a beginner, start with my FREE Book 12 Music Theory Hacks to Learn Scales & Chords. It only takes about half an hour to read, then you’ll have a solid foundation of the basics. And if you’re intermediate or advanced, download the Free PDF Tutorials, which teach you how to make great music in all genres.

Lastly, I don’t paywall any of these posts, as I don’t want to exclude anyone. So if you can spare a few bucks, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. It’s only about the cost of one coffee per month for you, but if enough people join, I can pay the rent and keep helping you. If you’d prefer to make a one-off donation, though, that’s awesome too. I’m deeply grateful either way! To get involved, head on over to HackMusicTheory.com/Join.

A heartfelt thank-you for your support, and welcome aboard the Songwriter’s Ark, where all the music making skills are being preserved through this global AI flood. The flood shall pass. The skills will last.

Ray Harmony :)

Help keep the Songwriter's Ark afloat.

Photo by Mart Production

Ray Harmony is a multi award-winning music lecturer, who’s made music with Serj Tankian (System Of A Down), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine), Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad), Ihsahn (Emperor), Kool Keith (Ultramagnetic MCs), Madchild (Swollen Members), and more.

Ray is also the founder of Hack Music Theory, a YouTube channel with over 10 million views and over 250,000 subscribers learning the fast, easy and fun way to make music without using AI, cos it ain’t no fun getting a robot to write “your” songs!

Cartoon by Jerm for UKColumn

Outro music by Ray Harmony, based on the music theory from GoGo Penguin "Everything Is Going to Be OK".

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