Mi'sen

Contemplative fieldnotes: My brother - a musician - asked me how he would go about using music to train attention. Playing around, using this masterpiece from James Holden - Renata https://youtu.be/2FmFXQSIzCo  If anyone has played with music + meditation let me know.

Music is great; I use it all the time with meditation. AMA.

Cool. It's a really broad topic so I suppose broad questions might give you some space to riff on whatever it is you've found helpful: - How do you like to use it? What functions does it serve? - Do you use specific focus strategies, or not? - What pitfalls have you found?

Answers in same order: I use it as a warmup/for doing rapid alterations between broad/narrow attention. I'll often pick a song with a strong percussive bass/drum line that occasionally disappears. While it's there, focus on the percussion. When it's gone, open up to everything.

Yes the spatiality aspect - broad/narrow, inclusive/exclusive, etc - seems like a key strength in using music, and pretty accessible to the beginner, eg: brother immediately grokked what I meant when I said something like, 'open to the experience of silence in which sounds arise'

Musicianship combines the flow-like ability to stay in focus with the aesthetics of meditation, IMO. A footballer or w/e can also be "in the zone"... ... but musicians share something of the meditator's relationship with silence, which is a more subtle thing.