Episode 70: Elevating Your Spirituality Through Sacred Music With Barry Goldstein
We each have a moment of power that we can step into to make the decision to transform our lives. Sometimes that opportunity presents itself over and over again. Other times, a moment is fleeting and never presents itself again. How do we choose to take action? Welcome to the Limitless One Podcast, I am your host, Anand J Sukhadia. Our guest today stepped into a moment of uncertainty, and came out with a transformation more powerful than anything he could have dreamed of.
Barry Goldstein has composed and produced for Television, Film, Major record labels and Top Ten Recording artists. Barry’s musical experience spans many styles and genres, from Co-Producing the Grammy Award-winning track ” 69 Freedom special with Les Paul for Best Rock Instrumental in 2005, to providing ambient music for Shirley Maclaine.
In addition, as an artist, Barry reached the Billboard top ten albums on the New Age Charts with New York Times Best Selling Author Neale Donald Walsch. Barry ‘s CD “Ignite the Heart” recently won the Coalition Visionary of Resources Award for best World Fusion album of 2015!
I came across Barry’s sacred music through my Dr Joe Dispenza meditation practices, as his music creates the vibration for reaching altered states of consciousness.
---
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Elevating Your Spirituality Through Sacred Music With Barry Goldstein
We each have a moment of power that we can step into to make the decision to transform our lives. Sometimes that opportunity presents itself over and over again, while other times, that moment is fleeting and never presents itself again. How then do we choose to take action? Our guest stepped into a moment of uncertainty and came out with a transformational experience more powerful than anything he could have dreamed of. Barry Goldstein has composed and produced for television, film, major record labels, and top ten recording artists. His musical experiences span many styles and genres, from co-producing the Grammy Award-winning track 69 Freedom Special with Les Paul for Best Rock Instrumental in 2005 to providing ambient music for Shirley McClain.
In addition, as an artist, he reached the Billboard Top 10 albums on the New Age Charts with New York Times bestselling author Neale Donald Walsch. Barry's CD Ignited the Heart won the Coalition Dictionary of Resources Award for Best World Fusion Album of 2015. I came across his sacred music through my work in the Dr. Joe Dispenza meditation practices as his music creates the vibrational setting for reaching altered states of consciousness.
--
Barry Goldstein, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much, Anand. It is great to be here with you. I’m excited to talk to you.
I'm wowed because I got back from Egypt a couple of months ago by now, and since then, the synchronicities that have been happening in my life have been unbelievable. I started working on my Mind movie, which is a video to tap into the feeling of my life, where I want to lead it to, and what I want to create.
Your music, I got exposed to it through Dr. Joe Dispenza through a lot of meditations. One of the titles of your music is Four Pathways to Your Destiny, which is in my Mind movie. The soundtrack of my life is on that. I interviewed somebody else the same week I met you at a concert back in March 2023. The synchronization is happening. If I'm thinking about something, it is automatically coming into my field of reference, which is such a blessing. I know I’m on the right path.
The connection doesn't take a lot of time for things to happen when we feel that connection and we are open to it.
Nowadays, our energies and consciousness are rising. It is happening immediately a lot of times. Whereas before, I would have to go through the 3D realm to put all the energy, movement, and action to take a little bit of time to get to where I want to go. Now, it is happening fast. I'm grateful for this moment in my life and also to have you on the show. I love your music and what it stands for. I wanted to learn a little bit about how you got into developing this type of conscious music.
It has been in the making for a long time, and it constantly is evolving. I don't think there are any experiences that we have that we are not able to utilize somewhere in our path. I have gone through many musical lifetimes in this one lifetime. Initially, I wasn't doing this type of music. I was much more involved in pop, hip-hop, and club music.
I developed my expertise in New York City as a music producer. It was seated many years before that as a child. There was a piano in my house. My mom, at an early age, got me behind the piano. I remember her playing notes on the piano and singing on top of them to Harry Belafonte's Yellow Bird. I was fascinated not with the notes and her matching the notes with her singing them, which I now know to be resonance when we have a frequency, and it is amplifying another frequency. That is what resonance is.
I was also fascinated with the way that the notes hung in the air after she played and the way they would sustain. There was something going on with the space in between the notes. It was interesting that that later became a unique part of my style and the music I'm doing now. That fascination with music, but also sound in general, was something that was going on in me. It wasn't happening to me, but the music was happening in me. It was amplified by what was going on in the space. That was my initial fascination.
If you look behind you in that Cherry Sunburst Gibson Les Paul, as my path started to unfold, my dad bought me a Gibson Les Paul, and that is a great story. When he bought it for me, we couldn't afford the guitar. He took me aside. He made me promise to him that I was going to stick with music. As an excited fourteen-year-old kid, I made that promise. At that time, I didn't understand what it meant and what we had put in motion vibrationally with that promise.
As I was coming up as a producer, and there were struggles to make ends meet initially, I would look at that guitar and say, “That could be two months' worth of rent living in New York City.” I remembered that promise I made my dad, and I would always see the name, Les Paul. That became symbolic of my dad's investment in me. I would look at that name, see it, connect to that name, and talk about putting something out into the field.
My dad bought me that guitar when I was fourteen. Many years later, I ended up working with Les Paul, the guy whose name was on the guitar by a string of beautiful synchronicities and intention. I believe that promised that was seated. I ended up co-producing a Grammy award-winning track with Les Paul. You never know how things are going to manifest and ripple out from the rites of passage we experienced. That promise was a rite of passage that occurred between me and my father. That is a brief history of how all this was seeded. We could talk more about how that led to the type of music I'm doing, but those were the seeds created a long time ago.
You planted this seed, but you also had the North Star in your life. The whole time, you wanted to honor your father and the promise that you made to him. Subconsciously, everything you were doing led you down a certain path that brought you to unfold all these other levels of your life story. Did you always know that this is the direction you wanted to go into, like, “This is going to be my career?” Did you go into any other career lines or anything like that? Did you go straight into music, and you knew, “I'm going to do this for the rest of my life?”
There was an inner knowing that I was going to do it. The same father who bought me that guitar was also brought up in a depression. He had his limited belief systems geared around music. Predominantly, music is a great hobby, but what are you going to do for a living? In my brain, there had to be a B plan to fall back on. I didn't go to school for music. I went to school for business, which has served me well, especially having that side, and being in the music business was a blessing to have.
Initially, I was always looking for something to fall back on. It wasn't until I was about 28 years old that I realized my dad was not on the cover of Entrepreneur Today. It was time to take off the training wheels, ditch the B plan, and make music my A and B plans. That is what I did, and I did work around releasing those ancestral patterns that we limit ourselves with.
In that time period up until 28, I was doing everything I possibly could to manifest doing this full-time. At that time, that was a goal. I was like, “If I could work doing music full-time, that would be amazing.” I was working as Corporate Loss Prevention Manager. I worked for Barnard University as Assistant Director of Loss Prevention. I worked for Sam Ash Music. I was working 2 or 3 jobs at a time. I was working from 12:00 to 8:00. I was getting off and waiting tables, whatever needed to be done. I then started my recording studio.
There were times when I was getting four hours of sleep a night, getting off and working security waiting tables, and starting to work with clients in my own recording studio, which was out of my apartment in Astoria, Queens. It was whatever needed to be done until I became a full-time producer. That not became a job. I don't know if you have experienced that or if people reading have had that experience where you have this intention, and it manifests. I call it through MUSH and PUSH. MUSH is Move Until Something Happens and PUSH is Pray Until Something Happens. It is a combination of the two where we're working with our own signature vibrationally whatever it is here we do, but we are also connecting to asking for guidance within that.
What I manifested wasn't what I thought. Suddenly, music became a job. It became a lot of timelines and deadlines as I became a professional record producer. I was honing those skills. It took 100 hours to create a four-minute song, timelines, and deadlines. That is where this whole path opened up for me. Where it started was I got stressed. I got burnt out. I had a lot of anxiety about it. I was having challenges sleeping.
When working with your signature vibration and asking for guidance within that, you can manifest anything you want.
A few years into that, I knew that I needed to reconnect with that fourteen-year-old kid who was sitting on the edge of his bed with a guitar and writing songs. What happened to that love and that joy? I decided that I needed to switch things up. I asked myself the question, “What would happen if I moved out of directing music stringently, those detailed songs that were taking 100 hours to produce? What would happen if I let the music flow through me?” Instead of composing, I was decomposing the music.
I had done some research and found that our heart had a relaxed state between 60 to 70 beats per minute. I knew that I wanted to move my heart to a more relaxed state. I started taking these journeys and setting my metronome for 60 beats per minute. I would let the music come through me and not steer it, not compose it, and not edit it in any way. I realized I was moving into meditative states doing that.
I’m moving out of those stress-induced states and that anxiety-induced state and moving into a more coherent state. I didn't know what coherence was at that time, but that is what it was. My heart was in training to that rhythm of 60 beats per minute. I was moving into a parasympathetic state where my body was able to relax and detox. I didn't know any of this at the time. I was experiencing it.
I started sharing those compositions because they were helpful for me with friends of mine, and I got great results. People were telling me they were using them for insomnia, going to the dentist's office, birthing children into the world, and for parents with dementia. That created this curiosity of, “Why was this happening?” Outside of being successful for myself, I wanted to understand the signs behind what was going on. That led to a lot more research and compositions in this genre of music, which also led to me writing a book.
You changed your frequency, and this whole level of consciousness opened up for you. Did you consider yourself a meditative type of guy? Were you into any spiritual thinking or research before you started this? Did it start coming to you in a way that can't be expressed in your words but through the music?
Around that same time, I had what I call a spiritual awakening. I'm sure you are from the Tri-State area. You probably have been on the Metro North before in terms of coming from Upstate New York.
I grew up in Staten Island. Staten Island Ferry was my thing.
I was hanging out with other friends for the weekend in Upstate New York and coming into Grand Central from there. I was taking a nap. When I woke up, I was looking at the Mid-Hudson. I remember that the sun was beaming off the Mid-Hudson. It felt like a shot right through me. There was this knowing that I was part of everything, and everything was part of me.
I was raised to think that I was agnostic because my father thought he was agnostic. Those are things that are passed down to us. I realized at that moment that I was not agnostic. I felt it in every cell of my body. That opened up this inquiry for me that led to me taking these musical journeys and reading every book that I possibly could get my hands on that was geared toward spirituality. I wasn't brought up in a spiritual or religious context, but I always felt a calling and a connection to something beyond myself. Even from that young age, I didn't put a name to it, but I would always feel it when I was playing music. I felt something going on in terms of being connected to something else.
When I started to take those hour-long journeys and move to those meditative states, I knew there was something else going on that I wasn't composing, but I was also being composed at the same time. That experience opened up me to questioning things and wanting to tap back into it. I'm sure this has happened to you when you are in a meditative state, and you have this experience. You feel connected, and something is going on here where you feel like you are raising your vibration to some level. You are not just experiencing it, but you are already wanting that to occur again. You were like, “How do I repeat that event?” That becomes part of the search. The excitement of it is you want to be able to come back to it.
Sacred Music: When you enter a meditative state, you feel connected. You feel like you are raising your vibration. You are not just experiencing it, but you are already wanting it to occur again.
Whenever I tap back into that energy of composing music, especially after the awakening, I feel that connection. I knew that a way for me to dive deeper into the connection was through the creative process. The way that I meditate is through the creative process. When I started taking those journeys, even that first one, I didn't have a lot of expectations going on. It came through me. Music has the ability to create autobiographical moments for us. That was an autobiographical moment in my life that I was instantly able to reconnect at any time to that field. That has been my creative process ever since then.
It is that feeling of being truly alive. There is a different entryway. For you, you learned that music was your entryway from a young age. You always wanted to search to tap back into it. Sometimes when it was a little bit off, you re-centered and found different technologies or ways in which you can do it, in your case, changing the tuning of 60 beats per minute.
Some people go through art, dance, meditation, or sports. I was always searching for what my entryway was. I always knew there was something more to this world than this reality. God bless our parents. They did the best they could. They grew up in a time that was different than the ability for us to choose what we wanted to do. Back then, they had to do whatever they needed to do. They passed on their traits, whatever fears or epigenetics they took on from their parents.
There has been a lot of healing for me, going through, understanding, and accepting my parents. They did the best they could. I love them so much for trying hard as they did, but it is up to me to change my mindset. A lot of times, my mom was in fear. She was like, “You shouldn't do this because it is not safe.” You adapt to that, but there is another moment or feeling where you feel like, “I need to step out of this. I know that I'm a limitless being, but I feel like I'm stuck in a bubble here.” I know you went through that. What does living a limitless life mean to you after you come to that realization that it's possible?
A lot of the limitless part of what I do is geared toward creation. For me, living a limitless life means constantly creating. When we are in that state of creation, we are connecting to the creator. Look around you, and take a walk in nature. Look at a flower and colors. Listen to the ocean, the music of nature, and the birds. When you think about that limitless mind that created all of that, that is the definition of limitlessness. It is that creative energy. When you can create something from nothing, and you can do that on a daily basis, you are constantly creating to not having limits because you are birthing something into the world.
There is a misconception that creativity is predominantly for artists and musicians for that type of creation. People say, “I'm not creative. I don't have a lot of creativity.” Most of the time, that is not true. Studies had shown that when they tested and followed children from the age of five years old all the way to adulthood, they found that at five years old, 5% of them were measured to be creative geniuses as they learned more and went through the educational process. At ten years old, it was half that. At fifteen years old, it was 30%, and in adulthood was 2%.
Most of us have this creative energy. It is not necessarily from music and arts. It could be creative thinking, thinking out of the box, or creating a moment in somebody else's life. You have that awareness that you are constantly creating. Everything becomes an opportunity to create, smiling for a waitress who is having a bad day or being there and listening to a friend and empathizing with them. That is all creating. That is creating moments that could shift other people's lives.
For me, that unlimitedness comes with the awareness we are constantly creating and birthing something from nothing. Tapping into the energy and walking with the divine or walking with God in our day opens up that space for unlimitedness to occur every single day. That is where the fun begins. Those synchronicities occur much more frequently when you are in the state of creation because that is the vibration of synchronicities. You are constantly creating. That is how personally I tap into that unlimitedness on a daily basis. It is to create something every day.
It is not limited to certain fields of study. What is beautiful is you can create because we have this divine spark, and we walk with it every day. Anything that begins in my mind and manifests into reality is considered a miracle to me, but we don't give ourselves credit for it. My story in the past, because of a couple of bad experiences in music or mathematics, I always said, “I'm not good at math and music.” I repeated that in my head. I always pushed it away as much as possible.
I was forced to take piano. I wasn't crazy about it. The teacher I had was always on me about like, “If you don't practice, you are never going to be good.” We were at a recital one time. I was supposed to play one of these songs, which is a little bit more advanced for someone who is a year into it. I was nervous. I played Mary Had a Little Lamb. She reamed me out afterward. She said, “You embarrassed me. I can't believe you played that song.” I was traumatized at that moment. In reality, people in their childhood have some negative experiences with creativity, and it shuts them off.
It is important for us to be able to have so many outlets to do the creative work that we do. It is the same thing with mathematics. I was never good at it. I thought I wasn't. Now music, art, and dance are coming into my life. I'm looking to embrace it because when I start studying these things, it opens my perspective and mind to other things. That part of being limitless is like, why look at any particular field of study or art and judge and say, “I'm not good at this,” rather than saying, “This is all part of the divine construct and embrace it rather than push it away.”
Many of the great inventors and minds in our world and lifetimes have utilized music as a gateway to higher states of consciousness. Even Einstein, in his wife and his children's memoirs, talked about him playing piano and violin. He was a musician. I don't know if you know that. When he would get blocked, he would either pick up the violin or the piano. They would hear him from the other room say, “I got it.”
Moving out of the thinking mind into a different part of your mind can open up and move you through blocks. It creates breakthroughs and transformation. It enhances and amplifies creativity as well. When we start allowing music to become the bridge of science and spirituality, that is when we can amplify whatever our mission is in terms of what we feel that we are here to do.
When you start allowing music to become the bridge of science and spirituality, you can amplify whatever your mission is in terms of what you feel you are here to do.
For me, that became a big threshold. I was like, “Yes, I understand that there is this connection. I was able to access it through music.” I also was blessed to have received a song in a dream state. It was a song called Through the Eyes of God. In this dream, I was shown the aspects of oneness from the point of view of being a single blade of grass and experiencing everything else. At the same time that I was this blade of grass, I was the mist within the rain and the sands upon the shore.
When I woke up, I had this song in my head that was part of the dream. At the time, recorders were not as accessible as they are now. I remember calling myself up and leaving a message on my answering machine with the melody of the song and writing down all the lyrics that came through. There were a lot of verses that came through for the song. It felt like I had heard that song before. I realized at that moment that song was a gift that was given to me, not as a song, but I can understand what oneness was about.
There is nothing we do that doesn't affect something else. That is a blade of grass affected by the wind and rain. The sun is how it is nurtured. It affects everything else at the same time. When I woke up with that knowing, there was another part of it that was like, “Creator and creativity came into this dream and gifted me.” What would happen if, instead of waiting for that to happen to me again, I began to invite that creator into my process? It was just not knowing there was a connection but inviting it in. What would happen if I invited God to create with me in every creation? That became part of the creative process.
It is rare I have experienced creative blocks since then because if I have that state of connection, I'm creating the unlimited. I know that if I'm experiencing a creative block, it is because I have closed off that connection in some way. It is a constant reminder that if I'm having a creative block to reconnect in some other way. You will never experience that creative block because you are collaborating with an unlimited source.
You talk a lot about coherence. I know you wrote a book about the mind and the heart. Are you talking about that in your creativity? If there are any blocks many people find, we are thinking through the mind rather than the full spectrum of bridging those two elements and energy centers. Can you talk a little bit about why it is important for the two to merge themselves to open up the creative limitless and the abilities we have?
That is a multi-part question. Most people get into the creative block because they move into a space of editing before their flow state is complete. If I move into a flow state, and I'm bringing in music, what I like to do is create as many parts as I possibly can to it. I will go through an initial pass where I'm composing something. I create multi-layers of things where I'm creating the arrangement around that. I'm not editing it. I'm letting as many parts that want to come through. I can move into a session after where I'm editing it, but I let it all flow through first.
For people reading who have creative blocks, if you are starting your editing process before that flow state is complete, you stop that divine energy from coming in prematurely. You can always edit. The thinking mind wants to go back and say, “I made a mistake. That is not the way I want it.” You can appease the mind by saying, “It is all good. We are going to come back and have a separate session for editing afterward.” Whether you are creating a business plan or a playlist for date night, allow it to move into a full-flow state. You usually can tell when that is done, the energy dissipates, and the ideas reach a funnel point where they are coming less regularly. You know that the flow state is complete.
We are talking about where science and spirituality bridge. There are things we can do with our physical body as well. We started off discussing targeting my heart at 60 beats per minute was what I have later known to be entrainment. Entrainment is when an internal rhythm can synchronize with an external rhythm. In this case, our internal rhythm is our heartbeat. The external rhythm is the metronome or the music.
We know through studies that the Institute of HeartMath has done that when we move to higher states or emotions such as gratitude, kindness, and compassion, our heart beats in smoother and more orderly rhythms. They define that as coherence. If you look at that as our heart being the conductor of the rhythm in our body, what is going on in the rest of our physical body?
If you view our body as an orchestra, and each of the different systems is a part of the orchestra, like our digestive system, endocrine system, and lymphatic system, think about what it would sound like if each one of those played music, whatever it wanted, whatever tempo in whatever key and they all played simultaneously. What you would hear would be dissonant or disharmonious, but what would happen if there was a set tempo and a set key?
Look at your body as an orchestra. If they play their own sounds at the same time, the music would be disharmonious. You have to set a tempo to make it better.
What the heart is doing is setting the tempo. When we move into those smooth rhythms, it sends messages out to the rest of our body. When they synchronize, we can achieve more optimal health or well-being because they are in that state of synchrony and harmony. There is a designated rhythm that's happening in there.
Music is a bridge between that. It allows our hearts to entrain to that set rhythm. When we are synchronizing to that 60 beats per minute and our heart is producing those smooth rhythms, it is not just an emotional, mental, or spiritual thing. Our physical body is experiencing more optimal heart rate variability, which is a prime marker for heart health and overall health. When we increase our heart rate variability, we increase our ability to deal with stresses, resiliency, and ability to come back into a more conducive state for healing.
Sacred Music: When you increase your heart rate variability, you increase your ability to deal with stresses, resiliency, and ability to come back into a more conducive state for healing.
Music can be the bridge into that state where we are moving into what is called a parasympathetic state. That is the rest and digest state. That is the place where we are able to detox and boost our immune system. It can all happen in a short period of time with the right music and musical recipe. The research shows that when our heart is moving into those coherent states, there is communication that is going on with the brain.
When moving into heart coherence, our brain starts to produce more alpha brainwaves, which are conducive to that creative state or conducive to moving into a calmer state of inner peace where we get these amazing ideas. We are able to rest the brain from thinking and revitalize ourselves. Music is what I call acousticeutical. We have pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals. Acousticeutical can put us into that state where music is medicine.
It is the ancient cultures. They all knew this. If you look at the Native Americans, the shamanic drumming had similar beats to the heart. It is getting us into coherence with that music, and it opens up static states. You couple it with dance, music, and chanting. The Ancient Indians sang mantras. These all have harmonies that resonate through the body into each one of our cells to allow us to get into that heart-brain state.
When your heart and mind are connected through the vagus nerve, and you are able to get it into that coherent state, all types of possibilities open up. We go into that love frequency. A lot of people talk about music with 432 hertz gets us into a certain feeling versus what a lot of the music now is at 440. Do you find that as you are measuring certain hertz of the music you are playing? Do you set the instruments to those frequencies?
I have played around with a lot of different tunings because that inspires me to create. It is a bit oversimplified when we start talking about universal tunings that are better or worse than this because it is not just the tuning. Part of the recipe is it is also about the composition and harmonics used in it. It is about intention and emotion that is put into the music.
We have listened to a lot of music. I'm sure you have heard most of your life at 440 hertz. You have had major and many healing experiences with compositions within that music. To negate it and say, “That is not healing to me,” is not accurate. It is the same thing with there being a specific frequency for this. We are talking about whole tunings.
What people don't realize is when we are talking about tuning to 432 hertz, most people aren't talking about a single note of tuning a 432. They are talking about tuning all of the keys into A432 tuning. Within that, there can be many different combinations of sound. Some can be dissonant, and some can be harmonious. If I played you 100 compositions in 432, you are going to like 50 of them, and not like 50 of them. Does that say, “I don't like 432?” Does that say, “I don't like those compositions?”
It is not just about the frequency. It is about each one of us becoming our own sound healer and understanding what is healing to us. I could say, “Anand, I created this amazing piece of music at 432. You should listen to this for this, that, and that because that was successful for me.” If you think of it more as nourishment, like we nourish ourselves with food, it would be like I'm saying, “Anand, you have to eat broccoli because the studies are showing that broccoli can help us battle cancer.” If you are allergic to broccoli and creating inflammation in your body, it is not going to be helpful for you.
It is the same thing. It is more about, “How can we see if a piece of music resonates with us?” It is more about understanding that when you experience a piece of music that is healing for you, it puts you into an expansive state. What is being expansive? It is like standing on top of a mountain and feeling the unlimited energy coming into my heart. I can feel that expansiveness when I hear that piece of music, or I might get God-bumps or chills.
When I hear a piece of music that doesn't resonate with me, I feel more contracted. I'm covering up. It feels dissonant to me. It doesn't feel great, even if it could be a beautiful piece of music. For me, it feels contracted. If you can bring that into music when you are listening and start understanding that music is not something that happens to you but something that happens in you, you can make an assessment based on how it feels for you physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually when you hear that piece of music. It is not just geared towards one thing or frequency but a combination of how you feel when you listen to it.
Music is not something that happens to you but something that happens in you. Make an assessment based on how it feels for you physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually when you hear it.
It's a long-winded answer to your questions. I believe in different tunings, and they have beneficial aspects to them, but I don't create a piece of music because of that. I create a piece of music because it inspires me as a composer, healing to me as a composer, and expanding to me as a composer. There is a frequency that goes into it. There is intention. I want to make sure that my intention is aligned with the piece of music when I'm walking into the room.
If I'm creating a loving piece of music, and that is my intention, and I had a bad day and was angry about something, I don't want to come into that room and compose. I want to move into a state where I'm connected, and the intention is pure with what I'm going through emotionally in my day. Intention, emotion, and composition are aligned. That is based on many years of composing music.
We are connecting to an unlimited field, but we also develop our own expertise and master something in our lifetimes. We are applying our soul signature to our creations at that same time. I'm collaborating with the divine, but I'm also bringing my unique vibration, skills, and mastery into that composition. You can see it is not always a simple process, but we want to simplify things, and that is the nature of us as humans. We want to find a panacea for this and that and use this for that or this for this. You have to be the keeper of your own gate to see what resonates with you and what doesn't.
Your music has such a unique signature. When I listen to your music, I feel the frequencies, the intention, and the love behind it. Is there a type of formula that you use? When composing new music, do you like, “I don't even think about which instruments I'm going to use?” Do you have a layering process where you were like, “I will start with a piano and go to the guitar?” Is it up to what the feeling and the way at that day in particular?
I compare similarly to an artist. An artist will have a palette of colors in front of them. Sometimes they buy new colors or blend colors. There is something in that that inspires them when they blend it or when they buy a new palette of colors. For me, it is the same thing with sound. I like sculpting sound. I will play with a sound, start with an initial sound and sculpt it. It has more decay on it. The release is longer on it, and it holds longer. It has a beautiful low tone that I hear and says, “That would be beautiful to have a grounding piece of music around that.”
I start from being inspired by a sound usually. I ask it, “What do you want to become?” and go from there. In the process, as an artist is painting, they might blend color. Suddenly, they are affected emotionally by that. They say, “I know what this is becoming now.” It is the same thing with sound. As I'm going along, blending sounds, mixing them, and creating this sound canvas, certain things are affecting me. I might feel my heart opening up in that specific chord or mode I'm playing.
As I started to move into the process of that unfolding, I was like, “Where do I want to open that heart space more and amplify that? Do I want to bring a cello or a violin to tug at the heartstrings a little bit more?” As the painting unfolds more, I start to envision the listener and how the listener would be feeling by receiving this music. It is already geared towards how the manifested would be heard in terms of the process. That brings in another whole thing.
There are different formulas that occur, but it was never like, “I'm going to go through A. I’m done. I went through A. I got to go to B or C.” There are certain ingredients in the recipe that are uninformed that happen in composition, but they might be different emotions, keys, or harmonics. It is like painting or cooking, where you have a recipe. A secret ingredient is always love.
Sacred Music: There are certain uniformed ingredients in the recipe of musical composition. There are different emotions, keys, or harmonics, but a secret ingredient is always love.
I compare it to grandma's meatballs or a dish that was cooked for you in your tradition where you might have that recipe, and it was written down for you to pass through generations. It tastes like grandma's, but there is still something missing because grandma changed it up a little bit every time. Those were the basics, but she was always seeing her family eating that recipe, the love that was going on at the dinner table, and all the things that would occur. There is your basic recipe, but this time she said, “I want to try a little something different. Let me throw a little more spice into it this time.” I hope that was helpful for you in terms of analogy.
From the end user, I feel the love that you pour into the music. I have done a lot of Dr. Joe Dispenza events. I do meditations every single day. I listen to your music daily. There are hundreds of thousands of people doing these meditations all over the world that are tapping into very high consciousness states in their minds. I have even seen some people reach gamma. They pass delta and into gamma. They are like reaching enlightenment. How does that make you feel when your music is a conduit for them to get to these places?
That is the ultimate gift and reason to continue to do what I do. For instance, in composing music for a walking meditation or a piece of music within a walking meditation, I'm always envisioning the people walking already. I see them walking. I have been to events. I have walked events and advanced retreats where Dr. Joe does. I have seen people reach those states. I take those mental snapshots of what that looks like. I have seen videos of it, and I incorporate that into the compositions.
I went to their Cancun retreat in June 2022. I had a profound experience because as I was walking in the walking meditation to my own music and watching people have these amazing experiences and breakthroughs, I got the message like, “Every note matters.” It was profound. All of a sudden, the floodgates opened up. I began to cry in a state of gratitude because when I'm alone here in the studio, and you are going through the process, I feel that energy. That message, “Every note matters,” even if I'm alone in my room, it is important to never think it is a passing note or a passing phrase. It is all-important in the recipe.
That is the ultimate stake for me in those collaborations where I get to collaborate with Dr. Joe in terms of music being a vehicle for magnifying the mission. Dr. Joe understands the importance of marrying the right music with his message and how that amplifies people's experiences. That is why it has been such a beautiful relationship that we have had over the last several years because Dr. Joe does what you and I had talked about. He knows when a piece of music makes him feel expansive and when it doesn't. That is his criteria. He has a knowing, “This is the right piece of music for it,” or not. Sometimes we land on it, and sometimes we don't.
The most important moment in the universe is the present moment. When we are in these walks, or we are listening to your music in a sitting-down meditation, we are deeply in the moment. I like what you are saying. You are like, “Every note hits a different frequency in the body or brain.” It is such a magical experience to be in that conscious state, but you are floating on this beautiful musical wave. It is incredible. I went from being the composer to the one being composed. It was like hearing the piece of music for the first time and being able to receive it outside of being the creator of it. It was a beautiful experience to have that.
People ask me all the time, “Are you able to listen to your own music?” The answer is yes. Many times when I listen to it after it is done, like months or years after, I was like, “That is cool. I don't remember composing that part necessarily. I don't have a connection to it where I get burnt out on listening to the music because it is my own.” It is a blessing to be able to do that.
I want to take a step back and hear your story because I know you were producing for other people, and you are successful at it. At some moment in your life, you told us the story at the concert I went to of how you decided, “I want to start composing my own music now.”
When we have a belief system and we bring it through our lives, many times, we listen to it. It can create a contraction in our life or a block where creativity isn't occurring. At a fairly young age, I was told by friends and people I grew up with were like, “You write great music, but maybe you should produce it and not perform it or don't sing it.” I took that with me until I was 44 years old. I told this story at the concert you went to.
I walked into a conference when Wayne Dyer was speaking. Wayne had this quote that he said felt like it was directed at me as it shot right through me. I felt like the rest of the audience had disappeared, and Wayne was talking to me. It was, “Don't die with your music still in you.” At that moment, I knew that I was holding back based on those limited beliefs, but part of why I started doing music was I loved singing, writing songs, and performing. I decided at that moment that I was going to write a full album of songwriter songs. I had a few of them that I started writing throughout the years.
I decided at that moment that there was going to be no other choice but to move into completion, whether 1 person listened to it or 1 million people listened to it. It took me about a year to complete the record. It was dedicated to that moment when I decided that there was no other outcome but completion. I called the song The Moment.
The song, The Moment, is about that moment always being there with us, but we choose to step into it when it manifests. I was waiting for the moment to arrive. I was searching for a sacred sign, but it was right here all the time. The cover of it is me at a bus stop. I'm waiting for this bus to come, but in reality, the bus has come many times in our lives and has passed us by. When we get on that bus and decide that we're going to step into it is when it happens.
A few months after the album was completed and it was out, I received a phone call from someone who was booking events from me. She said, “Would you like to open up for Wayne Dyer in the Budweiser Center in Denver, Colorado?” I got to open up for Wayne. He came out and rubbed the top of my head. He quoted, Through the Eyes of God, which is the song I told you about, in his talk in Denver. It is all about creating inspiration. He inspired me to create this album. I got to inspire 5,000 people who were there and got to inspire him back, where he included some of the teachings that were in my songs as part of his gift to the audience that night.
That is how it happened for me and how I realized that maybe my voice isn't perfect in terms of what I'm hearing or what people heard many years ago when they said that in that moment where I decided to receive their bad advice and produce music as opposed to being the artist for it. After that, I said, “I'm going to share this as another part of who I am as a composer is being that artist and voicing it.” There are many different ways we can voice in music. We can be the artist, composers, or producers. You could be behind the scenes in your business, the face of your business, or the front part of your business.
It is all about honoring the different sides of what music means to me. That was a crucial point for me in terms of what I experienced over the last many years of being in music. There are lots of different areas for it, but the common thread that weaves through it is that it is all spiritual and connected. Something that I had to address over the span of my career, which was a challenge for me, was that mind that wants to label something either spiritual or non-spiritual.
Sacred Music: There are many different ways we can voice in music. But the common thread that weaves through it is all in spirituality and connection.
When I hit that crux, it was like, “I have this type of music.” I realized that I had to tear down the wall, and it wasn't helping me by serving two masters. That was an awareness that I had to bring in that all of it is spiritual. Everything I have learned over many years of working in different genres could be incorporated into a melting pot or a spiritual gumbo, where you can stir around everything.
That is what you hear in a walking meditation or some of the breathing pieces I have done for Dr. Joe. They are eclectic. You can hear Native American chanting, Gregorian chanting, hip-hop beats, and electronica about beautiful ethereal pads and string arrangements all in one piece of music. That is what happens when you tear down walls. You create and say, “This is good. Everything I learned now is part of my recipe. Imagine how you expand your feeling of what you could create.” That goes from voicing it in many different ways. Don't feel limited to one flavor in what you do.
We are only limited by our perception of life. This message has been repeated for me so much. It was like, “You can't separate God from anything. From the worst things happening in the world to the most enlightened states of being, it is all part of the same container.” We are seeing the inverse of the more light you see, the more darkness you are going to see, but it is all part of it all. When you merge the two, that is when you realize that that non-duality and non-judgment of any of it are part of the next step of ascension. Once you made that decision to step into this transformational moment in your life, how did your life change after that?
Everything becomes part of the moment when you bring awareness to that. Every day is a possibility for something new and something creative. That has always been my driving force. Excitement is the ability to create something from nothing on this planet. The universe is something that I created now. It wasn't there before.
Excitement is the ability to create something from nothing on this planet.
When you bring that into your days, it brings in excitement and new excitement as well. If you allow it to, it can redefine you every day. I schedule my day. I set intentions. I'm a driven person, but I allow time in my day to connect to the not knowing parts and allow whatever is creating with me to bring in new opportunities for collaboration and creation. That is what happens.
When you are tuned into that moment, you are constantly diversifying and reinventing. It comes back in, believe it or not, to Les Paul. Les Paul was one of the greatest inventors of all time. Most of the music that you experience now is because of Les Paul. He didn't just invent the solid-body electric guitar. He invented multi-track recording, which gives us the ability to overdub and create different tracks. He created digital reverb, aspects of digital delay, and a lot of the things we use in modern music.
When they asked Les why he created the electric guitar, his answer was, “It wasn't there, and we needed it.” It was profound for me because, as a younger Les, he was told as he was performing, “Les, we can hear your harmonica, but we can't hear the guitar.” They were throwing beers at him. He was in this bar. They had the chicken wire in front of it because if they didn't like performers. Les went home and started to create this electric guitar.
Originally, he was laughed at by Gibson when he brought in his first prototype. They said, “Kid, come back.” He came back several years later with Les Paul that millions and millions of people playing Les Paul because he knew there was a void. It wasn't there, and we needed it. I see that now. It becomes part of my reinvention process of myself every day because we are in this amazing space now. Several years ago, people would laugh at me when I told them I was healing with sound, sound healing, or the ability to use music as medicine. Now it is coming into the mainstream. We are seeing apps like Gong. We're seeing it in 3D and apps like Tripp.
I have been hired to work with neurofeedback companies and create tones that were more musical. I'm getting approached every day and being asked to utilize music in different ways. It is coming full circle because it is coming back into pop music where people are saying, “Can you put this binaural beat into this pop song for me? What would happen if we implemented this Schumann resonance into this song?” People are becoming way curious.
My initial goal was to bring this into mainstream music. Why I ventured into this is now coming around full circle. I started as a pop musician, and I took another path to this type of music. It is not to master it anymore. It is coming back around, and the universe is saying, “How could we get this into more mainstream areas? How can we get this into film and TV? How can we get this to help people in more ways?” That is what happens when you embrace the moment. You reinvent yourself every day.
Imagine if Les succumbed to the criticism and stopped short of hitting the jackpot of the creativity you could have created and shared with the world. Each of us, everybody reading this, was going to be tested at some moment, but it is our higher selves putting this roadblock in front of us because it wants to see us thrive beyond our wildest dreams. Once we start making that decision to overcome that and listen to the voice inside here rather than the outside voices, that is when we are truly sharing our song with the world rather than playing it safe.
It is beautiful you had that experience, we all go through these things, and we are able to overcome this. It is incredible. The juice in life is if we created this video game of our life, why would we want it to be simple? We would want to experience the highs, lows, loss, tragedy, love, heartbreak, and all of it together. I learned that from Robert Edward Grants, who talks about this. It is magical when we look at life as a video game and every single day, looking at it as a blank canvas, “What can I create now? How can I share my song with the world?”
Sometimes it can be simple, and sometimes simple can be powerful. We can have complex games that stretch our minds because they are multi-sensory and open up different gateways. We are going through different passages. Sometimes you can have something simple. You can go back to playing Pong, one of the original video games. I know the inventor, Nolan Bushnell, who created that. What would happen when you played Pong? You go into this trance state of this ball being volleyed back and forth. How powerful that was when it was first created to inspire people to create video games in general and evolve to what we see as more complex now?
We can let go of something simple or complex and allow ourselves to have the experience and not try to overanalyze, “This is simple. How could it be powerful? This is complex. How could it not be powerful?” Many experiences I have that have been powerful have been based upon closing my eyes, going inward to my own heart, and allowing myself to breathe in and out of my heart and feel my own vibration and connection. What could be simpler than that?
One of the most powerful and complex technology is connecting to the heart space. It is still there, but we still have challenges connecting with our hearts, even in the simplest ways because of the many armors and forms of protection we have created in our lives around that. There are many great technologies that can take us to these amazing experiences, but it is important not to lose sight of some of the more ancient teachings that are based on the technology we have been given by God. Even in the Native American and indigenous customs, we hear that saying, “The longest journey you will ever take is from your mind to your heart.” Think about that technology and how that could change your life, and bring that awareness in.
It is the simplicity, but it is not the easiest journey. It is getting back to the basics.
Being easy and simple are two different things. Read a book The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. That has hit such a common chord. That book was out there many years before it made it. For some reason, there was a tipping point where it was discovered by Oprah Winfrey. All of a sudden, this book that was underneath the consciousness for so long became part of the consciousness. The Four Agreements are the ways to live our lives, but they are challenging. To be non-judgmental, think about how many times in a day we go into judgment, either for ourselves or others.
Sacred Music: The Four Agreements.
I read The Four Agreements multiple times a year. I have it on my nightstand. I always revert back to it. Anytime I have any questions or am feeling out of my heart, I open up to it and say, “You violated one of these agreements. That is why there is a struggle.” When you be in your heart, you don't judge and make assumptions. Start with curiosity rather than making assumptions. There are many nuggets of beautiful wisdom in there.
It is beautiful to learn to build all this knowledge base in our heads. Even if we do get to a place where we understand everything, which will never happen, we realize it has been simple all along. You deconstruct all the layers of the onion that you created in this identity that we think who we are. We realize we are not this little meat suit. We are infinite consciousness and potential. We are the extension of God.
It is a beautiful journey. To go through this, talking about music and how it relates to getting into higher states is beautiful because I have pushed it away for so long in my life. I always loved listening to music. It moved me deeply, but I never felt I had the potential or the power to do it. You have inspired me to start playing some music now. I have a guitar that I will pick up. I will start playing some chords and see how it feels. Tell me about some of the projects you are working on now.
We completed a meditation with Dr. Joe. That will be out soon. I'm not going to tell you what it is now, but there are a few meditations in the making. I'm doing a project with Anita Moorjani. That is Beautiful Healing Meditation. I'm launching courses that gear towards how we can navigate our energy. I’m utilizing music, how you can become the DJ of your own life, the power of heart, and bring coherence, the science behind chanting, and how that connects us to deeper communion and communication with the divine.
I'm finding more of that by putting more awareness into how we could utilize music in our days and how we are the programmers of our life, that creating music programs is more necessary now than ever. I'm reaching out to corporate areas. In 2023, I'm doing collaborations with Barbara Annis, who is geared towards gender differences. She is an expert on that with my wife, Dr. Donese Worden. We are bringing that into Corporate America in 2023 with music as medicine.
I am composing more for films and documentaries. I'm in the midst of doing a documentary that is out there. People are out there, and they are doing conscious films. They are looking to bring in vibrational music and music with intention. You are welcome to reach out to me. We can see if it is a match. I'm going back into doing retreats in 2023. I was asked to do a retreat in Israel that is geared toward my teachings. There are lots of fun stuff.
There are many amazing technologies and experiences that we can have. The fact that you are constantly putting so much beauty into the world is incredible. How can we learn more about you if we want to learn about your courses or anything that you have going on?
The best way to reach me is BarryGoldsteinMusic.com. The Sound of Transformation is where my teachings are, where they live, and my courses. A lot of the courses cover some of the things we talked about where science and spirituality meet. That is where the latest research on how chantings are being used to create limbic deactivation, how Kirtan Korea is being used to improve memory, and how heart coherence is being utilized to improve overall health. It incorporates research and experience and a lot of processes I have created to integrate those two things.
For anyone who is seeking the next steps, the great place to go is the Sound of Transformation. You can find me on Spotify and iTunes. I have a YouTube channel. Reach out to me on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to my newsletter at BarryGoldsteinMusic.com. You get three free pieces of music when you do that. That is a great way to become part of my sound tribe.
I have one last question for you before we do. What does God mean to you?
God, to me, means connecting with something beyond myself, connecting with everything and the creator of all things. Ultimately, it is connecting to the creation and the creator. When I'm in that space of creation, I know I'm connecting to God. God, to me, means all creations.
Barry, thank you so much for coming on.
Important Links
Spotify – Barry Goldstein
iTunes – Barry Goldstein
YouTube – Barry Goldstein
Facebook – Barry Goldstein
Instagram – Barry Goldstein
About Barry Goldstein
Barry Goldstein has composed and produced for Television, Film, Major record labels and Top Ten Recording artists. Barry’s musical experience spans many styles and genres from Co-Producing the Grammy Award winning track ” 69 Freedom special with Les Paul for Best Rock Instrumental in 2005, to providing ambient music for Shirley Maclaine.
In addition, as an artist, Barry reached the Billboard top ten albums on the New Age Charts with New York Times Best Selling Author Neale Donald Walsch. Barry ‘s CD “Ignite the Heart” recently won the Coalition Visionary of Resources Award for best World Fusion album of 2015!
I came across Barry’s sacred music through my Dr Joe Dispenza meditation practices, as his music creates the vibration for reaching altered states of consciousness.
