Nick Suchecki is a researcher, musician, and educator, having earned degrees from Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory. Currently, Nick is pursuing a PhD in Educational Studies and Graduate Certificate in Expressive Therapies Studies at Lesley University, focusing on the intersection of ecopsychology, music therapy, and mind-body medicine. Additionally, Nick recently completed a mind-body medicine teaching certification at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. As a jazz saxophonist, Nick has performed at the Newport Folk Festival and International Blues Challenge, as well as alongside Martha Reeves, Ronnie Spector, Dave Holland, Funktapuss, and the Cape Symphony. Nick has a passion to combine research and practice from seemingly unrelated fields to create new programs aimed at cultivating physical and psychological wellness for all.
Nick Suchecki is a researcher, musician, and educator, having earned degrees from Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory. Currently, Nick is pursuing a PhD in Educational Studies and Graduate Certificate in Expressive Therapies Studies at Lesley University, focusing on the intersection of ecopsychology, music therapy, and mind-body medicine. Additionally, Nick recently completed a mind-body medicine teaching certification at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. As a jazz saxophonist, Nick has performed at the Newport Folk Festival and International Blues Challenge, as well as alongside Martha Reeves, Ronnie Spector, Dave Holland, Funktapuss, and the Cape Symphony. Nick has a passion to combine research and practice from seemingly unrelated fields to create new programs aimed at cultivating physical and psychological wellness for all.
Intro/Outro Music:
Half Moon Island:
https://halfmoonisland.bandcamp.com/releases
Jeff 0:05
Welcome to Interdisciplinary Investigations podcast. I'm your host Jeffrey Perrin, we're recording from the WSCA podcast lab in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. And our first season of this podcast we're focusing on the subjective and phenomenological experience of listening. The foundation of our investigation focuses on making sense of the world through the sounds and lack of sounds that we encounter in our daily interactions. How do we hear these sounds? And how do we create meaning from them? And how does listening help us understand the world and our place in it? During this inaugural season, we're joined by educators, artists, musicians, scientists, contemplative practitioners, scholars, and activists who have tracked the importance of careful and engaged listening in a world that seems to enable scattered attention, disengagement and displacement. Their insights reveal great lessons in the stories of sound. And today, we are lucky enough to be joined by Nick Suchecki, who is a researcher, musician and educator having earned degrees from Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory. Currently, Nick is pursuing a PhD in Educational Studies and a graduate certificate and expressive therapy studies at Lesley University, focusing on the intersection of ecopsychology, music therapy and mind body medicine. Additionally, Nick recently completed a mind body medicine teaching certificate at the Benson Henry Institute for mind body medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. And as a jazz saxophonist Nick has performed at the Newport Folk Festival, International Blues Challenge, as well as alongside Martha Reeves, Ronnie Spector, Dave Holland, Funkdapuss and the Cape Symphony. Nick has a passion to combine research and practice from seemingly unrelated fields to create new programs aimed at cultivating physical and psychological wellness for all. Nick is also my advisee in the doctoral program. And one of my favorite people who I like to describe as a modern day renaissance man, Nick, thanks so much for joining us today.
Nick 2:18
Well, thanks so much for having me, Jeff. It's a pleasure to be here.
Jeff 2:22
And Nick is joining us in studio here in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. So Nick, tell us a little bit more about your background in particular, we know that you are a jazz trained saxophonist, we know that you're a doctoral student, we know that you're a visiting research assistant at MGH. But how did you become interested in this world of ecopsychology? And mind body medicine from studying music at Berkelee and the New England Conservatory?
Nick 2:51
Well, that's an excellent question. So when I was at Berkelee and New England Conservatory, I was really trying to figure out ways that I could make my practice sessions most effective. You know, you go into a practice room with a keyboard for hours at a time. And it can really be a mental drain, especially with keeping up with coursework and stuff like that. So I really became interested in how I could make my practice sessions as efficient as possible. And listening to various podcasts, I came across someone talking about the study of Roger Ulrich, where he looked at hospital patients. And half of them when they were recovering from gall bladder surgery, half of them looked out upon vegetation and half of them look at a concrete wall. And the half that looked at the vegetation recovered faster, they had to take less painkillers. And they had less negative comments from nurses. So I figured if that can help you recover from surgery, what are the other benefits, especially with practicing what's the effect of practicing outside or even just having a plant in your practice area, or a picture of a landscape or a forest or a nice lake? So that really led me down this rabbit hole of ecopsychology which has been amazing and mind blowing so far.
Jeff 4:38
So Nick, one of your main research areas is the therapeutic potential of the Lydian mode. Now, when you were speaking about ecopsychology, that's a word I know. Well, I'm quite familiar with once you start talking about the Lydian mode, in particular George Russell's Lydian chromatic concept. Maybe you could explain that to us what is George Russell's Lydian chromatic concept? Why was it so powerful for you and how does that relate to the therapeutic potential of this particular mode?
Nick 5:10
So, the Lydian chromatic concept is really a it's a radical expansion of the harmonic harmonic language that we use for improvisation composition, interpretation and analysis in music, and it really abandons the major minor Western scale system and focuses on Lydian instead. And George Russell focused on Lydian because he argued due to the naturally occurring overtone series and equal temperament, Lydian was more naturally occurring than major or minor. Lydian follows the natural tendencies of the overtone series, whereas major is achieved by manipulation of the overtone series. And we know from ecopsychology that there's sort of this correlation that the more naturally occurring something is the more health benefits we have. So when we think about the Biophilia hypothesis, which is something you taught me about this, it's this intrinsic urge to be connected to nature, natural things and other living beings. Which is why if you have a desert on your left, and a rainforest on your right, you're going to probably go to the rainforest. And the reason for that is because it's intrinsic, its biological, because it drives you towards survival.
Jeff 6:52
Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about this idea of how the Lydian in particular relates to ecopsychology. And I think, as we've talked a lot about this, I think you're probably the only one globally who's really thinking about how these two concepts actually relate to one another, so tell us a little bit more about the connection between these two.
Nick 7:16
Yeah, so we've seen through the research that across all five senses, there are benefits for naturally occurring stimuli. So if we just look at a couple of studies, researchers from Denmark and Sweden, they exposed some participants to a stress test. And they were given an experience in a virtual reality forest, and then the virtual reality forest with sound. And those who had the virtual reality forest with sound. They recovered faster, and from the stressful experience. And we could see that due to their cardiovascular data, and their cortisol levels and their saliva, their stress hormone. So we can see that, basically, you have the virtual reality forest with just vision, and then the virtual reality forest with vision and sound in those who's had the virtual reality, reality forest with vision and sound recovered faster. So it's a more natural experience. And then again, if we look at another study, this is also from Sweden. So 40 participants were given a stressful math task, math test, and then they were exposed to various conditions, including nature sounds and environmental noise such as traffic. Those who listen to the nature noise recovered faster than those who listened to the traffic noise.
Jeff 9:08
And are there any connections here between ecopsychology and and music theory? Have you started to look into that at all?
Nick 9:17
So this is really where George Russell's concept, where I try and relate George Russell's concept to ecopsychology. So every time there's a sound, there is the natural overtone series, whether we're listening to a car go by or someone singing or speaking, or dropping a plate on the floor and it crashes. There's sounds and those sounds are different because of variations in the overtone series, and they occur in a natural order. So the first interval in the overtone series is an an ocatave and the octave is the same note, so that doesn't really have a tendency to go anywhere. But the perfect fifth is the second interval that occurs in the naturally occurring overtone series. And that gives it the most influence over other intervals. So if you take six perfect fifths together, and you stack the perfect fifths, you get a Lydian Scale once it's condensed into an octave, and that's going by the laws of nature. Major on the other hand, is formed by disrupting that cycle.
Jeff 10:45
So, music has been around for as long as humans have been around and is part of every culture in the world. So it has as Lydian been used in other cultures as well.
Nick 10:58
So, Lydian has been used in many other cultures and specifically, the way that Lydian is formed by this stacking of perfect fifths. If we look at the major pentatonic scale, which is one of the most widely used scales in all of history, it's formed by the same Perfect Fifth stacking of perfect fifths. And then, there were prior to 300 BC there it was common practice to acquire various notes of a scale by this chain of successive fifths, and slabs of stone several 100 years older than the Greek Pythagorean school, have been found in China to into a similar system, and that was around 525 BC. And then there's this quote, which I think is really powerful from this book called Sonic design. And it says the European tonal system has been regarded by its theorist from Remo to Hindemith as a natural order, certain of them proclaim the 18th and 19th centuries as the common practice period, and the astonishing conception when one compares two centuries of common ideals with the preceding 1000 years of the European modal system, not to mention the several millennia of the Indian raga systems, since it ignore these as well as the music of other cultures and cannot apply to the 20th century music of the entire world, how common can it be? So basically, we've been using the major and minor scales for the past three, four or 500 years, but the Lydian scales, the Lydian scale and other scales derived from how the Lydian Scale is formed by that chain of stacking perfect fifths has been around for millennia.
Jeff 12:59
So what what led to that what led to that change 300 400 years ago that that shifted us away from that into the major minors.
Nick 13:08
So, with the church gaining prevalence, the Lydian has the tri tone interval. And the tritone interval was regarded as the devil's interval. And that is very prominent in Lydian. So the tritone is there as a result of stacking these perfect fifths. So, the major scale does not have the tritone as prominent even though it's still in the major scale. But the major scale is formed by altering that chain of fifths and thus the natural overtone series tendencies.
Jeff 13:55
So in addition to being this fascinating, improvisational and compositional tool, what other applications or functions do you think that the Lydian could have? I mean, seems like we haven't really even scratched the surface of how some of these concepts that are incorporated into the Lydian could really have a huge impact.
Nick 14:19
Yeah, so the Lydian Scale, George Russell argued that it communicated feelings of peace and calm and resolution because it doesn't have the same order as the major scale whereas the major scale creates tension and release and it's always goal oriented and moving towards the future. But if someone has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or generalized anxiety disorder, or some other kind of anxiety disorder, it might be powerful to listen to Lydian because it communicates these sensations of peace and resolution. Whereas major creates tension and resolution. And if you are listening to something that alternates between tension and resolution, that might create more tension as opposed to Lydian. And also, I think it could be an amazing mindfulness tool, because with mindfulness, we want to be in the present moment. So Lydian is focused on the present, because it's already resolved major, as we've said before, is striving for resolution. It's alternating between tension and release. It's goal oriented. So this might be a powerful tool for to play in the background of yoga classes, or as ambient music in a doctor's waiting room, or therapists office or even put on a track in rush hour traffic.
Jeff 16:09
So maybe the reason why everyone's yelling at me in rush hour traffic, is there listening to music that incorporates the major scale and not the Lydian is that? Is that what you're telling me?
Nick 16:20
That could be possible, or if they listen to the Lydian, it might put them more in the present.
Jeff 16:26
Or it could be my driving ability.
NIck 16:28
I think one of the most amazing examples is in the Bebop era with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, they would typically end songs on a major seven sharp 11 chord, which is a Lydian scale in chord format. They didn't end it on a major 7/11, which would be a major scale and chord format. And they ended it on a major seven sharp 11 because it was more final sounding, it signaled the end of the tune, because it didn't need to resolve. If you play a major 7/11 at the end of a tune it needs to resolve and thus, it's not the most final way to end a tune, they're still trying to move forward. Whereas the major seven sharp 11 is more final sounding.
Jeff 17:29
Nick, as you know, and as we've talked about, many times, I just I find these ideas and your ideas around the Lydian mode and the applications of this to be fascinating and the connections to ecopsychology as well. And I'm so just excited and curious to see how this is going to play out in your world in your career, and any ideas of what's next for you after the doctoral program what some of your goals are in applying some of these ideas to your work?
Nick 17:57
Well, I definitely have a while to go before I'm done with the doctoral program. But in particular, as you mentioned, when you introduce me, I love developing these programs that relate seemingly unrelated fields. So developing music based stress reduction courses and workshops, creating more mindful music when I play I like to rather than try and play a million notes a minute, I try and make each note count and ask myself, how much power can I or how much emotion can I fit into one single note. Or maybe even have concerts that are specifically geared towards stress reduction. So I imagine perhaps having a concert where people walk into an auditorium, and perhaps there's a piece that's composed Lydian, and it is designed to keep the audience in that present moment while they're in the auditorium. And maybe I could play an example of that now. So maybe I'll play a brief excerpt of major based improvisation and then a Lydian based improvisation and hopefully that can communicate what Lydian tends to communicate, which is presence and stillness and calm rather than major which is tension and release and moving forward.
Jeff 19:38
That would be great. We'd love to hear that. Now we'll hear a major improvisational Now a Lydian improvisational. Wow, thanks so much for that, Nick, you can definitely tell the difference even to an untrained ear such as mine and I imagine others can hear the differences as well. It's great having you here in the studio. Thanks so much for sharing your time for crossing state lines coming up here in New Hampshire to join us. Anything you wanted to add before you? Head off?
Nick 21:37
You know, I think I just want to say that it's the possibilities are so untapped. And just this correlation with the more natural something is, the greater the health benefits. We've seen that across so much literature and the five senses. And I think it's really something that could offer a lot of healing potential, especially in this time.
Jeff 22:10
Absolutely, so important to be finding any healing tools at our disposal in this particular time, for sure. Nick, thanks so much for joining us safe travels back to Boston. And I look forward to hearing from you again.
Nick 22:23
Thanks for having me.
Jeff 22:25
Thank you for listening to the interdisciplinary investigations podcast hosted by me Jeff Perrin, thank you to half moon island for providing our intro and outro music. Please rate review and check out all of our episodes wherever you stream your podcast. Thanks so much for listening
Transcribed by https://otter.ai