Relaxing Music for Difficult Situations, I

The music on this CD is a special kind of relaxation music. It is designed to be relaxing in some ways and stimulating in others. The mood is mostly soft and pensive with a tinge of sadness and quiet longing, interspersed with soaring passages of great drama, passion and exhilaration.

The music is very melodic, containing several themes that repeat in endless variations and combinations, always changing. Every moment of music on this recording is absolutely unique.

This CD differs from a standard relaxation CD in that the music is more active and harmonically complex than usual. This is more interesting and engaging for the mind. A few passages make use of chords that are normally considered dissonant but they are treated here like consonances. They are always played with a gentle and comforting touch, and are voiced in such a way as to bring out their hidden beauty.

In music, beauty is in the ear of the beholder, and we invite you to open your ears to a wider world of musical sounds. Expanding the mind in music is a metaphor for learning to have more choices in life, so we can turn obstacles into opportunities, see the silver lining in every cloud, feel the confidence to stay relaxed yet focused regardless of what is going on in the world around us.

If you are unaccustomed to some of the unusual combinations of notes, we ask you to just stay relaxed and keep listening. Discover their delicate beauty and allow them to resolve in their own time. Life brings us surprises, things we can't control, things we don't completely understand. But with a good foundation built on such things as love, faith, knowledge and creativity, we can handle whatever comes along. Through music, this CD takes you through a process in which the difficulties in your mind are transformed into new learnings and a beautiful new creative energy emerges.

On this recording Stanley Jordan plays solo on a Vigier Arpege guitar. The recording was improvised from beginning to end in one take, then edited down to about 63 minutes. The complex guitar textures were achieved using a technique called the "Touch" or "Tapping" technique. All parts were played live with no overdubs.