Healing Tones & Audio Therapy: An Interview with Michael Joly - Part 1

"In tone therapy, we've created a space which is both safe and intriguing so we can solve some of the discomfort problem with mindfulness meditation and we can also solve some of the boredom aspects of it." - Michael Joly   This episode’s guest is the founder of solu®, maker of n.o.w. Tone Therapy™, a sound meditation device. Before solu®, he designed a range of professional and consumer audio products for motion picture sound, home theater, and recording studio use. He has a background as a musician, an on-air announcer and radio business development executive, and he's also been immersed in the study of metaphysics, focusing on the intersection of sound, listening, and consciousness. His name is Michael Joly and you can find the n.o.w. Tone Therapy™ System at nowbysolu.com. There’s a lot to unpack here, but Michael’s enthusiasm for audio and its proper use is something I really think you’re going to enjoy hearing. If you’re one of those people who are extremely sensitive to sound, I think this episode will validate and soothe you. I know Michael understands your pain!   Sounds in the Fog Michael tells us about his first memorable experience with sound at the age of five when he heard the sound of distant foghorns on a misty morning in New Hampshire. That early memory not only sparked his interest in such experimental sound projects as Brian Eno's Music for Airports but also paved the way for his own work with ambient audio and tone therapy. "I realized," Michael explains, "I heard something like what Brian Eno is doing when I was a kid, that is, quasi-random overlapping of simple sounds to make new compositions. And that's what eventually led to tone therapy."   Listening to Nothing We also talk about Michael’s early professional work, a career in cinematic audio technology that introduced him to a surprising new way of considering sound. “I spent a lot of time listening to the noise floor of optical soundtracks and the noise floor of magnetic tape, so I got really, really experienced a