Over the years, I've had the opportunity to interview a fascinating variety of musical artists, but this is the first time I've interviewed an artist who creates music based on scientific studies on brain health. I reviewed two of Yuval Ron's earlier albums, Voyage Through the Chakras (2018) and Four Divine States of Mind (2020), but his The Healing Powers of 40 Hz, Vol 5: Global Piano for Focus & Memory, which was released in late-2024, was the first in his series called The Healing Powers of 40 Hz that I was aware of. I was given the opportunity to interview Yuval Ron in order to help explain the purpose of this music as well as how it was created, and it's been a very informative process! I hope you will enjoy it as much as I have!

KP: Greetings, Yuval! I hope all is well with you and that you are safe from all of the fires in Southern California!

YR: Thank you very much, Kathy! The area where my home is located is safe and didn’t suffer from the horrific fires, but sadly many of my friends and colleagues lost their homes, studios, musical instruments, and businesses, as well as the schools their kids attend… it’s really a horrific situation.

KP: I have several friends who lost everything, too. I just can't imagine the horror and pain so many people are enduring.

On a happier subject and before we really get into this interview, I want to say upfront that I've spent most of my life entrenched in music and I'm very aware of its power to heal, but much of your composing is music for a very specific kind of healing and "brain entrainment." Some of these concepts are new to me, so I'm sure they are new to other readers as well. To get started, please explain your current project, which is a five (so far) volume series called The Healing Powers of 40 Hz. I've watched several of the videos about the series, but I'm sure you can explain the purpose and intention of the music much better than I can.

YR: Yes, this current, multi-volume project is very cutting-edge music for brain health and sound therapy. I am very fortunate to be involved in this fascinating area of research and experimentation into the benefits of sound for overall brain health at its earliest stages.

Findings by MIT scientists suggest that the frequency of 40Hz can improve memory, focus, and concentration by clearing plaque that sits in the memory pathways of the brain. In the standard tuning of modern music (A = 440Hz), the frequency of 40Hz is approximately a quarter-tone lower than ‘Low E1' on the piano or 88-key keyboard.

In current research and treatment, 40Hz sound and light therapy utilize only a single tone and a quick flashing light vibrating at 40Hz in order to feed the brains of the patients receiving this therapy. As you could imagine, this becomes monotonous and tiresome for the patients of this therapy. This led myself and Dr. Richard Gold, Executive Producer of the record label, Metta Mindfulness Music, to create and produce a variety of beautiful music projects utilizing 40Hz sound therapy as a more enjoyable option for patients of this treatment.

So far, we’ve released seven 40Hz sound healing albums, each of which focuses on a different musical genre: World Music, New Age, Jazz, A Cappella Choir, Lo-fi Chill-hop, and Classical Piano. This newest album (Vol.5) that you heard and reviewed, is a combination of World Music and Improvised Piano, for which we came up with the name, "Global Piano." All of these albums were recorded with instruments tuned to 40Hz, layered with additional 40Hz overtone vibrations provided by an ambient synth bass drone, and binaural beats to stimulate brainwave entrainment, allowing for a “Triple-Strength” 40Hz listening experience.

KP: I was fascinated by your explanation in the video that you had taken instrumental sections from other projects and put them together for this album. Then pianist, Ruslan Sirota, had "conversations" from the piano with those instrumental recordings to create something new. All of the tracks were recorded in one take. That seems like magic to me. How does that kind of intuitiveness happen?

YR: Ruslan Sirota, in my humble opinion, is one of the greatest living improvisational jazz pianists in the world. I’m so glad that he was willing to come back and work with me again on this new album after having already collaborated on the third album of this series, Vol.3: Calming Jazz Ballads for Brain Health.

We decided to call the genre of this album Global Piano because it is a combination of World Music soundscapes and improvised piano. For this project, I created an interwoven collage of melodies using previously-recorded performances of World Music instrumentalists from India, Iran, Armenia, and Israel. Then, I created a brand new sonic soundscape with these melodies and invited Ruslan to improvise a musical “dialogue” with the pre-recorded performances of these master musicians. I was just as amazed as you to see that Ruslan was able to seamlessly improvise responses to what he heard in the new soundscapes I created. I was even more amazed that he was able to record each of the nine tracks for the album in a single take! He is such a talented young pianist with an incredible ear and amazing technical abilities. He’s won a Grammy with The Stanley Clark Band, and has recorded with Chick Corea and other legendary Jazz pianists. I invite everybody to listen to his recordings anywhere you can find them.

KP: I'll have to do that! What is the significance of 40Hz in music?

YR: 40Hz (Hz = Hertz, a unit measuring frequency cycles per second) has been shown in recent studies to improve connectivity in the brain by increasing blood flow. This results in cleaner neural pathways associated with memory by reducing the buildup of unwanted plaque.

Studies have also shown that 40Hz promotes healing from brain trauma and injuries . If you would like to dive even deeper into the scientific research we base our music projects on, all articles are available under the ‘Learn’ tab on our record label’s website: www.mettamindfulnessmusic.com

Sound therapy at the frequency of 40Hz has been shown in clinical trials at renowned research institutions such as MIT, Stanford, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins, to improve focus, memory, and concentration. These various research articles indicate that 40Hz vibrations have the ability to clear plaque that sits on the memory pathways of the brain. This plaque, when not claimed by normal bodily systems of a healthy brain, accumulates, blocking regular neural activity on the brain’s memory pathways. As a result of this plaque buildup, various forms of cognitive decline and memory-loss issues can occur, such as Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of Dementia. By incorporating the 40Hz frequency into the album in three different layers, (the left hand of the pianist, the bass synth drone and its overtones which play throughout, and the binaural beats vibrations), the result is a “Triple-Strength” 40Hz sound bath which contributes to the reduction of plaque buildup, improving memory, focus, and concentration.

KP: Can you explain a bit more about what "Triple-Strength 40 Hz" means and how it is created?

YR: There are three layers of 40Hz in the album. The first layer is audible. It’s the bass drone created by a synthesizer that plays along the whole time. You can hear it softly in the low end. The second layer is built into the music. Whenever the pianist plays “Low E1,” this has been tuned exactly to 40Hz. There are other instruments in the music, too, and they are tuned perfectly to E1 = 40Hz as well. The third layer is subliminal and it has to do with a technology called Binaural Beats.

Binaural Beats are subliminal tones that are embedded in the music, but because they are so low on the frequency spectrum, you barely hear them. A few people sense them as pressure in the ears when they listen to the music with headphones. Binaural Beats are created when the left and right ears each hear a slightly different frequency at the same time, resulting in the creation of a third frequency equalling the difference between the two. The Binaural Beats we utilize in this music create a difference of exactly 40Hz, which then results in something called, Brainwave Entrainment. This is when the brainwaves of the listener correct themselves to align with the newly introduced frequency of 40Hz, promoting a brainwave state of Gamma which is experienced in people when they are deep in intense states of focus and concentration.

For these reasons, we highly recommend listening to this music through headphones in order to get the ultimate impact of the Binaural Beats. It’s okay to listen to the music through speakers because you will still be receiving two layers of the 40Hz, but if you want to experience the full triple-strength effect of 40Hz sound therapy provided by the Binaural Beats, you have to listen through headphones.

KP: I know quite a few pianists who are having their pianos tuned down to around 430 rather than the current standard of 440. If a piano is tuned down to 40 Hz, how much of a drop in pitch is that?

YR: In order to yield 40Hz from the note, “E1,” on the keyboard or from any other instrument, we need to tune down to A = 427.15Hz, which is approximately a quarter tone lower than the standard tuning used in modern music of A = 440Hz. A quarter tone is a pitch interval that is one quarter of a whole tone (whole step), a.k.a. one half of a half-step or 50 cents. For example, a quarter tone would be exactly halfway between C and C#. To tune to 40Hz, you would be tuning down approximately halfway between A = 440Hz and the Ab below that. It is not exactly a quarter tone, but very close, the exact tuning is A = 427.15Hz.

KP: Fascinating!

You have a very interesting background and career. Tell us a bit about yourself.

YR: I studied Film Scoring at The Berklee College of Music in Boston, graduating in 1989, and have been working as a composer for Film and TV in Los Angeles since 1994. I have composed scores for the Oscar-winning film, West Bank Story, PBS Nova documentaries such as Breaking the Maya Code, art house films such as Proteus, and for site-specific installations at the Getty Museum, Japan America Center, LAX, and much more.

I have been involved in the world of music therapy since a commission in 1990 from researcher Robert Monroe of The Monroe Institute for the Study of Human Consciousness, to compose ‘Hemi-Sync’ music using Binaural Beats.

My work with the interfaith world music group, Yuval Ron Ensemble, took me to all parts of the world on peace missions using music as a way to bring opposing groups to dialogue and shared experience.

I have composed and produced albums with numerous master musicians including Omar Faruk Tekbilek, Estrella Morente, Deva Premal, and many others.

I have been invited to speak at numerous prestigious universities including Yale, Johns Hopkins, UCLA, Middlebury College, MIT, Berklee College of Music, and the University of Chicago. Also, I’ve given keynote addresses at the Pacific Symposium Conference of Oriental Medicine in San Diego, as well as the Quantum Institute in New Delhi, India.

My book, Divine Attunement: Music as a Path to Wisdom, won the Gold Medal Award for Best Book in the Spirituality Category at the Indie Book Awards in 2015.

I am also the founder and executive director of Inspired Sound Initiative, a charity non-profit organization dedicated to providing free-of-charge educational performing arts programming to underserved communities and at-risk youth worldwide.

KP: That's really amazing!

So far, The Healing Powers of 40Hz is a five-volume set. Tell us about the project and the other volumes.

YR: We began this series of albums after having already created and produced many other sound healing albums based on ancient wisdom traditions such as The Six Healing Sounds of Qi Gong from Ancient East-Asian Medicine and The Doshas from Ayurvedic Medicine Traditions. It wasn’t until my colleague, Dr. Richard Gold, came into contact with Dr. Sanjay Manchanda, an Adjunct Professor at the California Institute of Human Science, that we began learning about the profound research discoveries being made into 40Hz Sound Therapy. Once we learned about this ground-breaking neuroscience, we began creating the series, The Healing Powers of 40Hz, which up to now, has five volumes. The first two albums are composed in the style of World Music, the third in the style of Soothing Jazz Piano and Guitar Ballads, the fourth in the style of Classical Piano, and the fifth and most current, a combination of World Music and Improvised Piano.

In addition to these five volumes, we have created other 40Hz albums that are not part of the series. Heal Me @ 40Hz, which is the world’s first-ever recording of an A Cappella mixed-voice choir to be performed in 40Hz tuning, includes Biblical Hebrew healing mantras. We have also released a 40Hz album in the popular study-music style commonly found on YouTube, Lo-fi Chill-hop, with the album 40Hz Beats To Study To: Lo-fi Chill-hop Tracks For Focus And Concentration.

KP: Do you plan to do more volumes in this series?

YR: Yes, we are always thinking of new projects to utilize the magical healing powers of 40Hz. Next on the agenda, we have a Nature Sound Effects album, a Country Music album, and even an EDM/House Music album. We are always looking ahead to the next new, exciting project that can help bring the healing powers of 40Hz to the world.

KP: I understand you did quite a bit of film music as well as a lot of work in sacred Middle Eastern music. How did that transition over to music for health, meditation and healing?

YR: Interestingly, I worked on a project with the pioneer researcher, Robert Monroe, right when I came out of The Berklee College of Music back in 1990, which had to do with their patented ‘Hemi-Sync’ technology utilizing Binaural Beats.

After that, I continued to pursue my career as a composer for Film and TV for about 15 years. Then, in 1998, I was invited to produce an album for the great Turkish Sufi master musician, Omar Faruk Tekbilek, which opened the door for me to work in the record industry as a record producer and recording artist in the field of world music. This led me to start my own ensemble in 1999, The Yuval Ron Ensemble, recording our debut album in 2002 titled, Under the Olive Tree.

Around 2008, I met a neuroscientist named Mark Robert Waldman who wrote the award-winning book, How God Changes Your Brain, about spiritual practices that impact the brain in a healthy way. We began working together and we wrote a curriculum for a course on sacred sound healing and the brain, which we taught together at the Esalen Institute in California for many years. It was at the Esalen Institute that I came to meet Dr. Richard Gold. From there we started the record company, Metta Mindfulness Music, resulting in the majority of my healing and meditation music albums to this date. Since crossing paths with Dr. Gold, I’ve had the opportunity to connect with even more doctors, scientists, and healers in the fields of brain health, the neuropsychology of sound, Ayurvedic medicine, Chinese medicine, and more.

KP: How many albums has the Metta Mindfulness Music label released, and have you composed the music for all of them?

YR: All together, the record label has released over 60 albums and singles, as well as audio courses for meditation and health. I composed almost all of the music for these except for one or two albums where we had guest artists involved.

KP: How involved is Dr. Gold in the creation of the music? He certainly has had a varied career with a great deal of experience in many different fields!

YR: Dr. Gold initiates almost all of the projects that we work on at Metta Mindfulness Music. He provides me with medical research, neuroscience concepts, and some creative ideas, then I begin doing my own research and study of the materials. The big challenge for me is how to translate the concepts present in the medical research into musical concepts. For me that is the most creative and interesting segment of each project. I begin by composing, then preparing parts for the musicians, then recording, followed by editing, then mixing, and finally, I present the music to Dr. Gold and he gives me feedback and requested revisions in some cases.

KP: The titles of the pieces on the Vol. 5 album are quite specific - "River of Bliss,” "Seeking The Inner Mysteries,” "Inner Light in a Dark Cave,” "Courage of a Leaf in the Wind,” etc. I'm curious - which came first: the titles or the music? Who named them?

YR: I come up with the titles for all tracks on our albums and I usually do so after I mix all the material and listen to the tracks. When coming up with the track names, I ask myself what the music invokes: what are the images or feelings that come to me when I listen to it, and then titles come and appear in my mind. So it’s really my perspective of the music on an emotional and psychological level.

Sometimes the track names are predetermined, especially when it has to do with principles or energies of Chinese Medicine such as our Six Healing Sounds of Qi Gong album where the track names are based on the elements of the ancient wisdom practice (wood, air, fire, water, etc.).

KP: Wow! I really learned a lot from this interview. Thank you for that, Yuval! Is there anything else you'd like to "talk" about?

YR: I’d like to share some very important information about the issues surrounding streaming music online. All the music that people listen to online, for example, on digital streaming platforms like Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music, are MP3 files which are low quality, compressed files. MP3 files remove important data (in our case, musical vibrations present in the original recording) in order to make the file size smaller, and therefore, easier to stream through the Internet.

Especially for healing music like ours, we recommend ordering CD’s, or even better, downloading WAV files, which are nowadays much more rich in audio quality, in order to experience the full vibrational spectrum of the music, as it was intended. A great comparison, often made by Dr. Richard Gold, is that online digital music today is much like the unhealthy food we buy at fast food restaurants. It is stripped of its full nutritional value in order to save on production cost and enhance its appearance for advertising. Everybody should be able to listen to the music as it was originally created and intended by the artist.

In order to download the highest quality, WAV file versions of our music, visit our website. There you can also find more information on the topic of MP3 vs. WAV files and Lossless Audio. And again, we highly recommend listening with a good pair of headphones, with a direct connection rather than BlueTooth. Thanks!



Many thanks to Yuval Ron and Metta Mindfulness Music for taking the time to share all of this information with us! For more information about Yuval and his music, be sure to visit his website, Metta Mindfulness Music, and Yuval's Artist Page here on MainlyPiano.com.