Often, my clients will ask me, "What's this music you're
playing? It's really relaxing!"
And so I end up letting them know that I spend hundreds of hours looking through
music online, finding the best open music that's available for massage.
I've put that music together into compilations of the best massage music, which
I now make available to massage therapists through the site
http://www.MusicOfMassage.com.
This is a site where massage therapists join and get 60 minutes of massage
music, hand-selected by me, every month.
I've also taken the music and made it into straight, uninterrupted, 60 minute
tracks.
Because I have a background in both massage and music production, I'm really
enjoying helping other massage therapists to get the best massage music.
I'm also exposing new musicians to a new audience that many of them haven't
really explored that much... massage therapists!
If you're interested in getting the best massage music, definitely drop by
http://www.MusicOfMassage.com and
listen to some of the samples over there.
The rest of this page is what I used to recommend to friends and clients as the
best massage music, before I started MusicOfMassage.
What is the best massage and relaxation music?
Now bear in mind that these music
recommendations are just my opinion, and I'm always listening to new music.
As a practicing massage therapist
and meditator, I have listened to lots of music, and found a lot of music which
is soothing to my mind and body. I use this relaxing music during my massage
sessions, at times when I want something transcendental, and on days when I just want to mellow-out! That
music is also the music I recommend here for practitioners of all kinds: Massage Therapists, mind-body medicine specialists, transcendental
meditation instructors and students, relaxation response instructors and students, M.D.'s, D.O.'s,
dentists, and anyone else looking for great music for the purpose of relaxation.
For your convenience, all of the album covers below link to Amazon.com, where
you can purchase this music.
Enya is one of the world's best-known
female artists of the '90's, having sold an astonishing 60 million
albums worldwide.
Enya made her WEA debut in 1988 with
the universally acclaimed album Watermark, which has passed 10 million
sales worldwide, and has gone platinum in 14 different countries.
"Orinoco Flow," taken from Watermark,
was a hit in every country in which it was released.
The follow-up album, Shepherd Moons,
was even more successful, selling an amazing 11 million copies
worldwide.
She has been nominated for five Grammy
Awards, winning The Best New Age Album for Shepherd Moons in 1992, The
Memory Of Trees in 1996, and A Day Without Rain in 2002.
In 1997, Enya released a 'Best Of...'
collection entitled Paint The Sky With Stars, which featured two new
tracks. Selling 8.5 million copies worldwide, the album took Enya's
total world album sales to 44 million, including 3.5 million in the UK
and over 12 million in the U.S. Paint The Sky With Stars is perennially
in the top 100 catalogue albums in the U.S.
Enya's total sales have propelled her
to the position of Ireland's best-selling solo artist ever.
Her music first came to prominence
after appearing in the major BBC TV series, The Celts. Since then
Enya's music has graced several major films, including L.A. Story, Green
Card, the Tom Cruise/Nicole Kidman film Far And Away and Martin
Scorcese's Age Of Innocence.
Although fronted by Enya, the music
released under her name is the result of a collaboration between Enya,
producer Nicky Ryan and lyricist Roma Ryan. Enya has previously stated
that without any one of them, 'Enya' would not exist.
With 60 million albums sold since
1988's Watermark, this means that Enya has sold an average of over
10,000 albums per day. That works out to about 12 copies during the
time it takes to read these facts.
Special Thanks to Enya.com for providing these factoids.
Vangelis is a famous
Greek composer and keyboardist. Vangelis composes
and performs mainly instrumental music and film scores. During
his career he has flirted with many genres and has proved to be
very hard to categorize. The music of Vangelis has been filed as
"synthesizer music", "new age", "progressive rock", "Symphonic
rock", "Space music", "electronic music", etc. etc. None of
those terms is spot on and his output is too varied to catch in
one word.
He was born as "Evanghelos Odyssey Papathanassiou" on March
29th, 1943 in a small town near Volos, Greece. He started
playing the piano at the age of 4 and gave his first public
performance of his own compositions at the age of 6. During his
student years he was an important part of a successful Greek pop
band called the "Forminx". Vangelis moved to Paris in the
late sixties while forming the band "Aphrodite's Child",
together with singer Demis Roussos and drummer Lucas Sideras.
They scored many hits all over Europe. In 1970 the group broke
up and Vangelis started a solo career. In '75 he moved to London
where he set up the legendary Nemo studio that he used to record
many of his famous albums and soundtracks. Most legendary are
perhaps the Oscar winning score to "Chariots of Fire" and the
ever popular score to Ridley Scott's landmark cult film "Blade
Runner". In 1987, Vangelis left London and subsequently recorded
music in Athens ("Direct", "Voices"), Rome ("The City") and
Paris ("1492").
Special Thanks to Koert.com for providing this Vangelis
information.
It is the communication of deep
and profound feeling, at once sensual and transcendent, that
lies at the heart of Ray Lynch's musical sensibility. His
compositions proceed with elegance and balance, structured in
the classical sense rather than improvised. And yet he's
highly non traditional in other ways; for example, Ray freely
experiments with unconventional sounds, which he combines with
his unique mix of superbly recorded acoustic and electronic
instruments.
Like any fiercely authentic
artist, Ray defies categorization. A classically trained
guitarist and lutenist specializing in early and Renaissance
music, Ray Lynch was one of the first serious musicians to
embrace the use of new musical technologies, pioneering their
application in combination with a full range of acoustic
instruments, to create melodic, highly emotional musical
recordings.
Ray is committed to his music
with uncompromising depth, honesty, and excellence. Some
musicians never listen to their own recordings, but Ray is not
satisfied with a recording unless it pleases him so thoroughly
that he can listen to it for pleasure, again and again.
Although much contemporary music is played in the background,
Ray's music reveals many of its most delightful dimensions
when it is listened to actively and played loud.
Special Thanks to
raylynch.com for providing this information about Ray Lynch
California's
David Arkenstone blends global, cinematic, and rock elements
into his new age sonic tapestries. A music lover since the age
of ten, when he moved to California from Chicago, Arkenstone has
immersed himself in all kinds of music, and played keyboard and
guitar in numerous bands from his youth.
It was when he discovered the lush arrangements and exotic
approach of Kitaro that Arkenstone ventured into new age music.
The increasing synergy between computer technology and musical
instruments also inspired him; most of his works were created
partly or entirely on his Macintosh along with synthesizers and
guitars. This blend of electro-acoustic textures is showcased on
albums like 1998's Book of Days, and works from his other
project, Troika. Arkenstone returned in mid-2000 with Caravan
of Light. Frontier followed a year later. In 2002,
Arkenstone had two Grammy nominations and several Billboard new
age smash hits under his belt. The legacy continued with the
release of Sketches From An American Journey in June
2002. Thanks to Heather Phares from BarnesandNoble.com for
this information about Arkenstone.
Perhaps best known as a
musician and producer, Brian Eno is also an artist, professor and thinker.
Music-wise, even if you haven't heard any of his records, you may have
heard his production contributions to albums by rock legends U2 and/or
David Bowie. In other media, his music sometimes appears in films (Trainspotting,
Velvet Goldmine, Heat), television programs and commercials,
and the Windows 95 start-up sound.
What kind of music
does he create?
Enoweb tried all the
airy-fairy descriptions that they could think of to describe Brian Eno's
music, but it narrows down to this: 1. Songs. 2. Instrumental or ambient
pieces. 3. Unclassifiable.
What Eno albums would
you recommend?
Some of my favorite Brian Eno
albums are to the left. If you really want a chance to escape,
mellow out, or just really relax, the first two albums are Ambient Albums,
and are really great for that purpose.
Many thanks to
EnoWeb for
this information on Brian Eno