Zen Music

Bio

PETER MORLEY - Music Composer & Producer (Zen Yogi, Sri Shanthi Bhavana)

Musician, Composer & Producer of Transcendental Soundscape Therapy Music, and Ambient Cafe' Smooth Lounge Jazz, and Ambient Guitar Soundscapes

Recording Artist Names: Peter Morley and spiritual Yogi names Shantha Sri / Sri Shanthi Bhavana

Graduate Diploma of Film & Television Music - Queensland Conservatorium of Music, Griffith University, Australia

Level 1: Certified Integral Sound Healing with Tibetan Singing Bowls - Sound Healing Academy, UK

Studied Meditation with the Sri Chinmoy Organisation

Studied Mindfulness Meditation in the Buddhist Tradition

Studied Yoga and became a practitioner and certified teacher Yogi in the Krishnamacharya Yoga Tradition (specialising in Therapeutic Yoga and Zen Healing Yoga)

Member:

- West Australian Music (WAM)

- Sound Healers Association (SHA)

- International Sound Therapy (IST)

- International Institute for Complementary Therapists (IICT)

- International Energetic Healing Association (IEHA)

- American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP)

Mini CV

2000 – 2022

Produced 39 albums / and over 300 tracks specialising in Relaxation Music – Specialist Soundscape Music for Yoga, Meditation, Massage, Stress Relief, Sleep Disorders and other Natural Healing Therapies, and Deep Relaxation. Used by Yoga Therapists, Health Spas and other health practitioners globally.

Peter Morley is the official music composer and sound designer for the Optimal State Yoga organization, California, USA – providing Therapeutic Music content for their prestigious Yoga Therapy Training Program and online App.

Produced easy-listening, chill-out Ambient Cafe' Smooth Lounge Jazz, and Ambient Guitar Soundscape albums. Used by Café’s and Resort hotels worldwide.

Zen Music is distributed globally by over 50 major online digital distribution and streaming organisations (Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon Digital, Spotify, Tik Tok, YouTube, iHeart Radio, etc.)

2008 / 2009 JPF Music Awards – Nashville, Tennessee, USA.

“Just Plain Folks Music Awards” founded by the Future of Music Coalition, the world’s largest grassroots music organization.

Feel Forgiveness Now album placed 2^nd in the Spoken Word category [JPF Music Awards Top 6 places] – selected from 42,000 albums, over 500,000 songs entered from over 160 countries.

Music Composer, Sound Designer & Producer: Peter Morley

Author & Presenter: Dr. Juliet Rohde-Brown – Integrative Clinical Psychologist

JPF Music Awards are judged by music industry/mentor/peer judges, and judged on production, song writing / music composition, performance, arrangement and emotional effect.

2008

Produced the single (song) Billy for US artist, Will Barkley for Neil Young’s online Radio channel. Recorded and engineered in Santa Barbara, California, USA.

2007 – 2008

Produced 3 spoken word guided meditation albums for Integrative Clinical Psychologist, Dr. Juliet Rohde-Brown, in Santa Barbara, California, USA. Composed original music, created and engineered sound design for relaxation music integration with voice guided meditations.

Peter Morley (Sri Shanthi Bhavana) is based on the beautiful south coast of Western Australia.

He has produced 39 albums, and over 300 tracks.

Peter studied Film & Television Music at Griffith University, Queensland Conservatorium and is a graduate of that program.

He is also a graduate of the Sound Healing Academy in the UK, in Integral Sound Healing with Tibetan Singing Bowls.

In 2001, Peter Morley began experimenting with creating music ‘soundscapes’, and he formed Energi Music. His first album, “Celestial” in that year was the result of experimenting with creating minimalist music. Over the next few years several more albums followed, including “Calm Light” and “Seascape” – both referred to as Meditational Journeys. The first 13 albums were published by Energi Music.

On becoming a Buddhist Yogi, and receiving the yogi spiritual name, Shantha Sri, he began recording as an artist under this name. Later this spiritual name evolved to become Sri Shanthi Bhavana. Recordings can be found in all three names: Peter Morley, Shantha Sri and Sri Shanthi Bhavana.

Sri Shanthi Bhavana is a Zen Buddhist Yogi, a Yoga Teacher specialising in Adapted Therapeutic Yoga. He teaches meditation and sound therapy techniques (Nada Yoga Meditation), using his specialist music soundscapes as the basis for reconnecting with our natural resonance (frequencies).

Sri Shanthi Bhavana is the official music composer/ producer for "The Optimal State of Living Yoga School" (providing healing soundscape music and audio content for the prestigious 865 Yoga Therapist Training Program), California, US.

More recently (2021 - 2022), Peter is producing Smooth Lounge Jazz music and has released two albums in this genre, Tracks in the Sand, and Ambient Cafe' Series - Vol.1.

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Influential Voices

Peter Morley (Zen Yogi Sri Shanthi Bhavana) is greatly influenced by classical Indian music, Eastern spiritual philosophy, as well as jazz.

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ZEN MUSIC was launched in 2019, as the name was a perfect entity for his Zen Buddhist life philosophy.

ZEN MUSIC has continued to create music that is centred in the intention of stimulating the so-called relaxation response in the brain – to help people find relaxation, calmness and inner peace, through contemplation.

“In the early years (2001–2009), I was primarily engaged in creating what I called ‘soundscapes’ – I was working on my own and in the ‘dark’, because I had no peers or frames of reference for this work. I had no idea what I was doing. I only had my 'gut feeling', or intuition, which I have come to trust. The music was there, flowing into my head and heart from the Universe – I just knew I had to record what was coming up for me, naturally”

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“If you’re not pushing the edge, as an artist... then you are stuck in the middle, and who wants to be there?” - Peter Morley

Soundscapes - Influences

For my soundscape compositions I am very much influenced by the work of music luminaries such as Erik Satie, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, Bill Vencil, Kitaro, Max Richter and Nils Frahm, as well as the mesmeric drones (guitar and keyboards) of Led Zeppelin (Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones) and Pink Floyd. My Jazz inspirations come from Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Chuck Loeb, Larry Carlton, Joe Pass, Jim Hall, Allan Holdsworth, John McLaughlin, Bill Frisell, John Scofield, Carlos Santana, George Benson, Pat Metheny and Lee Ritenour.

What I was creating – 'pictorial music' (what the Japanese Zen Masters call 'mind-scapes') – did not necessarily fit typical commercial music genre classifications. At best, it was framed as Ambient, Alternative or New Age, but I knew that I was definitely not ‘mainstream’. A lot of my work revolves around drones, and they represent an ancient, mesmeric sound, wonderful by themselves or as a solid background upon which simply tones and melodies can be placed.

Drones are all you need!

We always used drones when we were making music - one kind or another - either layered guitars or keyboard, and the hurdy-gurdy allowed us to have this 'sonic mystery' sound... the drones are so moving. Every time you get out of the Anglo-Saxon world, the drones (are) there, and that's all you need.

- Robert Plant, Led Zeppelin

Later, thanks to the advent of the Internet and to my great delight, I 'discovered' Robert Fripp and Brian Eno (progressive rock), and Herbie Hancock (progressive jazz) – extremely talented music ‘gurus’ – and what I found was that these guys were creating very free-flowing, avant-garde music that seemed to be a genre all its own, and that they had been doing it for a long time.

Mr. Hancock is a pioneer of electronic music in jazz. Mr. Fripp, an exceptionally gifted guitarist and producer coined the term, “Soundscape”. Mr. Eno, a gifted keyboard musician, producer and pioneer of electronic music, created what he calls “Generative Music” – a form of layering tones and repetitive cycles that are never the same, as the music keeps evolving.

These artists have impressive and extensive backgrounds in extending the boundaries of electronic music – through computer assisted, or generated electronic (digital) technology – and its this that has inspired me to reach a little deeper into my own music journey and explore my music self-connection. Artists need to test their limits and expand their range. Another big influence came later in the form of English contemporary composer, Max Richter with his cycling, pattern-based, mix of electronic and orchestral minimalist music designed for relaxation and sleep. His lush, seductive pieces strike a deep emotional response within me. Similarly, the creative work of Nils Frahm, and his philosophy behind it, fits me perfectly. When I listen to his compositions, something in me simply say “yes!”, and I need nothing more.

Although I mention these amazing artists as inspirations for my own humble work, in no way do I wish to draw comparisons between my work and theirs – as I am not worthy of casting a shadow on the sidewalk as their bus passes by (if they ever take a bus). I just watch in amazement from afar, and, enraptured by their every note, I exist in the space between them.

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“Music has power. It is like the Spring season that causes flowers to beautifully blossom.” - Herbie Hancock - Jazz Composer, Music legend.

Methodology Behind the Music

At last I found that I was actually part of something – all of these musicians had been experimenting with ‘soundscape music’ based on minimalist repetitive cycling motifs in continuous layers. Another of my inspirations is the French composer and pianist, Erik Satie – a very influential artist in the late 19th and early 20th-century, who championed the avant-garde music movement in Paris, using a minimalist approach with simple, sparse, extroadinarily well-timed motifs and evocatively seductive cyclic repetition.

My soundscapes are carefully constructed in subtle layers – gradually added, and progressively evolve over time – like the repetitive layers of intricate detail in a Paul Cezanne painting, eventually building to reveal the whole image.

The seductive sounds implore the listener to be patient, or perhaps (hopefully) even commit to developing patience to concentrate and really absorb all the parts that lead to constructing the whole sound-painting.

If concentration is discarded after only a few seconds, the full influence of the Zen relaxation process will remain hidden to all but the very patient and committed – for whom the total reward will blossom and open with joyful abundance.

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“Be your totality” - Carlos Santana

— NMW All In Podcast Episode 010, with Narada Michael Walden