Podcast : Out Of The Void

Tom Evans in conversation with Jackie Roberts in this podcast on how he, as an unexpected author and meditation guide, now finds himself as an unexpected ambient composer on Insight Timer, after unexpectedly writing a novel which might be the future history of the Earth and humanity.

Transcript

And that you could learn from those opportunities are whether you're online or not,

U know,

And I think hundreds of Hello and welcome to yet another Soul Waves podcast.

I'm Jackie Roberts and have the pleasure to be interviewing Tom Evans,

The author and composer of the Soul Waves movement.

Tom,

Hello.

Well,

Thank you.

Yeah.

Well,

That's what you are.

Well,

This is what it is,

Isn't it?

It's become that,

Yeah.

And that first track that we just listened to is called The Void.

And it's almost like this has come out of a void.

It's quite incredible.

I know.

Oh,

And it's,

You know,

We're all going into a void though,

Which is the other really funny thing at the moment.

Funny,

Huh?

Or not.

We're going into a void where people are being sent home.

We're going to be spending more time at home.

We've got more relaxation time.

And for some people that may even feel like a void.

Yeah.

And obviously there's the word avoid as well as avoid.

Oh,

So there is.

So maybe by being busy,

We've been avoiding our real calling.

Well,

That's interesting because one of the questions I have for you is you finished writing Soul Waves and it got published at the beginning of the year,

Which was very exciting.

And then you have started writing music,

Playing music.

So you've been composing and playing and producing.

I just wonder,

Did actually the end of writing the book,

Because it took you 15 years,

Has the actual ending opened up this latent skill set of yours or what's happened?

How's it come about?

Well,

It's kind of more involved and intricate than that.

And thanks for the question.

I had the idea to do the music that goes with the book probably about three months before the book got published.

And I've just moved permanently to Malmsbury in Wiltshire.

I'm sorry.

And I thought I must find a new guitar teacher just to learn to play guitar again.

I got a bit rusty with it all.

So I found a great guy called Piers Ward,

Who from now on is going to be doing,

Even though he's five miles down the road,

We're going to be doing remote sessions over Zoom and what have you.

But he turns out that he's actually also good at compositional theory.

And although I got to a reasonable standard at guitar,

Although I'm very rusty now,

I didn't know anything about keys and what notes go with all the notes and all this sort of stuff.

And so he's been teaching me all of that stuff.

And then that's like this coincidence that you need when you're on your soul wave,

When you're connected like this,

The right people turn up at the right time.

Anyway,

So we did our first session,

Compositional session just before Christmas,

About two weeks before the book came out.

And then I've basically been using these pieces as my education.

They're like my homework,

You know what I mean?

So they're getting more and more advanced as I'm going on.

And I'm challenging him to teach me more things,

Which is great.

And I'm learning more about musical theory.

But also some of them are just popping in because I didn't really intend,

I've written five of them now,

Produced five of them.

Only intended to do one a month,

So we should be on number three.

But they just keep popping out of the void.

It's really,

It's incredible,

Isn't it?

And I mean,

Did you go into it to take it seriously?

And did you realise just how far this would take you?

Many ways,

And where is it taking you?

Well,

It's a bit like,

You know,

I became an author by accident 12 years ago.

You know me at least that time because you remember Hundred Years of Eventrue.

That's my first ever book.

And that's how we got introduced.

So there's that German chap,

Remember his name?

There's a German chap on the Academy.

Yes,

Andreas Widow.

That's it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you're listening,

Thank you for connecting these two souls together,

Andreas.

So we,

Yes,

I became this author by accident.

Then I started doing meditations with the books.

And then the meditations got found by Insight Timer.

And all the time,

I always used other people's ambient music behind my voice,

Mainly because the ambient music puts slightly different signals into left and right brain.

So it befuddles the brain.

So if you like the hypnotic suggestion,

Not that I'm not,

These tracks aren't hypnosis per se.

They're very light hypnosis.

So the suggestions can go into the brain and then we can make the change and all that sort of stuff.

And then most recently,

I've been using this amazing composer called Ludwig Sibrelius as my ambient music provider.

He's up in Sweden.

We never met,

But he's on the app.

And I love,

Love his music.

But I had this desire to learn.

I've always had this desire to learn.

And I didn't know where it's going to lead.

So not only am I producing the music,

But in just two or three months,

Other meditation guides and prospective meditation guides said,

Can I use your music?

Really?

I know.

And so all of a sudden,

It's not just,

It's a little factory of stuff which I'm doing for me.

So I use the ambient tracks for my,

To illustrate the soul waves journey,

But also as backgrounds to my own guided meditations now.

Now other people are saying,

Can you use them,

So it's a really unexpected door opener.

And of course,

Music opens the heart,

Doesn't it?

Absolutely.

And it goes beyond,

Because it's wordless,

It allows so much more to change,

Doesn't it?

It does.

Well,

Remember my original nonfiction books when I had this idea,

Wouldn't it be nice rather than just talking about,

You know,

How do you access other states of consciousness?

Why do you have to listen to a meditation that gets you to access those states?

That was my aim back then.

And when I talk about the void and the density in the book,

So,

And I didn't plan to do the track of the void,

I had a mind map of 12 tracks to do one each month or one each month over this year.

I'd had it laid out chronologically as sort of,

So each musical piece told a bit of the story in music.

Right.

And I realized that some of the threads in the book go right through the book that I've changed to being thematic now.

So when you hear about the void,

Which gets referred to quite a lot throughout the whole book,

The track,

The void gets you into the state of being in the void.

Because I sat down one morning,

I didn't intend to produce it,

And it just popped in.

From the void?

From the void,

Yeah.

Because you weren't avoiding it.

I wasn't avoiding it.

And I'm tapped into the void,

And I'm in this mode,

Like many creatives,

Has been the connector between the above to the below and the magician in the tarot.

It does that,

Tells that story very correctly,

Obviously.

And so,

Yeah,

The void just popped in.

And actually some of the stuff I'm working on now is also coming in that mode.

I was going to do this next track,

Which is called Ocean's Rise,

Was going to be about Ken's journey from Scandinavia all the way over to China.

And I was going to invoke all these different musical modes.

So it would invoke it in a sort of thematic way.

And I realised that the story of the Ocean's Rise goes all the way through the book.

So it's now inspiring me to do something slightly different.

There's a track by Neil Young called After the Gold Rush.

It's a lovely track.

And it's all about,

You know,

After we've done the gold rush and we've got all the money out of the ground and all sorts of stuff,

What do we do next?

Yeah.

And it's coming from the sun and this sort of stuff.

So my original track was going to be called After the Sea Rush.

But I'm still going to use the chord structure from After the Gold Rush as the underlying chord structure for the piece.

So what I'm finding is very helpful,

Especially I'm not a natural composer.

So I have to have something to latch onto.

I've got something I can use,

Like in Sirens Call.

I use the chords from Pasha Bell's Canon in D.

I wanted something in the key of D.

I'm learning about keys and all sort of stuff now.

So I found this lovely track from Pasha Bell,

Which is fantastic.

I can't put Neil Young's track in here,

But I can put Pasha Bell's track in because it's copyright free,

Being a few hundred years old.

But yeah,

So it's a lovely track.

And if you listen to the track and Pasha Bell's Canon in D and then Sirens Call,

You'll hear the chords and the movement.

So that's really interesting because there's an enormous amount of preparation there that you knew that you wanted to do it in the key of D.

Yeah.

For what purpose?

Oh,

Because we were playing with drop D tunings on the guitar.

Because you're playing with drop D.

Yes,

At the same time.

At the same time,

Piers is teaching me musical theories,

Also trying to get me to be a better guitarist as well at the same time.

So we happen to be playing with drop D tunings and so I used them in the key of D to go with the guitar tuning and that sort of stuff.

So a bit technical,

But no.

No,

That is absolutely amazing.

One of the things that strikes me because it's now turning out to be more thematic and you're still,

As you're moving along,

It's getting more and more complex,

Your composition and your playing.

There's a degree of slowing you down with this then,

Isn't there?

Absolutely.

And I'm going to take time over the next track because to allow it to mature.

I also,

For my birthday,

Treated myself to a Native American flute lesson as well.

So I might even treat that to whom I can.

But that might have to wait a while,

What with everything else that's going on at the moment.

But yeah,

All the fun.

It is good fun.

So,

But yes,

This is amazing.

So we've got the Boyd,

We've got Insertion was the second track,

Wasn't it?

Yeah,

That was a chronological track about how Shen came out of the middle of the sun,

Ended up through the Northern Lights going into his mother's womb and it ends with a lovely heartbeat.

Should we just play that just now so we can get an idea?

So Insertion was very much a chronological telling of the story,

If you know what I mean.

But it applies to everybody,

You know,

So everybody's gone through that journey,

Haven't they?

And ended up in their mother's womb and then popped out and gone,

Oh,

What are we doing here?

Yeah,

Yeah.

And actually,

If you look at it in not just from the soul's point of view,

Well,

In fact,

Yes,

We can continue to look at that.

Ideas get inserted.

And from above,

If we're tuned in to listen,

Things are inserted and we can pick them out.

So whilst it appears that it's not a thematic,

I think it could be a thematic part of the journey.

Yeah,

In retrospect it is,

But at the time I was in chronological mode,

Whereas the track after that was just deep thought.

That was where I was kind of in chronological mode,

But it was clear that I was talking about the themes because it was about me awakening as a musician.

And it was about Shen's awakening,

You know,

When you're a baby and a toddler,

When you're about seven,

You get your self-awareness.

And when we wake up in the morning,

We're kind of asleep and then we get our self-awareness and we go to sleep again.

So what I did in that piece was mirror the awakening.

So at the start of it,

It's the computer playing the notes and then the computer plays the notes a bit faster.

And then I take over as the awakened guitarist and play similar notes.

And then the piece goes to sleep again.

Can we just hear that?

Well I'll just play the bit where the guitar awakens up.

Okay,

Yes do.

So underneath the podcast,

I'm going to put the whole,

I realized at the end of last month,

I've done five times 12 minute tracks.

So I cut them together and made it into one hour piece.

And I'll put that whole thing down below.

But yeah,

Here's just the guitar waking up.

Oh,

Isn't that just,

I didn't realize that story before Tom.

And so once you've told it,

I've never had the opportunity to tell it.

Oh,

I do love these.

That was brilliant.

And by now you're in the flow of understanding and recognizing that you want to do the thematic way through the book.

And you bizarrely call one soul wave.

What a funny name for it.

Think about soul waves.

They're the things that attracted you and I together all those years ago,

Often instigated by a third party or a coincidence.

And again,

A bit like the track about the void.

I thought we're in a sort of a track that gets you into the state where you become attractive in all senses of the world.

And you also get in the state where you can attract all the things into your life that you want.

So soul wave is just about getting into that very,

Very laid back state where you haven't got a care in the world.

But you've also got these desires sort of lurking,

Bubbling underneath somewhere.

And then there's a voice that keeps coming into it,

Which is a computer,

A sample voice.

And I mentioned that because in the next track I've got a real voice in it,

But this is a computer sample voice.

And the idea of that was someone's just calling and then they stop calling and they call,

What have you.

So we're being called all the time.

And the idea of that voice coming up,

Like a wave,

Was we get these calls,

Sometimes we ignore them.

And hopefully with all the things going on in the world right now,

That some of us will find a new calling that we didn't even know exist.

Or allow the calling,

Which we won't find it because it finds us.

And that is the smartest thing to do,

To allow it to find you.

Yeah.

And this attractiveness,

It's being somewhat magnetic,

I think is probably quite a good word.

But you do have to be very open to it.

So at any time meditation and allowing yourself to be in that laid back state always increases and improves your life.

And if it connects you with your soul wave and has even bigger purpose,

It would be madness not to do it,

Wouldn't it?

Yeah.

And I didn't,

I only just realized this over the last few days is that the book Soul Waves has got more resonance in the current world crisis.

I know.

I found this,

I didn't use it as a diatribe to have a go at what was going on right now.

I started in 2058 and just rolled on from there.

It's based in Beijing,

It passes through Wuhan a couple of times into Hubei province and up to the upper Yangtze and the Dongting Lake and what have you.

So very much based in China.

And it also is a bit of a praise of the Chinese people how they think big and they plan big and they can build hospitals in five days and all this sort of stuff.

And also we're seeing that they've got a philanthropic side to them.

They sent doctors over to Rome and what have you.

And lots of sharing of knowledge and what have you.

Well I did mention very briefly that the state of play in 2058 in August came because of,

We'd learned things about the excesses of the last 200 years in what I call the 20s.

And of course we're in the 20s right now.

Immediately.

I mean that literally is right now.

It really is a book for present in order to create the next,

Not just future,

Well it is future isn't it?

It's the future history,

Yeah.

And because there are a lot of things in the book,

I know we're not really discussing the book,

But there are a lot of things in the book that still have to happen in the next almost 30 years,

Assuming it starts in 2058.

And there's no reason for that not to be the case.

It's so exciting really.

We are at such a whoppingly opportune moment.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

And I didn't really also realize that the whole suite of the current five tracks I've got,

Which again I'm going to put back down below in the podcast,

Making this one hour track is a lovely,

Lovely thing.

If someone just wants to get off the bus,

I mean I'm guilty of this and I'm sure lots of people are.

You keep looking at the news and the Twitter stream and all this sort of stuff,

But it largely is the same news nowadays.

It's just a different change every day with the mortality count and all that sort of stuff.

And so something like this is also such a blessing and a gift just to get off the bus for an hour and allow your mind to wander and to go to different places.

And it's lovely having this story behind it to be able to take you through,

But it is so beautiful.

I mean,

I was away,

I was lost for an hour and I have played it,

If not every day,

Every second day ever since.

It's just,

It's bliss,

It's marvelous.

So that takes us to the final part.

The final part of Where I'm Octo at the moment.

There's another load of those.

Where I'm Octo right now,

Yeah.

Ah,

No,

This one has a cracking name.

The siren's call.

It's um,

And wow,

What a track.

That received a lot of attention and a lot of comments,

Didn't it?

Yeah,

Well as I said,

I use Passion Bells Canon in D as the structure for it.

A lovely Siri who keeps doing amazing work.

She does some amazing art.

She's creating these amazing soul dahlas at the moment,

Which are just stunning.

They're beautiful.

To encapsulate you in an image and what have you.

They're fantastic gifts as well.

Anyway,

I sent her some English words and said,

Can you sing these in Norwegian or even in old Norwegian?

And that they are thematically,

Or storytelling,

Freya,

Who is one of the main hero in the book,

Calling Shen from her place in Scandinavia,

Calling his heart from China over the sea to,

Ah.

Now obviously,

Shen and Freya don't know in the book that they're destined to get together.

So it's an unconscious calling.

So I use that calling in the start and end of the track.

But also the dolphins have got a big role to play in the book and they're on a planet 150,

000 light years away.

So they're also calling.

There are also sirens of the sea calling Shen to them as well.

I won't say why,

Because that is a bit of a spoiler at the end of the book.

But the dolphins appear pretty early on and what have you.

So that was the latest track.

And I thought what we might do is just play that out at the end of the podcast.

Oh,

That would be marvelous,

That would be marvelous.

Are there any changes that you've noticed in your life since you started making music?

Let me be honest with you.

You know,

I'm quite a productive person.

I set my stall out there.

What I do this year is I do every month,

I do an ambient track and a guided track.

And the ambient track is part of this whole series.

The guided track was part of a slightly different theme to help people connect with their soul a bit more.

Now last year,

I would knock those tracks out like though tomorrow.

But my heart is with the ambient music,

Not with the guided stuff at the moment.

So I've had a month off producing the guided track this month.

I found five old tracks that were never on Inside Timeless.

I published those there this week.

And I realized that they're actually quite a good precursor to the next step anyway,

In this which is called soul entanglement.

And the idea is we step into our magnificence when our soul actually incarnates with us and has got a strong bond with us.

And I realized that these five tracks were actually quite good as precursors to the next step I want to make.

But to answer your question,

Yeah,

I feel like I'm really drawn to do the next musical track because it's just much more fun and it's new and what have you.

I think it's just amazing and to look at where you are now and what you've produced in just three short months,

Really.

Can you imagine what you'll be preparing for us by December?

Well I've already started the ideas are coming in for the prequels and the sequels and that sort of stuff.

And it was always part of the marketing strategy.

You know,

I've never really marketed any of my books fully.

I've done a bit of social media when it first comes out and then it all wanes and stuff like this.

So the original idea was to give me a prolonged program that would always bring people's attention to the book.

So you can get in five more tracks time,

Which is another hour's worth of music.

So this suite,

I didn't realize I called it Soul Waves Immersion.

Then as I do the next five tracks,

Another name will come out for the next hour of music.

I'll release them incrementally 12 minute tracks at a time.

Yeah,

Five months and then five months from now that we should be August time,

Wouldn't it?

Probably then we'll do another show.

Oh,

It might come out quicker than that.

Who knows?

Well,

Exactly.

And if it did,

Would you publish it?

Absolutely.

As the music comes,

And if it's safer than 10 themes,

Then it's coming.

Yeah,

Why not?

Wonderful.

We are so very lucky to be part of your world and part of your soul wave.

Thank you,

Tom.

Well,

Anyone that wants to learn,

I can connect you with Piers Ward.

Piers has been working face to face.

I've been encouraging him since we first met that he can work virtually.

And he's absolutely amazing,

Amazing guitarist,

But also a great teacher.

And so highly recommend Piers if you want to learn some of the tricks that he's taught me.

And either for your own enjoyment or so you can create something like this as well.

And also anyone wants to get their stuff onto Insight Timer,

Then let me know and I'll introduce you there as well.

So there's no reason why people can't emulate this if it's a goal for them.

Especially when there's a void in their world.

Oh,

And there's a void and we don't know whose world we'll affect.

Look at the number of people you're affecting already.

Exactly.

Dominoes,

Dominoes locking dominoes down.

Dominoes and dominoes and dominoes.

It's just brilliant.

Well,

Tom,

Thank you very much.

I hear a siren's call there.

Let's let the sirens call.

Thank you,

Jackie.

Thanks,

Tom.

Thanks sco remained way,

Way to go.

You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You

Reviews

Dear Tom,
I really enjoyed hearing about your journey to music and I absolutely love the music 💕 🎶 Thank you for the track at the end with the dolphins 🐬 You’re not only a magician but a musical magician and, a magical musician 😊 🙏
Philomena

Excellent exchange. Tom you are supercharged with creativity.

Great interview with Jackie!
You have many layers to you Tom, just like peeling an onion. 😊
Thank you for this new information regarding your book, and the music.
And I so loved the music meditation at the end! 💗
Soulwaves indeed! It has my mind thinking in different contexts.

A fantastic interview and equally amazing music. 🙏

Outstanding interview and exciting musical interlude at the end!!! Thank you very much!!!!

Dear Tom & Jackie (spelling?) I cannot resist making this comment....
That was a humdinger (!!!!) of a podcast & the music a pure delight.
Thank you both so much. At one stage when Jackie was speaking I was seeing a vision of a lady with spectacles on! I wonder who that was!!
🙏💜😍🎶

Loved hearing the story behind the music accompanying the book Tom and siren call is a track I love. Really enjoyed podcast