Pablo Arellano: The Note Whisperer

A conversation with fellow Insight Timer composer, musician and meditation guide Pablo Arellano.
Discover how Pablo tunes into his Muse and how he helps us to make the path to enlightenment easy with his music. The podcast concludes with a stunning cello piece which sums up the conversation beautifully.

Transcript

So hi,

I'm Tom Evans and welcome to another Zone Show.

Now you will have noticed that the introductory music was slightly different than the normal music for the show.

And that's because my guest today is an amazing musician,

Composer,

Director,

A man of many,

Many talents,

And someone I really admired and been listening to for many years on Insight Timer.

And it's Pablo Arilano.

I hope I pronounced that correctly or close to correct anyway.

Perfect,

Tom.

Thank you.

I'm honored that you invite me to the podcast.

Oh,

Well,

Thank you for that.

That's just 30 seconds of that piece and we're going to play the whole piece at the end of the show.

Thank you for sharing that.

So you're my go-to musician on the app.

But I know that you do much more than just music.

You know,

You've got courses and an amazing portfolio.

I was wondering,

Go back in time,

Because,

You know,

I think you were born into a musical family,

As far as I can tell,

And studied music.

And obviously,

As a musician,

You could have gone many,

Many ways,

Couldn't you?

But you got involved with film schools and then ended up in this special place.

How come you're not in a rock band and how come you're here?

Well,

That's an interesting story because,

You know,

When I was little,

My father was a very talented man of many,

Many virtues.

Like he could paint,

He could sing.

He was also a director for commercials,

Like TV commercials.

And he came from theater.

And his way of waking up to life and to another dimension of consciousness was through theater.

And this influenced his inner world very much.

So when I was small and I was,

I don't know,

Aware enough to have a book,

The first book that he gave me was the Dao Te King of Lao Tse.

Wow.

And from that book,

He seeded in me a mystical journey.

So you were destined to come on this route then?

Yes,

I think I was in the sense that it was always like a calling for me.

And but because he came from a very industrialized entertainment background when he started to do commercials.

He trained me also in the way that professionals,

Musicians need to be trained to make money,

You know,

To do TV commercials and this and that.

And if you needed something for theater,

You needed this.

So you could do many styles and work for clients and be under pressure and all this.

And so in a way,

I have both worlds,

You know,

Like a very stressful professional musician type and relaxed meditator kind of spiritual path.

And your output is voluminous.

I mean,

You've got an amazingly huge YouTube library with this.

It must be over 30 million listeners on there,

Isn't it?

Yes,

I have.

And YouTube,

I have 84,

000 subscribers and like 30 million views.

Wow.

And then on Insight Timer,

About 8 million and some tracks that have been listened to over 2 million times as well.

So that's incredible library you've got.

Is this library something you've built up from?

Because you came out of the industry at the end of the 80s and got into the work you're doing now in the 90s.

Is that something you've been building up from that time?

Yes,

Because my father had it's funny story.

My mother took me to a Montessori school.

And the Montessori teacher,

When I was like four years old,

Recognized in me that I was always talking about God and spirituality.

And she wrote it down in a little book and told my parents,

Who is teaching Paolo all this?

And my parents said,

No,

No,

We're not into that.

I don't know where it's coming from.

But then the brother of this teacher came from India to live in our house.

And my father and him did a lot of music together,

Jingles and things like that.

And but because he came from India,

He was a very big influence in me.

And later in life,

My friend,

Mauricio,

Invited me to do my first New Age record because he was opening a label.

And so I composed my first New Age CD.

And this was I was 19 years old,

I think.

And since then,

I had that passion to continue with this kind of music,

Because I realized that my music made people very sleepy.

It's a joke,

Because my father,

When he did parties,

Everybody were jamming and this.

And then when my father was a little bit tired,

He said,

Paolo,

Like you woke me up from my room at two in the morning.

I was like 15 years old.

Come and play the piano,

Please.

So I would play a little bit and everybody started to yawn.

And then everybody started to say,

OK,

Goodbye,

Goodbye.

Well,

That's funny,

Because for quite some time I used to I get woken up about three o'clock in the morning,

Not because I'm stressed,

But because I get messages and inspirations and that sort of stuff about especially about the creative work I'm on.

And I've always used whispering notes as the meditation to get me back to sleep,

But it always works.

I never make it to the end.

I get about 20 or 30 minutes in and my wife wakes me up and I've got my headphones on still.

And it's been going for another couple of hours of silence.

So that's probably why it's the most listened to track,

I think,

That you might have on the track.

Yeah,

That's so true.

And then I realized this.

I realized that my music had that effect,

That it really relaxed people.

And in my career,

I nourished that part of me,

That effect that it has.

And I realized it also has some part that is spiritual in the sense that it connects you with some part of you that it's present and still.

And inspired in yourself.

Let me ask you a question which is slightly different.

And this is to try and inspire other musicians that are starting out there.

So obviously,

You worked in a commercial environment for when you first started out in your career.

And I guess there was money coming in from that kind of work that you say that your father was your mentor as well.

But when you moved over to this kind of spiritual world,

Could you make money out of that?

Especially when you've got 30 million free listens on YouTube,

You've got 8 million largely free listens on Insight Timer.

I know there's a bit of commerciality in Insight Timer nowadays.

But were you able to make a living from this work?

Yes,

I do make a living out of it.

And everything comes together with different approaches.

It's not only one way to earn money.

You know,

For the people that are starting,

I recommend that you study a little bit of copyright.

OK.

What that intends.

You also can study a little bit of how to register your work to copyright it in a proper way.

Yeah.

And then from there,

There's different things that stem like a license.

You can license your work and they pay you for that.

YouTube pays me.

My sales of my CD pay me.

We get a little bit of revenue from Insight Timer.

Thank you,

Insight Timer.

Yeah,

Me too.

Very much.

Yeah.

And so it's not only one way to earn,

You know,

You play live,

You have the apps,

You have the license,

You have YouTube.

Also,

I have earnings from there,

Etc.

So it's like different ways to capitalise your talent.

And do you teach as well?

I did teach before.

I was a teacher at university.

But then I moved.

So I stopped doing that.

But now I want to I want to do like video lessons,

Kind of like like,

I don't know,

20 lessons of how to improvise.

And to record that,

A camera observing my hands and how the exercises influence my way of playing.

Because I sense that sometimes people are afraid to approach an instrument because of the notes and they don't want the hassle of learning how to read the notes and all this.

And my approach is very free in the sense that it's only almost like geometrical in the way how you move your hands.

And you start to see a pattern when you practice this way of playing.

You start to see a pattern in the keyboard,

Which is geometrical.

And it's based on the form of our hand and the semitones,

The half tones in the keyboard.

Wow,

That sounds fascinating.

I'd love to sign up for that when it comes out.

And you play a number of instruments,

Is it piano,

Cello and guitar mainly?

Or do you have another another range of instruments outside that as well?

Yes.

The thing is that I play those instruments in the piano.

They're sounds that I take from a library and I play them.

And I keep in mind how you play them in the real world,

Like in the real instruments.

So you get the feeling that you're listening to a guitar or you're listening to a cello.

That is amazing.

You had me fooled.

So I've got to tell you that that works a treat.

I have a funny story.

A friend,

Well,

A known guitar professor in one university when I uploaded this song of guitar that is famous on YouTube,

He sent me a mail and said,

I am so much of a fan of this song that you made on guitar.

Could you come to the university and play for us?

I'm doing a guitar seminar and it would be an honor that you come.

I said,

Well,

I would love to go and if you like,

I can play,

But I will play the guitar on the keyboard.

I thought you were a guitar virtuoso,

Which is just amazing.

But he was very disappointed that I didn't play the guitar.

Because I heard my father play the guitar so many years when I was small.

And you get a feeling of how the guitar is played.

That's why it sounds more like a guitarist.

Yeah.

Oh,

That's magic.

Because you're not playing it as a piano.

You're playing it as a guitar,

You know,

With the inversions that you need for the guitar to be played.

Of course,

It's never going to sound like a real guitar.

Fantastic.

And I guess a guitarist could learn a lot from that approach as well.

Yeah,

It works both ways.

I learned from them and they could learn also from the way.

I've even got a lot of inquiries of the tablature or the notes and chords of this song that is famous.

The guitarists want to play it.

Wow,

That's incredible.

One of the things we discussed is how you get into the zone.

So what's your practice so you can get into that space where the music comes through you?

Well,

I'll give you a very recent example like yesterday.

Yesterday,

I went to the studio.

My routine is I don't work here at home.

I have a studio in my mother's house.

My father built me a little space for my studio.

So I go there.

I turn the air,

Sit down,

Turn on the computer.

And then I do all the things that you have to do.

The routine work.

And then I practice,

I don't know,

Like half an hour I practice my technique,

You know,

Like just playing with no end to it in the sense that I don't have something to do with it.

I just practice.

But then there's like a moment when I'm practicing that I feel like an energy or a surge,

Something that is telling me to go in some direction.

Like when you were saying that you have some inspirations in the night that something comes.

So that sensation is similar.

When you're playing,

You get the feeling of what you want to do.

And like you downloaded it in an emotional,

It comes down like not all the piece completely,

But like a sensation of what you want from that piece.

And do you get the title of the piece at the end?

It's funny,

I always put the title and the sequencer when I start to work.

I put,

For example,

Yesterday I put the title,

Peace for Your Day.

But at the beginning of the session,

I tried to improvise some keyboard and very melodic kind of piece.

And then I didn't feel the truthness in it.

I just saw the technique in it.

You know what I mean?

Like you're playing and it sounds so if somebody else would hear it,

They would say,

Oh,

It's very nice.

But I wasn't feeling the truth in it.

Like what I was playing in my heart weren't synchronized.

And how would you go about getting that synchronization between head and heart?

I think it's a technical thing.

When your mind is thinking too much of what you're doing,

Technically.

So an example for writing would be maybe you're too worried about using this or that word or finding another word to say this word or musically it's almost the same thing.

You worry that you're doing this chord and what progression you should do.

And you're thinking and playing at the same time.

And this causes this interruption between the heart and the inspiration.

So like the mind is thinking too much and it blocks this flow.

And so sometimes do you feel like you've chosen the wrong instrument?

There may be something you might be working on piano,

But it might work better on a guitar or cello.

Totally.

Yes.

So sometimes I change the instrument or maybe I just stop playing a little bit and meditate a little bit just to quiet the mind.

And then when the mind is a little bit more present.

Because sometimes what distracts me is that I want a certain outcome.

You have a certain expectation of something.

And then this desire of meeting that expectation and then you become a perfectionist.

And then it's a wave of things that make you think.

So when the mind is more at rest and more serene,

More present,

Then you notice that things are flowing and the piece comes out like whispering notes,

The guitar piece that I have in the YouTube and many others.

Like the butterfly song in the YouTube that also very famous with Esther Stone and Ishvan.

That was one take,

One moment.

That's it.

No corrections,

No editing,

No anything.

That's what you call being in the zone,

I guess.

Yes.

So it's when you recognize that flow and there's no mind to interrupt the flow.

It's just flowing,

Flowing,

Flowing.

And this musical,

Like this cello piece that you're going to play all the way to the end is a very good example for me because also for the people that are starting or that have some doubt of their work,

This piece is a very good example.

I said,

I'm going to play something that I love to play.

Which is this piece that you heard.

I love the sound of the cello and I love this kind of baroque kind of style with the contrapoint.

I don't care if it does anything or nothing.

If nobody likes it,

No problem.

I don't mind.

I'm just going to do what I love completely.

And do you think then that whatever feeling you got coming through you,

And maybe the listeners can tell us this by way of comment and down at the bottom of the post when you put this on the podcast,

Do you think that the feeling that's coming through you gets mirrored in the listener?

Yes,

Completely.

When you,

I have a very good example.

There's a very famous concert by Keith Jarrett called the Cullen concert.

It became very,

Very famous in the world.

And then years after he made the score of it.

So some other piano players now have recorded that concert,

Reading the notes.

But you can sense immediately,

Like in the first note,

Not even going to the three,

Four bars after,

No.

In the first note,

It's not him that's playing.

Because there's something there that his energy,

His state of mind,

His flow made it this way.

And I think we all have like,

We have all a digital,

We have a,

How you call the finger,

The mark in the finger?

Fingerprint.

Aha,

We have all a fingerprint.

And that fingerprint is also energy and it transcends.

And it goes,

I think it goes to the quantum world.

And then that quantum world registers that energy,

That flow,

That spirit,

And it's transmitted through the music.

I think it's something magical.

I can't explain it scientifically,

But I know it's there.

Well,

I know we have mirror neurons in our brain.

That's how we copy things when we're a child.

These neurons are like plastic and they can mirror,

You know,

Our parents.

And I guess that's what's happening is that the neurons control the keys on the piano or the notes on the guitar.

And then something with the music then goes into the brain of the listener and then must evoke that same sort of feeling.

But also there's another magical layer,

Isn't there,

Where this transfer occurs?

Yes,

I agree.

I've had,

Look,

I have so many comments.

And I'm very moved by them in my YouTube channel and the Insight Timer of not one,

But hundreds of people telling me how the music has helped them.

I give you one example.

One girl sent me a message and said,

Thank you,

Because all my family gathers together to listen to your guitar song.

And we hug because it's the only way to save us from the fear because our town is being bombarded.

So we get together and we listen to your music and feel better.

Some other person said,

I got my heart open operation and I use the music during the operation,

After the operation.

And this has helped me a lot.

And I like this many,

Many comments.

And what I realized of this is that it's a co-creation of the music,

What's embedded in the music,

But also what the person brings to the music when they're listening to,

You know,

It's like when you believe in a medicine,

You take the medicine,

It's very good for you.

Like the placebo effect.

So there's something also that the music can't pass through reason.

Only when you are very trained person,

You can say,

Ah,

This is a G minor,

C minor chord with this 11th and 9th or 13th.

But for an average listener,

You listen to the music and immediately goes to your emotional body.

There's no filtering,

No anything.

So that has a very deep effect on a person,

Soul,

Body.

Now you're also producing spoken content as well,

Aren't you?

Of course on mantras as well.

Is this a new development or is your voice been a part of your work in the past?

Well it has been part of my own journey,

But I was a little bit afraid,

You know.

It's the opposite of me because I've been doing the spoken stuff and I've always used,

I've always sub-licensed the ambient music from other composers and I've just over the last few months,

Because we spoke about this with my book,

I was inspired to write the music of the book and I was afraid at first.

The first track I put up,

I put it on Insight Timer and I just said,

It's by an anonymous composer.

I didn't say it was by me.

That's very funny.

You've gone through the same transition with your voice.

You've got a lovely voice.

Thank you,

Thank you.

My father always told me,

You have a lovely voice,

You should speak,

You should sing,

You should do this,

That.

And I don't know,

There's sometimes fear is your worst enemy in the creation of your own reality and to overcome this stigma that you create by your own fears,

It's really,

The journey is there to overcome these fears.

But also you've chosen the courses on mantras,

Which of course are musical by their definition.

I guess your voice is an instrument in that regard.

That's become something very praised,

I get a lot of praise that my voice is nice.

And fortunately I overcome this fear and confidence of doing the workshop.

And it has great response.

I have now 8,

000 people who have listened to the first workshop I did.

This is the course on Insight Timer,

Yeah?

Yes.

And now I released the Spanish version of it also.

And now I released the second course in Spanish.

And next week I will record the second course I want to do.

And it's definitely your voice,

You're not sampling it through the keyboard.

And they're going to be sister workshops,

Because if you take one and then the next one,

It's like a continuation of it.

The title is going to be The Easy Path for Enlightenment.

And I talk about compassion,

Stillness,

Empathy,

And love as the key pillars of enlightenment.

Oh,

That's interesting,

Because many people,

I think,

Labor under the idea that enlightenment has to be hard and tough.

And I love the idea that it can be easy.

Exactly.

And this is the premise of the workshop.

Enlightenment Made Easy is just this mythical myth that you have to be in the mountain and be like with a guru,

Without eating and almost naked in the snow,

In the cave or something.

But for me,

That's not true.

I learned that enlightenment is basically being in love in the present moment.

That's the only requirement.

That is easy.

It's easy when you know how.

So being in love in the present moment.

That is such a lovely sentiment.

So could we,

Let's just hold that thought.

It's been an absolute delight to speak to you.

But let's now just slide into this musical piece.

Now,

It says here,

A beautiful long time,

Baracko,

Cello,

And violin.

Now obviously,

We now know because the secret is out that it's actually a keyboard and samples of the cello and the violin.

But it had me fooled.

I had no idea until we spoke to each other.

So just very quickly,

So people can find you through Insight Timer.

You're all over YouTube.

I'll put those links down at the bottom of the podcast.

But if people are listening to this through Apple in the car or something like that,

Then what's the best website for people to find you through?

I think iTunes is the best way to acquire the music.

But also it's everywhere.

I mean,

It's in Google Play,

It's in iTunes,

It's in Amazon.

It's also for free in the YouTube.

Fantastic.

And it's also for free in the Insight Timer.

I love that generosity of your spirit.

And that's part of this easy path to enlightenment,

Isn't it?

By gifting so much away,

So much comes back at you without any effort.

I think yes,

Because there's no limit to the music I can output.

So for me,

It's like a gift to myself and to the world that I don't need to hold on to.

There's no need not to share it.

Why?

It's a gift from God and it's a gift for everybody.

So just let it flow.

If people want to pay for it,

I'm happy.

If they want to hear it for free,

I'm happy.

It's there in both ways.

So it's not like I'm trying to retain,

I mean,

How you say,

Stop the flow or something.

Absolutely.

Well,

It sounds like you're a natural with tapping into the zone.

And I hope the gift keeps on giving for you and for everyone that listens to you as well.

And thank you.

It's been a gift to speak to you today and to learn a bit about more your journey and how you work and how you get in flow and real joy.

So let's share some of that gift now in the form of a beautiful long time.

And may you keep going for a beautiful long time.

Thank you,

Tom.

Thank you.

And I admire your work too and have a beautiful,

Beautiful day.

Take care.

Reviews

Thank you Tom for this delightful
Interview ☺️
I have been a fan of Pablo’s since I started on IT 3 years ago. Whispering Notes has lulled me to sleep many times. Peace and blessing to you both.

That was a wonderful interview. And Pablo do have an amazing voice, perfect for the Mantras course. I look forward to more!

Serene & calming. I woke up with worries on my mind & this just soothed my mind & body completely. Beautiful 🙏

Beautiful moments this afternoon. Wonderful insight into the creation of your music! Thank you!

Thank-you for sharing your beautiful music. Always feels like peace has arrived 🙏❤️🙏

Interesting interview, mesmerising music! Thank you for sharing! 😊

Super cool thx you both.

Thank you Tom and thank you Pablo, as always, excellent!!🙏♈🧘🕉️

Excellent interview! I am a fan of Pablo's music & have spent many enjoyable hours listening to his wide range of musical compositions.

Thoroughly enjoyed the talk and music touches my soul deeply...I breathe it in and love the moment.
Thank you.

Thanks for that enlightening interview, Tom🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻Pablo Arellano, together with Weston Brown and The Wong Janice are of my favorite composers/musicians on Insight Timer...

Such a fascinating discussion. Thanks for sharing Tom and Pablo. 🙏

I thoroughly enjoyed both the interview and the composition at the end.

Pablo, mil gracias por haber compartido tu historia, tus inspiraciones y tu proceso. Me tiene sentido que tengas una conexión espiritual tan profunda ya que también me he maravillado de tu obra tan prolífica y bella.

May You Walk In Beauty
✨🙏🏽🌸💜☯️✨

Beautiful 🙏🏼
Thank you 💕

Pablo’s music is my go-to and I be been using this app for years...thank you to both of you!