Intriguing neurobiologic uses of sound are not new.
The clip following, from Omni Magazine, is 25 years old:
Concerto for Clitoris
Sounds that Stimulate
by Tom Bozer
LOS ANGELES -- Up on the fourth floor of an elegant old building, in
the very same apartment that once was home to Shirley Temple's
movie-mother, nitrous oxide felon Ken Schaffer stumbles between two
bedrooms, lurching over a mass of flashing electronic equipment in
one, and a thin placid young woman, lying spread-eagle nude on the
wired four poster bed in the other.
The apartment is disarray. Looking like a mad Zapata Rasputin,
Schaffer squints toward a mirror which reflects the face of an
oscilloscope, and zeroes in over the girl, who murmurs a
devil-may-care giggle while Schaffer, half blinded by ouzo, removes a
cigar-thick "transponder'' from a jar of electrode gel and dips it
smoothly into her vagina.
Ranging determinedly over heaps of soda bottles, carelessly
discarded alpha-wave headsets, and pounds of frayed snaking
cables, Schaffer zips into the adjoining laboratory and fires up a
pre-programmed music synthesizer. Momentarily, the mechanical
pencil of a chart recorder begins recording the nearly incredible
phenomenon of "sympathetic clitoral resonance."
Schaffer is experimenting with "bio-resonances" a process whereby
organs of the body and mind respond sympathetically (automatically}
to the excitations of specific sound vibrations, last year he perfected a
method of stimulating the large intestine with 27 cycle sine-waves
Shortly thereafter, at a party in a friend's Bel-Air mansion, he
"indisputably'' demonstrated the effects of his circuits -- causing
massive pile-ups to the bathrooms in what he later insisted was a
"serious" experiment.
Now. with intestinal success tucked under his belt. he's gone on II
took him two months to uncover the right combinations of frequencies
to effect clitoral stimulation Since then, he's taken a leave of absence
from his gig as "propaganda minister' for Douglas Communications --
Douglas Records and the hit film, "El Topo" -- to go full time at his
experiments.
To synthesize sympathetic resonance, nothing more than an
average tape or record deck is needed -- provided a pre-recorded
tape or record is available which produces the necessary tones.
Though Schaffer's laboratory is loaded with about $35,000 worth of
equipment, nearly all of it is unnecessary after the original synthesis is
recorded. The maze of wires leading to Jessica, he explains, is only
for analysis.
The crucial factor, Schaffer explains absently, is in "frequency
heterodynes," or the combination tone created by two or more
separate tones "beating together." One is a sine-wave (shaped like
the waveform of a flute) the other a sawtooth wave. "You get good
sawtooths from violins.'' he added, cueing up a Doug Kershaw record
"On a couple of these tracks, you can sort of get the idea of the effect
by feeling Jessica's clitoris when the violin beats against the bass."
Speakers blaring toward the bed, Kershaw's "Dinky Dinky Die,
Dinky Dinky Doe" thundering toward Jessica, Schaffer points to the
oscilloscope The green trace pattern, which till now had been nothing
more than a bright green dot in the center, undulates rhythmically a
few times a second, in perfect correspondence to the "ghost tone"
resulting from Kershaw's violin and bass interacting. Strong positive
clitoral resonance is unmistakably felt by the girl, whose eyes tickle in
delight.
Schaffer gropes his way to the control room, changes around a
few patch-cords, and returns, grasping my hand and leading it into
the open vagina before me. (Sure enough, you could feel it throbbing,
pulsing, to the music.)
Jessica is enthusiastic. She'll speak no end about the pleasures of
Schaffer's sonic stimulation. Animated with delight, she sits up and
pulls the covers over her shoulders, explaining that two or three
minutes' exposure to the waves increases her sensitivity
"unbelievably" and makes her uncontrollable and almost insatiable.
(Schaffer met her while she was standing on the "girls" line and he on
the "boys" line at the Free Clinic a couple of months ago.)
"An interesting thing." Schaffer notes, "is that there's up to a 10 per
cent frequency variable for peak responses by different women I've
been keeping records of the frequencies that work, and been trying to
correlate it with different factors, like size, race, education, weight ...
ya know?"
Before closing clown the networks of equipment and sitting down to
enjoy straight-from-the-bottle gulps of ouzo (a drink Schaffer swears
is derived from an opium base), Schaffer points to a little red light on
the oscilloscope which, he explains, works like the tuning light on a
stereo FM receiver "That little light glows when the frequencies and
heterodyne ratios are optimized. Just like tuning in KMET or
something."
Since the volume level at which most people play their records is,
according to Schaffer enough to effect resonance, droning
heterodynes could be programmed into records and be buried in the
track. "A lot of the second side of guitarist John) McLaughlin's record
has violin and sitar-bass heterodynes." Jessica adds that the record
makes her "horny" now that she's been clued into the effects.
The current project near complete, Schaffer is working on a penis
resonance stimulator "to jack up virility" before going on to induce
other modes and moods. "Let's get sex out of the way first," he
exclaims in an ouzo drawl. His elbow draped limply around Jessica's
neck, he goes on, "You could make a whole set of records with
different tones dug deep into the tracks -- to shit, turn on, get hot, one
to go to sleep, ya know, l mean I've only just begun on this, and who
knows, there might be a tone or heterodyne to mess with every body
function or headspace -- can you imagine that?"
"Last month, I even hit by accident on a set of frequencies that
makes me hallucinate -- and everybody knows, Jews don't
hallucinate."
As for the likelihood of his making the tones available on tapes or
records, Schaffer isn't sure: "It'd be a sure-fire hit, but it's pretty
heavy, you know, and I sort of see this thing as pure research. If they
were out there on sale, you'd probably see mail-order ads for them in
the back of comic books, you know, the kind with one of those waivers
where you have to initial 'I promise not to use this for Evil,' and I'd hate
to see that loose on the world. Think of some bastard plugging one of
these babies into an Altec at the Garden, the place would go crazy
--'cause there's no way to resist it… ya know?"
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