Meditative Drone

Meditative drone is the contemplative wing of drone music: sustained tones and slowly shifting harmonic fields, often rooted in the tambura drones of Indian classical music, in overtone chanting and in the long-tone practices of American minimalism, used to induce presence, slow breathing and altered attention. Composers such as *Eliane Radigue*, whose electronic works unfold over hours of barely perceptible change, and *Pauline Oliveros*, whose Deep Listening practice made listening itself a meditation, define its poles. Instruments range from synthesisers and organ to singing bowls and voices, but the constant is duration: pieces are long, quiet and deliberately uneventful on the surface.