How to write music for yoga – part 1

One of Swara Imagined’s missions is to inspire other yogi-musician hybrid people out there to explore the creative space at the interface between yoga and music. In our opinion, there is far too little good music written specifically for yoga out there right now. To make it as easy as possible for other musicians to get creative here as well, in this post we offer a quick guide of how we approach this creative process. This post is to be understood as an invitation to other musicians to get active and creative here themselves.

We take two different approaches to how we write our music for yoga sequences. In the first approach, we FIRST think of a yoga sequence, and THEN write the music that might go with that music. For example, the development of the “Chair Flow” from the album/video “Cloud Nine” took place in the following steps: 

1. Yoga sequence 

For the chair flow we came up with the following exercises:

Chair – twisted chair – twisted lunge – side angle pose – reverse warrior – vinyasa. 

In the first step we thought about how long we want to hold the positions and played a chord sequence (Cm – A# – G# – G) with the keyboard that has approximately the correct length. Each position is held for the duration of one run of this chord progression. This gives the sequence a basic structure, which we used to work on the lyrics and produce the music. The following video shows Alex and Uli developing the basic sequence of the chair flow. In the video you can even hear the click of the metronome in the background!

2. Production of the music and lyrics

Once the basic structure was clear, we moved on to working out the lyrics and music. We kept the electric piano and added a synthesizer bass, drums, guitar, and the harp in the second part of the song. In the following video you can watch Uli recording the guitar:

After that, it was on to writing the lyrics and recording the vocals. In the case of the chair flow, the lyrics and the guided instructions are the same thing. In the following video you can watch the wonderful ElMar Origenes recording the vocals for the chair flow:

3. Practicing to the music and having fun

After the music was fully recorded, we recorded the video “Cloud Nine”, which based on the music. Here you can find the corresponding clip:

Just try composing your own yoga music! It’s not as hard as you think! 

In the second approach, we first write the music, and then think about the sequence to it. That post is coming up soon!