I produced, edited and wrote Maejor Frequency for Audible Originals. This narrative audio series navigates the world of sound healing and music but also forges ahead into explorations of comparative religion, psychedelia, ecstatic practice and mental health. Within a month of its release, Maejor Frequency rose to become Audible’s most popular podcast and landed on the cover of AdWeek as the magazine’s Podcast of the Year in 2022; they also named it Best New Podcast, Best Travel Podcast, and Best Creativity Podcast.
The series’ host, Maejor, is a prominent music producer and artist whose songs are heard by hundreds of millions of people. While still young, he left behind his native Detroit and worked his way to the heights of the hip-hop industry in Atlanta. At the apex of his career, he received a life-threatening leukemia diagnosis. The bottom fell out of his career, and undergoing chemotherapy, he fell into depression and addiction.
Maejor Frequency follows the artist’s healing journey into the Los Angeles yoga scene and around the world as he is sucked into a vortex of esoteric music theory, Eastern spirituality and new age mysticism all inspired by Nikola Tesla and that enigmatic scientist’s keys to the secrets of the universe: energy, frequency and vibration.
We orchestrated the entire podcast with high-concept sound design routed through Apple’s spatial audio technology, relying on this new aural algorithm to orient listeners on an exploration of their own mindscapes, literally.
Spatial audio elicits an effect similar to Dolby Surround Sound via two earbuds.
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With audio engineer and composer, Jeremiah Zimmerman, I recreated rich, kinetic scenes and tapestries of healing vibration that swirl around the listener’s head. Planetary gongs and tuning forks and ancient mantras tuned to the episodes’ frequencies fill the sphere beyond your brain and then decay back into nothingness.
We used this technology liberally to transport listeners to the reverberant heart of a Malibu sound bath, to the sonic bang at the heart of Kundalini cosmology to the depths of a root-shaking ayahuasca trip and beyond.
Maejor Frequency is a travelogue, a journey of discovery from the first episode to the end. But in these episodes, the energy resonates on all levels:
Energy (20 to 20,000 Hz)
Maejor takes us back to the claustrophobic tool closet where his music career was born in a tough Detroit neighborhood. Superstar EDM artist Martin Garrix and planetary gong master Lou Maurer unleash a tale of energy that extends from the Motor City streets to the dance halls of techno and house music into the celestial realm and beyond.
Frequency (8 to 12 Hz)
Maejor flies to the edge of the Far East in Malaysia for a hard reset and new vibes. There, he synchronistically meets brain wave entrepreneur Vishen Lakhiani and hears from Indian hip hop artist Raja Kumari about how they each translate Eastern wisdom for modern minds, harnessing ancient healing frequencies to elevate consciousness to higher levels.
The 5th Dimension (216 Hz)
Reeling from chemotherapy and paralized by depression, Maejor takes a trip to the root chakra of the Earth itself, Mt. Shasta in Northern California. There, he takes an ayahuasca journey and meets celebrity spirit guide Shaman Durek before learning how to process the trip with therapist and psychedelics advocate Natalie Ginsberg.
I realized this 10-part narrative over the course of four months for Audio Up, an LA-based podcast production company.
Nearing completion, Audible launched Maejor Frequency into the world at the beginning of 2022 with billboards over the Holland Tunnel entrance in Manhattan and all along the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. The show went on to be named among Variety magazine’s Best New Podcasts of 2022, an Ambie nod for Best Production and Sound Design, and a nomination for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Lifestyle/Self-Help Podcast.