Song of the Soul: Astrologer Gemini Brett and Master Pianist Erik Deutsch Transform Birth Charts into Beautiful Music
Interview by Heather Anderson
Gemini Brett is one of the most respected astrologers working today. He believes astrology should not reside in the mind alone, but should be something sensed, felt, and experienced. Brett is most known for teaching practitioners how to actually read the living sky, not just interpret charts on a screen, but astronomy is only one tool he uses to facilitate embodied astrology Perhaps the most unique is Song of the Soul, a collaboration with world-class pianist Erik Deutsch, in which an astrological chart is transformed into music. I got one for my own birthday last year and I am still treasuring it. You can hear mine here. Brett sat down to talk about how the project was born, what it takes to turn a chart into a song, and why music sometimes reaches the places that words simply cannot.
For anyone who does not know you yet, who are you in the astrology world and what is your lane within it?
Many lanes, but what I am most known for is helping astrologers and astrology reconnect to the living sky. It is surprising to most, but astrologers these days tend to be very fluent with a chart on a screen or on a page alone. They know the birth chart as a map of the soul, which is a beautiful thing indeed, but most do not really understand that it is actually a map of the living sky from a particular place at a particular time. So one of my principal devotions is to help re-nature our astrology by reconnecting it to the marriage of heaven and earth. I take people out under the sky, in Hawaii, Arizona, and other magical places to just meet the stars in a new, but ancient way so they can integrate the measurable, sensual side of the heavens with the immeasurable.
How does that foundation shape the way you approach something like Song of the Soul?
My mission is to help astrology become a sensed and felt thing by freeing it from the confines of the mind and bringing it down into the body. Nothing is more felt than music and there are many correspondences between the arts of astrology and harmony like the 12 zodiac signs and 12 keys. Song of the Soul transforms the rhythms and frequencies we follow in astrology into something beautiful that we can actually hear, feel, and move to. It brings a birth chart to life so we can actually experience the unique essence of an individual.
“My mission is to help astrology become a sensed and felt thing by freeing it from the confines of the mind and bringing it down into the body.”
What is a Song of the Soul, and what inspired you to start this project?
A Song of the Soul is a musical expression of a moment in space and time. So as an astrologer, when we are looking into a birth chart, or a chart of a marriage or a relationship or whatever it may be, we can really get lost in the mind and in the psychology of the thing. Songs of the Soul are musical expressions of an astrology chart, so we can have a physical, sensual experience of it. It whispers to the heart. It helps us move and feel and get it out of the mind and more into the body.
It began in a few ways. I started my astrological career by recording readings as I walked around a park in West Seattle. I would put a recorder in my pocket and move through the chart while outside, and it was wonderful because an eagle would fly by and come into the reading, or I would hear a crying baby in a stroller by the beach, and Earth herself would participate. Years later, a client reached back out to me. I had done a chart for her twin boys when they were newborns, and she told me it had really helped her during those first years, especially the more difficult one. Now she had a new baby girl and wanted a recording for her. At this time I was in a real existential crisis about doing charts for babies. Who was I to say this much about a brand new human being?
Her name was Harmony. It was pretty obvious what needed to happen. I called Erik Deutsch and said, let's actually do this. We recorded a Song of the Soul for her, and I sent it to the mother instead of a reading. She did not say, hey, this is not what I hired you for. She said, oh my god, I love this. And that girl grew up listening to her song. We have now made more than five hundred of these.
How did you and Erik meet, and how did the two of you end up collaborating on something like this?
Erik Deutsch and I played together in a band called Fat Mama, a jazz-oriented instrumental jam band, back in the day in Boulder, Colorado, and then toured all around the country for years. We kind of grew up together, or maybe did not grow up together. He is one of my oldest and closest people.
The Song of the Soul idea began coming together in a few places at once. I had been playing piano in my own astrology sessions for years, when words were not reaching the story I could see in someone's chart, I would just walk over to the piano and play a chord based on that part of their chart. Something in the tension and the resolution of the music would just bring the story out of them. So I had been working with charts musically in consultations for some time.
Then in October of 2019 I led a retreat in Mexico, in San Miguel de Allende and Mexico City, with the specific intention of embodying astrology through sacred geometry, astronomy, and musical harmony. Erik has been living in Mexico City for years, so he came and played while I was teaching. I could speak about squares and trines and their musical expressions, and Erik would just play them at the piano. Watching the emotions that produced in the room, the things that broke open in people, we both saw how powerful it was. And then shortly after that retreat came the request from the mother of baby Harmony. Everything was ready.
For readers who do not know him, who is Erik Deutsch?
Erik is genuinely one of the greatest piano players working today. He leads his own band, the Erik Deutsch Band, and has played with some of the most celebrated musicians across jazz and rock: Nora Jones, the Dixie Chicks, Charlie Hunter, Ron Miles, Jenny Scheinman, Alison Miller, Todd Sickafoose, Citizen Cope, Shooter Jennings. The list is long and it is serious. He is currently the pianist for the Black Crowes. His own music and projects live at hammerandstring.com.
What drew me to Erik for this project specifically, beyond our history together and the depth of his musicianship, is that he has this tender approach to music that you would not necessarily expect from someone who also rocks an arena. He has always had the ability to sit down at the piano and get directly into the heart of a thing. When I first wanted to create a record for my eldest niece Whitney to be born to, I flew to Colorado, we went into a studio in Denver, and he recorded what we called the Baby Sessions: his own compositions alongside covers of Bjork, Tom Waits, Nick Drake. It is a beautiful solo piano record that Whitney grew up listening to. That was 2003. So I always knew that when the time came for Songs of the Soul, Erik was the only choice.
I should also mention, because Mamahood moms will appreciate this: we were fortunate enough to be featured on Goop, which meant we got to create Songs of the Soul for some rather well-known people. Gwyneth Paltrow got one. Her song was really something.
Walk us through what actually happens from someone's birth data to the finished piece.
In astrology we have 12 signs. In Western harmony we have 12 keys. So we use a simple system where we assign the key of A to the sign of Aries and increase chromatically from there. Taurus is B flat, Gemini is B, Cancer is C, and so on. Each planet's position in the zodiac at the moment you were born translates to a specific note. The placement of all the planets creates what I call the palette, the set of notes Erik is allowed to play. Sometimes he only gets six of the twelve notes. Asking Erik Deutsch to play a grand piano with half the keys off limits and still produce something transcendent is kind of the whole game, and he does it every time.
I also give him a harmonic journey through the chart. The song starts in the key of the moon, because that is our feeling body, the first layer we lead with. Then it moves to the key of the sun, the core identity. Then it resolves to the ascendant, the rising sign, the way we meet the world. I like to say: what was rising when you rose is rising within you.
In the middle of that arc I focus on what are called aspect groups, significant geometric relationships between planets where there is tension and then resolution. The best music is built exactly like this, and I would suggest we all are too. I am looking for places in the chart where there is real friction, and then where that friction resolves. So Erik gets a sheet with the palette of notes, the harmonic journey, and then these specific sets of tension and release expressed first as harmony and then as imagery.
The imagery is where it gets interesting. I do not send Erik astrological language. I send him scenes. Cinematic images that carry the emotional and energetic signature of what I am seeing in the chart. Something like: we thought we were going to a boxing match but musical theater broke out instead. Or: a young girl sneaks out of the church during a difficult sermon and finds the river spirits in the forest nearby. He receives the image, sits down at his Steinway late at night in Mexico City, says the person's name to himself a few times, and he does not read much of the notes before he records. He wants to be in the moment with it. And then the music comes through.
You wrote these images for my chart too. Can you share what you saw?
You were born on a moonless night, Heather. Both the moon and the sun were beneath the horizon. Saturn was the only visible planet above the ground at the time of your birth. You have what we call a cardinal T square between the sun in Aries, Pluto in Libra, and Saturn in Cancer. In music that translates to a diminished triad, which is one of the most tense sounds in Western harmony, resolving to a major chord. That tension resolving to release is built right into the geometry of your chart.
The image I wrote for that particular set was: a group of conscious mothers sneak beneath the dark skies of a moonless night to plant a field of flowers just beyond the barbed wire fence of a juvenile detention center. And another: the pen is mightier than the sword, especially when filled with an ink called authenticity and wielded by a warrior named truth.
You can hear Heather's Song of the Soul here and decide for yourself how well those images landed.
What do people say when they hear their song for the first time?
The testimonials show that many people feel like they are listening to the story of their life. These songs, like all charts, like life itself, have challenging parts, and it is usually those parts that people respond to most viscerally. The beautiful passage comes, and then suddenly it gets really tense, and they remember this specific time in their life, and then they feel the way the music moves through it. People have told me that during stormy seasons, these songs help them navigate toward more tranquil waters.
I also get these responses where something uncannily specific lands. Someone will write back and say that image you sent Erik, that actually happened in my life when I was nine. Literally. Or I will hear: I bought a song for my mom and showed her the notes and she wants to know why you wrote it about an alien abduction in the woods. And I have to explain, I was not implying that happened to your mother. I was just trying to give Erik a dreamscape that would guide the music. But sometimes those things are not as random as they seem.
We have also had some really beautiful long-term relationships with these songs. One of our clients is an amazing modern dancer who has filmed herself dancing to her song at different points over the years and shared those recordings with us privately. Watching how her movement and her relationship to the music has evolved as she has is something I will never forget.
Do you find that the meaning of a song shifts for people as their life changes?
Absolutely. We have clients who have written to tell us that part of their birthday ritual is to listen to their song in the morning and dance to it. And what they describe is exactly what you would hope for: like a good book, or like a familiar smell that brings back something ancient, it changes depending on where we are in our cycles. We are smelling with a different nose at forty than we were when we were young.
I also do sessions with clients where we listen to the song together and tune into specific passages and how they relate to the chart. I have one client where we have done this in more than ten sessions. Watching how their experience of both the song and the chart has deepened as they have grown is one of the most moving things this project has given me.
We have had clients commission a new song for each of their birthdays. In astrology we have something called a Solar Return chart, the chart of the exact moment the sun returns each year to where it was when you were born. One client has had five Solar Return songs recorded. We have also had clients ask Erik to record a second version of their birth chart song with the same notes, just to hear how the music comes through differently on a different day. The palette is identical. The song is not. And that, to me, is the whole mystery of this project in miniature.
This also strikes me as one of the most genuinely original gifts I have ever come across. Who are people ordering these for?
New babies are a big one, and that is where it started for us. But the range of what is possible is wider than most people realize at first. You can cast a chart for any meaningful moment, not only a birth. We have done relationship charts, where we combine two people's charts into one. First kisses. Marriage charts. Solar returns. We have even done a chart for the moment of someone's passing. Divorce charts. The moment two people met. A child's first birthday. A parent's chart as a gift from their adult child.
Whatever you can cast a chart for, you can make a song for. And what makes it land differently than almost any other gift is that it is irreducibly about that specific person or that specific moment. The geometry of the sky at the moment you arrived will never repeat. No two charts are exactly the same, and no two songs are either. You can feel that when you hear it. It is not a generalized portrait. It is theirs.
Where does this go from here? What are you most excited to explore next?
Live concerts, for sure. The one time we were able to do this together in a room, at a retreat in Mexico City, was extraordinary. I was feeding Erik different parts of a chart while he played, and I was also asking him to look at particular oil paintings on the wall as he played them. The emotions that produced in the people in that room, the things that broke open, I have been trying to find a way back to that experience ever since. My dream is a concert where Erik plays while I work through the notes, and then at the end we draw names from a hat and create songs live for people in the room.
I have also thought about expanding from solo piano into full band arrangements, bringing in multiple musicians and really letting a chart breathe through a fuller sound. But I want to be careful with that, because part of what makes this project work is that I leave enough space for Erik to actually receive the music as he is playing. He says the person's name to himself a few times before he starts. He barely reads the notes before he records. He wants to be in the moment. That channeling quality is the heart of the whole thing, and I never want to lose it.
Why does this project keep pulling you back personally?
My main devotion in life is to help earthlings have a more deeply terrestrial experience as they connect with the celestial realms. When I look up at the stars, though they are so far away, it somehow helps me be more in my body, to really feel the earth beneath my feet. As I look to the heavens, I have more of a connection to the place I am looking from. These arts, astronomy, harmony, geometry, this was the old way. They help us engage with the powerful opportunity of feeling and healing and knowing and growing that astrology offers, but not only in the jungle gyms of the mind. In our own guts and hearts and body minds.
Songs of the Soul serves that devotion perhaps more than anything else I do, right alongside taking people out under the stars. There is something about offering someone a sensual, embodied experience of their own chart that I will never stop wanting to do. And honestly, every time Erik plays a palette I have given him, I learn something I did not know I believed. That keeps me very alive in this work.
For someone who has never heard of anything like this, what do you want them to understand before they experience it for themselves?
Most importantly, I want this to evade the word understanding entirely. I want it to be an experience rather than a concept. Astrology is such a powerful tool for tuning into our own path of feeling, healing, knowing, and growing, but we so often get lost in the need to know. The music just invites us to relax and have an experience.
People receive their production notes with the astrology and harmony translations. But I always encourage them to listen to their song at least three times, if not thirty, before reading a single word of those notes. This is about getting out of the narration of your life and experiencing your life itself. The body will do the rest.
For someone ready to order their own Song of the Soul or give one as a gift, where do they go?
Everything lives at chartsong.com. You can order a song for a birth chart, a relationship chart, a solar return, or the chart of any meaningful moment. If you want to go deeper into the astrology and the philosophy behind the project, you can find me at geminibrett.com. And for Erik's own music and the full range of what he does, that is all at hammerandstring.com.