These tracks aren’t music in the usual sense. There’s no musical development beyond the initial set of parameters. From there selected randomizations give the audio constant variation. Nothing loops!
I originally started making “noise” tracks for myself as noise-blocking audio to help me sleep. I was living in a noisy neighborhood in a noisy house doing shiftwork. I tried the usual things to help me sleep through the noise: ambient music, soundproofing the room, TV background, and pure white noise. I either got sick of the music, distracted by the TV, or found that the background clunks and thumps still penetrated whatever soundproofing or competing sound source I used.
I experimented with loads of different audio combinations and finally settled on constant random variation within fairly narrow parameters. That way the sound was at a constant volume, had no surprises, yet had enough variation that thumps, voices and squawks from the house and street could fit in without startling me awake.
Over many years I’ve tried all sorts of variations. For quite a few years I made “binaural beats” using slightly different frequencies in the left and right channels to create an interference frequency set to low-Hertz “entrainment” rates. There are all sorts of wild claims about what these frequencies can do. I didn’t find anything magical about over what good dark ambient deep noise could do so have eventually discarded them – which is also a lot easier on the speakers. It also means the tracks no longer require headphones for the full effect.
The most interesting aspect of these tracks – beyond just noise blocking and sleep help – is the way they can induce dreams. I always test these tracks before uploading them, sometimes for months or even a year or more tweaking the parameters. Almost all f the can activate a lot of dreams although the effect seems to wear off after a period of days, or if I’m lucky, weeks. So “fresh” audio is needed to keep up the effect. I’ve also found that the more active the track the better the effect – simple noise or rain sounds won’t activate any dreams, at least for me.
Why this should be so I have no idea. It works for me and if it has any effect for you I’d love to ear about it.
With each of these videos I also have an MP3 for download for Patreon subscribers. In all cases it is a 256K MP3 to ensure the audio retains full quality. Of course that means big files, a 10-hour MP3 is typically about 1Gb.
https://www.patreon.com/richarddehove
Happy drifting and dreaming,
Richard
November 2022