Reckon | The Whole World's a Stage

This is your brain on binaural beats

If you play 2 sound waves that are very close in frequency (but not quite exactly the same), you’ll get a phenomenon that causes beat frequencies between the 2 sound waves.  As it turns out, if you play these 2 frequencies separately into your 2 different ears, your brain tries to resolve the difference between the 2 frequencies and “hears” the beat frequency even though it isn’t there.

The interesting thing is that these perceived beat frequencies cause your brain to do some strange things.  The imaginary beat frequency manages to somehow force your brain to start taking on the frequency of the beat frequency (I guess based on some sort of resonance or interference concept) and people are using this idea to actually modify their mood and mental state.

Some say that it works so well that you can recreate the effects of meditation, happiness, and even the effects of certain drugs, all without leaving the comfort of your own headphones.

There are a couple of companies that sell the software and the files for it (usually for about $5 apiece), but I’ve found a free version…

There is an open source piece of software called SbaGen that you can download here that will play the binaural files through headphones and it comes with a number of presets.  If you look around, you’ll find a number of sites where you can download other presets as well.  Ok so you’re too lazy to use the Google, so this one will get you started. There are also a ton of them here .

You can also direct download some sound files here and here .  (ogg files)

Here’s a site with an embedded player. They even have a forum for binaural beat enthusiasts here - they have more files for download here.

Note: you HAVE to use headphones for bianural beats to work, preferably good quality headphones.

The names of some of the files are very compelling out there ..check them out:

Astral Projection
Healing System
Meditation
Chakra Stimulation
Delta
Lucid Dreaming
Become Psychic
Remote Viewing
Clairvoyance
Improve Memory
Cosmic Ordering
Telepathy
Control Stress
Speed Learning
Cure Insomnia
Deep Meditation
Chi Generator
Precognition
Increase Energy

So, the 10 million dollar question: Does it work?  Well, I’ve tried a “meditation” preset and a “coffee break” preset and I have to say, I was stunned.  It worked suprisingly well for me.   It’s very interesting because at first you just hear these tones, and after a while (if you relax), they start to disappear and you slip into what I can only describe as a very “open” state where you just let the tones sort of take control.

I have been studying and enjoying composing with beating/phase relationships for many years. The binaural phenomenon is a psychoacoustic phenomenon, but not one that is any more relaxing for your mind than simply just listening to sine waves for 10 minutes. If we all just take 10 minutes and actually breathe or listen very intently to a sound (any sound, for example, a bird outside) we will feel emotionally cleansed. The fact that folks are finally stopping to listen to their environment is more important than pretending that a fantastic psychoacoustic phenomenon is transforming their emotional well-being. In any case, congratulations all on finding inner peace, and check out some of the wonderful music of phase and beating out there, it’s been around for a long long time.