Is there anything to binaural beats?
As best as I can tell, there’s no good science done to say one way or the next.
I have a great interest in the subject of sounds that cause feelings.
About a year back I was stricken with a constant, nearly debilitating anxiety.
Xanax did nothing. NOTHING did anything.
I became obsessed with the idea of sounds that relaxed me. I found a few songs that didn’t have exactly earsthetically-pleasing sounds per se but had frequencies and noises that made me feel…less anxious.
The song Chinatownby DoMakeSayThink was like medicine.
I started thinking about frequencies in the sound waves that could interact with or counter act my brain signals.
I did some digging and found this is what binaural beats claims to do.
I have used various generators and recordings to no result.
I am still very much interested in the idea that a sound or group of sounds can be clinically relaxing for the wave pattern rather than the fact “it just sounds relaxing.”
Is this even remotely plausible…?
Marconi Union came out with “the most relaxing song ever written,”but it’s just same-ol’ same-ol’ ambient, only they wrote it in conjunction with a dubious laboratory who “tested it.” it’s hokey and untrue, I’m sure—but the principle still intrigues me.
I’d be willing to bet some sounds (lion’s roars, baby cries, etc.) cause various primal emotional responses as would be appropriate for our ancestors. There could even be artificial sounds that tap into those responses, perhaps more effectively than the original does.
I would also be willing to bet that individual people’s experiences and preferences are much more powerful determiners of how they perceive sounds. Formative memories and cultural background probably drown out most, if not all, of those primal base human responses.
Personally, “I Do” by Yoko Kanno and Ilaria Graziano is my go-to calm down song.
i mostly listen to doom, thrash, black and death metal. i listen to the extreme of the extreme. grindcore. i run the gammut from slowest, heaviest stuff to crazy, frantic stuff.
but i listen to stuff like i posted above which has to be the polar opposite.
i can sleep to some heavy slow stuff. it actually relaxes me. people say fast crazy music winds you up, but mostly i just think it’s fun.
but really i’m not talking about music that relaxes me, i’m more interested in the wave function and things like phase cancellation and if any of it could actually be a thing that works.
Here’s a couple of articles you might find interesting. They’re about pain, not anxiety, but still interesting. We don’t know much about the science behind music, but people are starting to study it.
Link and link.
The first article theorizes that music distracts us from pain. The other article mentions that people in a pain study listened to a wide variety of music - rock seemed to ease pain just as well as soothing music.
I do think we’re going to figure it all out eventually, but now it’s hit or miss. A binaural beat that works for someone else just doesn’t work for you, because your brain is wired differently.
when dentists traveled on horseback in old Europe they employed musicians to play music during them doing treatments (extractions).