I put my synthesizers to work and created a track earlier this year that was intended to help me forget about my pain and fall asleep. It works so well that if I listen to it mid-morning, I still get groggy.

I already shared this track in a previous post, but wanted to share it again because I use it so often when I need to dial back a brain overload.

“Binaural beats” are difficult to describe without getting technical, and I don’t want to get technical on you here. Once you listen to the track below, you’ll hear the beats in the audio. Good luck trying to describe them after you listen.

Binaural beats do not work on speakers. You will not experience brainwave entrainment with binaural beats unless you listen to them on headphones or earbuds. The sound needs to go directly into your ear holes. I consider it to be a form of accelerated meditation.

To create binaural beats, I use frequencies on the synthesizer which are mostly in the sub-bass territory. So if you don’t have good earbuds that can produce some phat bass, then you might not get the full effect. Get yourself some Smokin’ Buds 2 for $30.

Or if you’re a high-fidelity fanatic like me, full-sized headphones work – but only if you’ve got a headphone amp to drive them with. The audio amplifiers in smartphones are not powerful enough to move full-sized headphone magnets.

The volume should be medium loud. It should feel like the sound waves are reaching through your earbuds and stroking your lizard brain with sound vibrations, the same way you’d stroke a cat’s soft fur with the palm of your hand. It should almost tickle  the middle of your brain.

The “white noise” foundation of this track (below) is a stereo field recording of the I70 corridor where New Castle nestles up against the Colorado River, and the interstate highway weaves parallel ribbons along the steel curves of railroad tracks that carry multiple freight and Amtrak trains through the rugged mountains beyond. (See opening image).

There is no trickery and nothing “subliminal” about this track. That’s a good  dragon, by the way. That dragon would defend honor and integrity.

About a minute into it, we hear a freight train go by. It’s got a squeaky wheel. The fairly annoying noise goes by from right to left, above the din of the highway traffic; chiseled mountainous ridges nearby reflect the sound of rubber hitting asphalt at high speeds. Let the squeaky wheel carry with it all your worries as it vanishes to leave you drifting through the rest of the track.

By five minutes in, you’re beginning to relax and so is your brain. The binaural frequencies are synchronizing your brain while you listen, and the effect deepens the longer you listen.

Enjoy the track with your eyes closed, breathing deeply into your belly – in through your nose, out through your nose – and allow your attention to be held by the complex tapestry of healing sound unfolding into your ear canals and feel  it winding down your brain.

Again, please use headphones to listen to this track when you can lay back and relax. Listen a second time for a deepened effect.

So – how would you describe the sound of the binaural beats in this track? Did it make you sleepy? Did it help you relax?