Brainwave entrainment : Ramping

If you haven't read any of the previous articles, you might want to have a look at some of that stuff, as it gives you the basic building blocks for putting together a binaural preset using an audio editor.

Just to quickly summarize - you create two audible tones, one in each ear. The tones should ideally be between 200 HZ to 1000 HZ, and the difference between the tones is the binaural beat you are gunning for.

So, if you want an 5 HZ binaural (associated with sleep), you would put a 200 HZ tone in the left ear, and a 205 HZ tone in the right.

Ideally, the end result should be listened to with headphones, if you want a real binaural. If you listen through speakers, you'll get a monaural beat instead of a binaural beat. (Although, I find monaural beats work very well also.)

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Now, on to the topic of today's blog -- RAMPING.

Say you want to create a binaural preset to help you fall asleep. You would just do what I described above. 5 HZ binaural -- 200 HZ left ear, 205 HZ right ear. Voila - done.

If you are already kind of/sort of sleepy, or at least relaxed - this will work fine.

However, let's say you've just come from Starbucks (or for New Englanders, Dunkin Donuts), and you've just consumed a dozen large coffees.

Or -- let's say you've just spent the last 12 hours playing Call Of Duty, and are in such an insane state of hyper-vigilance that sleep seems like an impossibility at this point.

In that case - you might need to ramp down to the brainwave frequencies associated with sleep, rather than just starting off with a 5 HZ binaural. You need to coax your brain down from where it currently is, down into dreamland.

To do this, you start with a higher binaural, closer to your mental state. So, you may want to start at 20 HZ. From there, over time, you gradually drop the binaural down to 5 HZ. The bigger the difference, the longer you want to make the rampdown.

The easiest way to do this. With an audio editor, set one ear to a consistent tone. In keeping with what we used above, let's set the left ear to 200 HZ. You want to make this a fairly long duration. For this example, let's do 20 minutes worth of it (1200 seconds).

Now, for the right ear, we're going create an audible tone that effectively creates a 20 HZ binaural, and then gradually works it's way down to a 5 HZ binaural. With Adobe Audition, the tone generator allows you to set an initial value and a final value - it allows you to limit it to either the left or right channel, and then mix paste the end result in with the left channel tone you already created. The initial value should be 220 HZ, and the final value should be 205 HZ. (This, paired up with the 200 HZ tone in the left ear will create the binaural beats we're looking for.)

One thing to note - since this is a fairly long file, and since we're not creating a background sound to pair up with the tone, it doesn't hurt to keep the sample rate very low. I've been testing with sample rates as low as 8000 HZ and 16 bit resolution, and I haven't noticed any degradation at all, particularly using sine waves.

Now, if you incorporate the background sound (noise, nature sounds) right into the main audio file, then you'll need to go higher with the sample rate to accurately capture the higher frequencies from the background sound. However, the binaural itself is not going to have much in terms of higher frequencies, so lower sample rates are fine here. (At worst, if you're using waveforms that have overtones, you might cut off some of the highest overtones.)

As I promised last time, I am linking to a couple of examples. One ramps down from the alpha range into delta. A second example ramps up, from the Alpha-Theta line up into higher Beta.

Disclaimer #1 - depending on the web-based plugin your browser is using, these WAV files may or may not work within the browser. You might have to download the WAV and then open it locally from your computer.

Disclaimer #2 - you might want to push down the volume you a little on your speakers when initially playing, and then adjust to a comfortable level. The first example at least is recorded a little 'hot' in terms of the levels.

Disclaimer #3 - should whatever device you play the sound from implode or spontaneously combust, I will not be held liable, as it was clearly either a manufacturer defect of some kind, or you didn't lower the volume like I suggested above. =)


Example of downward ramping : Alpha to Delta 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzTirQgov1pmOEl5bktFTE9yS2c/view?usp=sharing

Example of upward ramping : Alpha to Beta

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzTirQgov1pmaWx5elRCZkwxQUE/view?usp=sharing

Example of Mike rapping 

(Nah - I don't think the world is ready for that.)