Sleeping to Music – Sleep Headphones and Accompanying Soundtracks for Slumber

Recently I had an idea to explore the market and technology of “sleep headphones” – that is, headphones designed to wear all night while the listener sleeps. As my readers know well, the ambient segment of my archive comprises over 60,000 ambient tracks from nearly 5,000 artists’ discographies. My bedroom is set up with a dedicated amplifier and a tablet wirelessly patched into my server on my home network which plays ambient music through a vintage pair of Advent One speakers my late father passed down to me for 10-12 hours each night while I sleep.

Unfortunately, as the albums must be played at a minimal volume for sleep, the environmental noise of rainfall, passing cars, and my furnace drown out much of the nuance and delicate sounds of the music. This is why I decided to explore an alternate solution.

A quick search on Amazon returns a product named as Amazon’s Choice for the category of “sleep headphones” – called MUSICOZY Sleep Headphones Bluetooth Headband Wireless Music Headband Headphones. The product has 12,698 ratings and an average of 4.3 stars and is priced at just $19.99. The headband is lightweight, breathable, pairs wirelessly over Bluetooth, and the lithium ion battery lasts for ten hours on a single charge.

I carefully read through the product details and was seriously considering clicking that big “buy” button, but I took some extra time to read through all of the customer reviews as well as the question-and-answer section from those who purchased the product. This revealed an undesirable property of the model – notably that the speakers emit a loud “low battery” warning every time they are in need of a charge. A few customers complained that this is jarring and wakes them up from a sound sleep.

So I searched Amazon again, and found something intriguing. I discovered a very similar model from a different manufacturer, called Perytong Bluetooth Sleep Headphones Wireless, Sports Headband Headphones. These were curiously also named as Amazon’s Choice, but this time for the nearly-identical category of “sleep+headphones” (that’s with a plus symbol between the search terms). This product has 39,919 ratings – more than three times that of the former model, and matches its average of 4.3 stars. Both devices offer Bluetooth pairing and a battery life of ten hours with an approximate two-hour re-charge time. This model was priced at $39.99 marked down to a deal price of just $19.99, and it is available in a variety of colors.

I carefully read through the question-and-answer section and other buyers confirmed that this model has no low battery warning sounds. I surmised that other customers had viewed and compared the same products that I had.

The most promising review came from a customer named Joshua B who said:

These headphones have become my go to for night listening and sleeping, for these reasons…

The headband feels lightweight and doesn’t heat up, even during summer nights with windows open.

As long as my head is on something soft like my pillow, the round, hard plastic speakers inside the headband do not get in the way or introduce much discomfort or pain. This makes side, back, or stomach sleeping and listening comfortable. I can turn to any side and the headband remains in reasonable position on my head, and speakers in reasonable position at my ears. I make small adjustments to the speaker positions, but this is not a hardship. If I’m on my side, sometimes I can feel one of the round speakers pressuring my ear. So far it hasn’t bothered me.

While both left and right speakers need to be adjusted/positioned within the headband each time I put it on, this is a minor inconvenience for comfortable listening without discomfort.

The battery life easily lasts all night and into the next morning. It lasts two nights. I find myself charging the headphones either once a day or once every two days, just to be sure they’re fully charged. Charging is fast.

The plug-in side of the USB-C cable is actually tucked into the back of the headband. I can easily locate it, pull it out, and plug in. Surprisingly, it’s not uncomfortable tucked back into the headband, while wearing. Do the plug and the two round, plastic speakers feel a little clunky? Yes they do. I envision this design being refined over time.

Conclusion:
Overall, this is my favorite sleeping headphone set. Battery life is great. Comfort is fine. Easily better experience than earbuds or a headphone form factor.

I did a bit of Googling outside of Amazon before finalizing my decision and found that the latter model was also the Editor’s Pick on Sleepopolis’ article showcasing the best Headphones for Sleeping. For under $20 it seemed like a safe bet.

They arrived just a few days later. Exploring the modest packaging and reviewing the included instruction guide, they seemed like a very straightforward product. No USB charging brick is included, but thankfully I had a spare. And evidently the headphones only accept a charge when used with the short charging cable included with the device. The product touts a lifetime warranty, while customer service is provided via a personal gmail account address included in the manual. Hopefully the manufacturer will be around long enough to honor it. (But hey – it was only $19.99.)

There were a few key functions to note. When the headband is fully charged, (in approximately two hours), the charging light on the front of the headband turns solid blue. To connect to Bluetooth, the user presses and holds the Play/Pause button. The headphones will enter pairing mode. Turn on the Bluetooth of your device and connect to the headphones. That was a snap.

Short press the minus button to advance to the next song. Long-hold the minus button to lower the volume. Short press the plus button to reverse one song. Long-hold the plus button to raise the volume. And long-pressing the center play/pause button powers the device on and off.

And yes – the headphones work with Bluetooth phone calls.

After a brief acclimation with the product I queued up a seven-hour-long album on my tablet and scanned through the tracks adjusting the volume to make sure I wouldn’t be disturbed by a spike in sound in the middle of the night. I found I was able to rest comfortably on my back or on my sides without any pressure from the speakers. The headband was fairly comfortable and breathable like the other reviewers had described.

Of course, these are not audiophile speakers by any stretch of the imagination. They’re just small, efficient speakers for yoga, workouts, or sleep. As most of the albums I’ll be playing in them will be minimal drones at a very low volume, the music isn’t going to be pushing the limits of the speakers, and I’ll be asleep for most of the listening sessions, so I am fine with that. Once again – they were under $20.

The music was enjoyable with the Perytong headphones I selected. I did notice that a lot of the subtle detail of the raindrops in the recording were lost with these speakers, but that was to be expected. It still sounded pleasant and relaxing which is just what I need to sleep.

Unfortunately, due to a combination of my excitement at acquiring new audio tech for my favorite genre coupled with the novelty experience of my first-listen, I remained awake for nearly the entire seven-hour duration of the album. But that was a consequence of my overactive mind and not a fault of the product. I just need to get accustomed to this new listening dynamic. In time I hope to experience a more restful sleep with them on. So far, I’m pleased with the purchase.

Now on to my promised Accompanying Soundtracks for Slumber. I took a quick look and put together a brief list of highlights. Forgive me – I can do much better when I have time to dedicate to the task. But at a quick glance…

There are a few noteworthy long-form sleep albums, including:

Max Richter’s Sleep (8 hours)
Robert Rich’s Somnium (7 hours) – this was the album I employed for my first-listen
and Perpetual – A Somnium Continuum (8 hours)

Larger catalogs and archives for ambient listening include:

Hearts of Space (1327+ broadcast library)
Ambient Music Guide Podcast series (55 mixes)
A Strangely Isolated Place (62 mixes)
Brian Eno (the ambient portion of his 410 major releases)
William Basinski (23 albums)
selections from 36 (22 albums)
Mathias Grassow (149 albums)
Robert Rich (72 albums)
Deuter (89 albums)
Klaus Wiese (100 albums)
Harold Budd (82 albums)
Steve Roach (162 albums)
Music For Sleep (29 albums)

As well as a few sleep album favorites – 

Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Panaiotis ‎– Deep Listening
The KLF – Chill Out
Jimmy Cauty – Space
This Is Not What Space Is About
This Is Not What Chill Out Is About
Peter Broderick – Float
Lawrence English – A Colour For Autumn
John Foxx – Cathedral Oceans Vols I-III
Moby – Calm. Sleep.
Tom Middleton – Sleep Better

And additional albums from artists including:

Stars of the Lid
A Winged Victory For The Sullen
Deaf Center
Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto
Marconi Union
Eluvium
The Album Leaf
Tapes and Topographies
Loscil
Liquid Mind
Jóhann Jóhannsson
Ólafur Arnalds
and Nils Frahm

To supplement and introduce new content into my library for sleep accompaniment, I compiled album data from various sources around the web. I’ll share a few of those chart and list sites below for my readers to join me on my journey of exploration for quality ambient soundscapes for sleep.

The first is Atmospheres and Landscapes: 600 Greatest Ambient Releases from data on RateYourMusic.com:
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/Carbon_Fields/atmospheres_and_landscapes__600_greatest_ambient_releases/

Then I found a second chart on the same site from a user named wilczur for 750+ Ambient Essential Albums Ranked: https://rateyourmusic.com/list/wilczur/%E2%80%A1-ambient-essentials-%E2%80%A1-650-albums-ranked/1/ 

Next I compiled a database showcasing highlights of ambient drone artists’ catalogs. Below is the introduction from the accompanying documentation I authored:

Methodology:

Artist names were sourced from music-map.com entering Stars of the Lid as the core artist value and pulling favorites from the most similar (proximate) artists in the cluster.

Each artist/composer was then run through rateyourmusic.com and all of their releases were then sorted from highest to lowest overall score from the userbase’s ratings.

Albums I’ve already exhausted from my own library were omitted so that the list would comprise new or lesser-experienced releases of the genre.

The resulting LPs were indexed for future listening.

From that list, I assembled a roster of examples of “bleak and haunting yet beautiful music, like the emptiness of a barren and gray wasteland (Ambient, Minimal, Drone).”

Then I constructed a chronological survey of Minimal Ambient Modern Classical Music from other articles around the Web.

For more quality content, I compiled ambient titles contributed by members of the SteveHoffman music forum at the links below:

Any ambient recommendations?
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/any-ambient-recommendations.649771   
and 
Top Five Ambient: Your Choices?
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/top-five-ambient-your-choices.457661/  

And I wrapped up my research refining various incarnations of an ambient music introductory guide I’d authored and shared with friends over the years. The present iteration of my Introduction to Ambient Music (Revised Edition) was incorporated into the book I published.

There are also a variety of sleep music streaming sites and apps, including:

headspace.com/sleep/sleep-music 
ambientsleepingpill.com 
calm.com/music (the same as meditationoasis.com)
http://www.ultimathule.info/listen.html 
sleepbot.com
and ambient-sounds.com

I’ve additionally bookmarked each of the generative music apps showcased at Brian Eno’s generativemusic.com but haven’t yet tried sleeping to them.

I’m definitely interested in continuing to expand my library of sleep music. I’m always interested in exploring more non-sequencer based, beatless ambient minimal tone poems such as Indo-Tibetan music for meditation, generative soundscapes, etc. I enjoy veteran minimalists like Harold Budd, Steve Roach, and Robert Rich who are regularly featured on transmissions of Hearts of Space. I have a complete HOS archive, as well as all the essential artist discographies, from Popol Vuh to Klaus Wiese, and their contemporaries like Music For Sleep and Stars of the Lid. 

I also have complete vinyl and digital archives of foundational ambient kosmische musik discographies such as those of Cluster and Harmonia and other forebearers of the genre. I’m looking for quality catalogs beyond the common threads. Neo-classical composers like Max Richter are welcome as well. As I mentioned the ambient segment of my library clocks in at over 60,000 recordings, but I’m always interested in new discoveries. I’m ideally looking for soundscapes for work and sleep to quiet an overactive mind. I invite my readers to share any music they find well-suited to sleep-listening, or if they find any value in the selections I’ve noted above.

Forgive me for any glaring omissions in my own offerings. Happy sleeping!

Brian Eno: His Music And The Vertical Color Of Sound (a review)

Brian Eno: His Music And The Vertical Color Of Sound by Eric Tamm is the author’s dissertation drafted while studying under Robert Fripp. The work certainly reads as an exhaustive thesis. Musicological terminology abound, one chapter alone discusses pandiatonicism, ethnomusicological scholarship, Phrygian modality, the principle of timbral heterogeneity, improvisatory roulades, Brahmsian modulation, temporal articulations, diatonic grandeur, inner melodic differentiation, and likens one Eno track to Xenakis as being characteristically “monistic with internal plurality.” By the work’s conclusion even Tamm, himself is decisively spent, and in his final statement, he pleads to his professors, “Amen. And may I now have my dough, please?”

But academics aside, the text is a tremendously satisfying read. Tamm provides a contextual and informed perspective seldom witnessed in the province of rock, and his mastery of the subject is warmly welcomed and appreciated. Tamm examines each of Eno’s incarnations over the course of his career and explores his compositional methodology and his musical philosophy at each new turn. I found myself highlighting entire sections of useful analysis to the point where my notes consumed nearly a hundred pages on their own, as every chapter is brimming with valuable insight. While no single excerpt exemplifies the depth of information presented in the full text, the closing segment titled The Music’s Beauty offers a thoughtful observation about Eno’s catalog:

Music deals with time and exists in time, and may be seen as a sacred observation of the mystery of time. Whether through classical symphony, Renaissance mass, reggae dance, jam session, or ambient soundscape, time marked by music is set aside, consecrated. Music concentrates time, making us aware of different levels of temporal magnification, from immense historical vistas to momentary transitions. It enhances and focusses our ability to perceive changes, fluctuations, and developments in an overall state. Music is paradoxical: profoundly unnaturalistic, presenting an abstract temporal tableau, it may nevertheless poignantly evoke not only realms of common, everyday experience, but images of the grandeur of eternity. Eno’s music is capable of thus transforming time, for those who would listen.

I find this to be an elegantly concise, and almost poetic description of the artist.

KLF Recovered and Remastered: The KLF Remix Project Part III – An In-Depth Review

Re-examining my previous proto-ambient post, I realized that I ever-so-briefly touched upon my latest KLF acquisition, but offered little in the way of insight or feedback about the record.

Well I am nothing if not thorough with this blog, so I’m back to offer a proper, track-by-track review of this disc.  (Hey, it’s not every day that NEW KLF material comes around, so let’s do this right.)

Musical Context:
I came into MINUS FOUR having recently explored The Orb’s collaboration with David Gilmour, and their new 2013 effort with Lee “Scratch” Perry.  I have also been getting into Klaus Schulze’s earliest works (including those with The Cosmic Jokers, Ash Ra Tempel, Tangerine Dream and his solo recordings produced between 1972 and 1978.)  So my musical environment at the time MINUS FOUR arrived was certainly one of ambient, German-influenced space music, with a healthy touch of dub.

Innerspaceboy’s Review:

“What Time Was Love¿ (Anti-Club Mix)” is an excellent opener to the EP.  It builds anticipation, opens the listener’s pours to absorb the slightest and most minimal of musical events, and clearly communicates that this is quality headphone music.

The subtleties are clearly audible throughout the track, demonstrating what purchasers of the earlier Recovered & Remastered EPs already know: this album is no victim of the loudness war.  It is magnificently mastered and enjoyed best through a quality pair of circumaural cans.

“Kylie Said Deeper (Microphase Remix)” introduces the first steady rhythm of the EP.  But this is not dancefloor music – it is deep, heady techno and wonderfully entrancing.

With your mind warmed-up by these openers, you’re ready to go all-in with track three – “What Time is Dub¿ (Salz Acid Dub Mix).”  Your eyes are closed in musical meditation and your pulse matched to the deep, steady beat of this beautiful mix.  I particularly loved the build leading to the beloved “Kick out the Jams” sample, which is silenced after the crowd cheers and the listener is left in a wonderful sonic void as the bass comes back in.  Well done.

“Build A Fire (Agent Cooper’s Damn Fine Ambient Mix)” has a pulse of its own as well, but it’s an elegant implied pulse that one can only find with dark ambient music.  This is the sort of mix we might expect if Black Swan were asked to toy with KLF samples, and the result is splendid.

“Madrugada Eterna (Live From The Lost Continent Original Version)” is a segment from EP 6, and while I would usually dismiss excerpted/previously-released tracks, the song is well-placed here in the mix.  The tempo is slightly elevated, and continues the ambient theme of the record.  It is enjoyable and fitting transition to the next track –

“Kylie Said To Jason (Trance Kylie Express)” is one of the most uptempo tracks on the EP, but the bass isn’t overpowering, the hi hat is steady, and the samples continue the listener on the exciting path of quality, new KLF mixes.

“Build A Fire (In The White Room Noisesurfer Mix V2)” takes you right back into deep, minimal, headphone house.  The samples are so slight and smooth that I loose myself completely to the song.  Just the way I like it.

“The Monumental Tribute Mix By Strawb” closes the EP beautifully.  Imagine a “spacey” re-imagining of “Live From The Lost Continent 2012.”  It’s lively and exciting, and two minutes in a solid, melodic bass riff comes in and gets your head nodding.  The samples aren’t introduced quite as fluidly as they are on “Lost Continent ’12,” but honestly, that’s a high standard to hold any track to.

All in all, MINUS FOUR is an excellent mix which matches the production quality of all the other fine releases in this collection.  Highly recommended.