Binaural Music??

[Guest spiral]

I was woundering if anyone here who makes music uses "binaural" theory when composing their music?? if so what are you trying to achieve through using this tech?

[Feathers]

I would guess that people using binaural would be trying to hypnotize the listener for various reasons, ie.. Relaxation, subliminal suggestion (for example: you could suggest that George W Bush is an honest and true leader (this would obviously be a lie!)).

 

I have used Binaural light and sound and the two together can be very relaxing. It can give you a sensation of lying on a beach (A politician will lie anywhere!) or of floating upwards on a bright and sunny day.

 

I used red light synced to the binaural tones but I'm going to use white light (white LED's) since these will create a more intense experience.

 

I would like to point out that certain rhythms can also be hypnotic. Anyone listened to a certain track by ozric tentacles (from Erpland?) that sounds Turkish. The rhythm is shifting in a very clever way which causes the listener to drift away. If you lock onto the rhythm you can also get carried away trying to decipher it.

 

:-)

[Guest DeeperNETWERK]

Not a lot of people are using Binaural methods these days, but it is trying to force it's way into the movie/video game world. Where one day you'll just be surrounded by speakers like a sphere so a gun shot will sound like it actually went through your body. The future will definitly be cool. I'm actually trying to land myself a job in participating in doing this.

 

But firstly, to get the Binaural effect, you MUST MUST MUST use binaural microphones, mounted in a dummy head, JUST right. This is the only way to acheive a true effect. It's basically pretty hard to do cause you'd need to mic everything up, so it'd be difficult to say record a synth or guitar part, but is possible. I've heard of some studies where they are doing some tracks with vocals so it sounds like the guy is singing inside your brain, literally, or deep in your chest cavity. Another one is where a person is singing to you, and he's walking around you. I think it's really cool.

 

You can make fake binaural effects, but it just doesn't sound as good. It only truely works in headphones too, you lose the effect if just listening to it in regular speakers.

[Guest X-tul]

You can make some good binaural recordings using a pair of headphones that you put in your ears, the ones you usually get with a walkman or discman. Just replace the speakers inside the headphones with small microphone capsules (even cheap mic capsules will do!). You should get these capsules cheap from an electronics shop. Just do some soldering and it's done.

 

If you record sounds or ambience this way, the stereo image will be very clear, especially movements like left to right, rotations, etc. You will also get some effects where sounds seem to be placed in the middle of your head, or even behind you.

 

As this method very much depends on the shape of the head used for recording, the recordings will probably only sound good to yourself or to some people with a similar headshape. For different shapes the stereo image will be distorted and usually you'll have a gap in centre position. The dummy heads used form an average representation of human heads for average results for everybody.

 

You will also have to listen to binaural recordings using headphones. A speaker setup won't work......oh, DeeperNETWERK said that already.

 

For really good sound quality, try putting some DPA lavalier mics inside your headphones.

[Guest spiral]

haha, yeah i want to attept to alter brainwaves, but nothing as sinister as hypnotizing people into thinking george bush is cool;)

 

i've just noticed that withing most trance music there is a distinctive frequency difference between layers of sound. like you have the beat and then any number of sounds or loops which seem to build up or slow down.

 

binaural music is used to alter brain waves by having two different frequencies in each ear, the subconscious mind latches onto the difference between the two and this actually alters the brain waves of the listener (to a certain degree).

 

so i guess the question i'm asking is if anyone is creating their music to specifically create a certain type of brainwave frequency in their listeners, is it just a coincidence, or am i full of it

[Feathers]

It's a good question, Spiral. Ozric Tentacles have made reference to mood altering properties of some of their tracks but I don't know if they've used binaural beats. Perhaps the thing to do is to analyze any track which seems to have an unusually strong relaxation/hypnotic effect.

 

I was listening to a Hallucinogen track (I think it was one of the 'live' sets) and at one section it started to make my head spin with the swirlyness of the sounds. I'm sure this was what Posford intended.

 

:-)