Whether you are at home, relaxed while stretching your mind’s eye or you are triangulating some point in a far-flung location at the edge of time, Remote is the sound of the universe perceiving itself.
As the music swells, a set of binaural beats establish a relaxing alpha pattern. After two and a half minutes, the carrier frequencies glide down, resolving at the root tone of the music while the binaural beat frequencies drop from alpha to a set of beat frequencies conducive to remote viewing.
Listen for free anytime at higher-music.com or make a donation to add it to your collection and/or download.
WARNING: This music contains audio brainwave entrainment technologies. People who are subject to seizures, auditory disorders, or adverse mental conditions should not listen to this music without first consulting a physician. DO NOT listen to this music while driving, operating heavy machinery, or performing any other activities that require focused attention. Although binaural beats entrainment audio may contribute to wellness, it is not intended as a replacement for medical or psychological treatment. No medical claims are intended express or implied. No statements made have been evaluated or approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. For best results, use stereo headphones or earbuds.
Hello folks welcome to the episode 48 of our podcast The Artist and of course we are touching half a century, gonna be soon 50 episodes thank you. Past episodes we focused on the internal life of a film maker, the challenges and how mental health could take a toll. Mental sanity and balance life style are important ingredient for greater creativity. Which is why we have been talking about choicism, we’ve been talking about vuve. We’ve been talking about choosing your sounds over noise. We have spoken to film makers who have shared their internal world in episode number 1, episode number 16 and much more so due tune in and check those episodes. Today we’re talking about the altered state on consciousness. Hacking your consciousness for peak performances and altered states of consciousness is currently a trillion dollar industry and by all means play a huge role in hacking your consciousness.
Today we have artist and creator J.S. Epperson. J.S. Epperson is musician working with Binaural Beats to facilitate altered starts of consciousness. You can find him on his website; higher-music.com. In the episode we also have one of our favorite pieces of music by J.S. Epperson, Ascension. Further results of the brain wave state where Einstein and Edison solved their toughest creative problems. So guys this is an opportunity to act consciously into Theta brain wave state and we are grateful that J.S. Epperson could take our time and take us through the process of creating Binaural Beats and its impact on our creativity, so ladies and gentleman J.S. Epperson in the house.
Interviewer: Hi Jay, welcome to our podcast The Artists and thank you for joining in at 5:00am.
J.S: Thank you for having me here. It’s going very well it’s dark and its quiet.
Interviewer: Are you woken up or you’re continuing your work right now.
J.S: I probably got up and hour ago to kind of clear my head. And get ready for this, no this is actually my normal creative time.
Interviewer: Tell me Jay about this very exciting Binaural Beats that you are into creating and I believe a lot of the present generation you know getting into the whole understanding of Binaural Beats and how it can enhance creativity and cognition. Just to relay simply for our listeners. What are Binaural Beats?
J.S: Well I like to think of Binaural Beats as a form of brain wave entrainment. It’s a type of an audio technology that allows you to entrain your brain to specific frequencies. It does so by using two different signals one in the left ear and another in the right ear and it kind of works like those 3D stereoscopic glasses. They create an illusion of the third signal or the thing that’s not there.
Interviewer: Just creating Binaural Beats… how do you sort of compose them? How do you get into it?
J.S: Well how do you compose a Binaural Beat? Binaural Beats themselves are generated using oscillators: it’s kind of techy. There is software you can use to do this, apps on your phone you can download pretty much from anywhere. The Binaural Beats created can then be used for meditation, sleep, and affirmations. I try to roll binaural beats into musical projects, giving a more artistic take on Binaural Beats rather than a bland, clinical approach.
I try to roll binaural beats into musical projects, giving a more artistic take on binaural beats rather than a bland, clinical approach.
J.S. Epperson, Episode 48 of The Artists podcast
Interviewer: and of course there isthis verification like you get into, the Alpha State, the Beta State, the Theta State, the Delta State. How do you sort of design this?
J.S: I design it by thinking of what kind of experience do I want to create for the listener? What kind of experience do I want to have as a listener? At any given moment the brain is going through a large number of brain waves. Right now we’re probably very Beta dominant. We’re having a conversation; we’re talking to each other. We’re kind of going through our memories and our lessons and having this conversation so that kind of forces us into a Beta state of mind.
Interviewer: Right.
J.S: But we’re also experiencing– You know I just work up an hour ago, there’s probably a good chunk of Delta in there and I’m very relaxed right now so there’s also Alpha and what I try to do is take all these different brain wave states and create an experience that you know through a period of time. So I will start with one set of frequencies and in about 5 minutes in I’ll kind of ramp them down if I want you to go deeper into your subconscious and unconscious mind or I can ramp them up if I want you to have a more intellectual or kind of focused experience.
Interviewer: Jay tell me if we want to have an altered state of consciousness or if you want your music to take us into an altered state of consciousness and I’m listening to for example further brain wave. What would happen to my mind and how can I use it as a listener to enhance my altered state of consciousness?
J.S: There are really five main types of Binaural Beats. Five main types of brain wave patterns now there are others but we really categorize them into the Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. Theta that’s one of the lower frequencies. This is your subconscious mind this is the mind you experience when you are deep into mediation, maybe visualization of Theta brain waves are associated with the REM state of the sleep cycle where you have a visual dream experience. So to get into a meditative experience you know listening to audio with a lot of Theta brain waves you know close your eyes, put on some head phones and listen to some Theta waves, eventually through the frequency following a response you will entrain to the Theta signal.
Interviewer: So it’s like we get into it every day unconsciously but by listening to it, really get into consciously?
J.S: Yeah. All these states for the most part can be achieved. You know you can make a choice and you can get there. What I love about altered states of consciousness is that all it really is; is right now we’re in one spot we want to get somewhere else. That’s the alteration. I think sometimes people feel like Binaural Beats are unnatural and these are natural states of minds you experience Beta every single day this is not new to any of us. So yeah we can put our head phones on, dial up some Theta audio in our phones and if we take a little time for ourselves we can get into a Theta brain wave state.
Interviewer: What’s the frequency like for example when you composing. What do you keep in mind?
J.S: When I’m composing, I usual start with an idea. So for example-
Interviewer: Like what kind of effect do you want on your listeners?
J.S: Recently I just have an experience where I released a project call Gyre and it was based on a dream and it was a very swirling Theta experience in my dream and I thought, “gosh I’d really like to recreate that.” So I knew that this was gonna be a very swirling sound, and it has to be in the Theta Rem where we’re going into a deep mediation. So as I build the music, I’m actually matching the Binaural Beat frequencies to the key of the music so that it’s unobtrusive but still very much there, and then I start developing the Binaural Beats with the music to build an experience.
As I build the music, I’m actually matching the binaural beat frequencies to the key of the music so that it’s unobtrusive but still very much there, and then I start developing the binaural beats with the music to build an experience.
J.S. Epperson, Episode 48 of The Artists podcast
Interviewer: Just for our listeners in terms of figures. We have a lot of creative people who listen to podcasts like film makers, writers enhancing your creativity you know is something that all of us focus on. So you know as a creator of Binaural Beats what do you sort of suggest like for example the internet says that Edison and Deshler they actually got their best inventions in the Theta state so of course that time by Binaural Beats was not something very popular or was perhaps not there so I mean how do we use now since we have a tool with us?
J.S: Well I think that’s a really important point it is a tool and I personally think there are two state of mind I love the most. Theta is definitely one of them. I like to take half an hour, an hour a day and just meditate. Focus on my own my thoughts and kind of letting them go. But when I work I love to listen to Alpha waves. Which to me it’s a very relaxed focus it’s getting into the flow of the creative process and for me it’s really kind of my sweet spot I’m in love with the Alpha state personally.
Interviewer: So I’m gonna ask you later what are the suggestions that we could listen to from your library of music?
J.S: Sure.
Interviewer: When it comes to Alpha which is your favorite brain wave state tell me J when your audience listens to your music and I saw your website where there’s a series of supported by so many different people. Have you interacted with them and try to find out that what is your audience looking for when they are trying to listen to your music?
J.S: You know I do kind of have a motto of “ask me anything”. I’m really open to people getting in touch with me and there have been pattern over the years. Definitely people find my music for mainly one of two or three reasons. The first reason, and maybe the most dominant reason; people are looking for some kind of spiritual connection; a connection to something bigger than themselves. They’ve tried mediation and maybe they didn’t work for them or maybe they’re already very good at meditating but they’re just looking for a different experience.
People are looking for some kind of spiritual connection; a connection to something bigger than themselves.
J.S. Epperson, Episode 48 of The Artists podcast
I find most of my listeners get to Binaural Beats through meditation and spirituality but there is another large group and I would say that those are really-I call them bio hackers. They are really people who are trying to optimize their daily experience. They’re trying to optimize their routine to get the most out of everything they do and they find that if they can get a 10 or 15% improvement by listening to a certain type of Binaural Beat then that’s what they’re gonna do all day to get more out of whatever it is they’re doing. So those have been the two big groups that get in touch with me and tell me how they found me, why they got in touch with my work.
Interviewer: Also Jay you were mentioning yesterday about the left and the right brain theory and the anecdote you said that you would like to share about one of your listeners who listens to your music.
J.S: Ok well. There are a lot of thoughts about how we organize and kind of describe creativity and intellectual processes. You know and one of the popular ways to describe that is kind of the right brain, left brain, the right brain being very creative and inspirational and the left brain being very focused and analytical. That’s a little inaccurate in terms of how the brain actually works but it is an amazing metaphor I really like the metaphor because there really are kind of -there are days and I know you’ve had them where it’s like you know I really would like to do something very disciplined right now, I’d like to do something very focused and work on a spread sheet and that’s really a great period of time for the higher frequencies.
For me personally I find Alpha is a great frequency to get work done. There’s a lot of people also like Beta frequencies for really getting the analytical part of their work done. So one of the weird things I’ve noticed about some of my albums particularly with the Hemi-Sync. The Hemi- Sync albums I’ve done over the years do have more of a focus on the Beta frequencies and for example I find very left brain men, business men, they love the Beta Frequencies. They are very drawn to it. I think Einstein’s Dream was maybe released 1996? And 99% of the letters I go testimonials, emails they were almost all from business men and it was always so interesting to me that wow this album with those frequencies really resonates with this type of person and then I can look at something else like Gammadrone which is kind of available everywhere and that has a lot of Theta frequencies, a lot of Gama frequencies.
Almost every person that got in touch with me was an offer. They were creative, they were people who were creative in terms of big systemic you know story lines and story arcs and they were story tellers and I was just like you know you can’t get that many testimonials from a specific type of person. It wasn’t across the board it was very much focus on people telling stories and I’m fascinated by that. I don’t have a lot of answers for that. I don’t know why this project necessarily resonated with those people but when they hit a certain group of people they really do hit and I find that incredibly interesting just personally that that happens.
Interviewer: That’s awesome. J so you’re saying that it has different effects on different people like for example you mention the Beta for the business man or you mentioned the Theta state for the authors, the Gamma state and the Alpha state is also good for creativity. But the effect of these different beats must be on different levels to people in the same profession. Like for example two story tellers are listening to the same frequency will have different kind of effects.
J.S: Every experience is a personal experience right. You know I don’t know how other people experience it. So all I get is the feedback you know they’re listing to this music while they’re working and they his repeat, and they his repeat, and they his repeat, and before I know it they’re like hey you know what I listen to gammadrone seven times in a row and wrote three chapters of this thing and I didn’t even want to write and so that is an experience I hear a lot from people but then someone else can turn around and say you know I’ve been stuck for so long and listening to this one piece and boom it was like a light bulb went on and I knew exactly how to solve this problem. I started wring a story to get to the solution and thank you so much. The experiences are of course different and personal but they’re definitely some commonalities I find over time that exist.
Interviewer: So of course it triggers something in the brain.
J.S: Yes definitely trigger something in the brain. One of the things that I found so interested about the specific responses from some types of people is that it does speak to maybe a possibility that certain frequency sets just appeal to a type of person that you know people who are authors, they respond to this frequency set for reason I don’t necessarily understand but the respond very strongly. Same with the business men and the Beta frequencies there are commonalities in the types of people. Not to break people into stereotypes and groups but types are types.
Interviewer: and of course now it’s becoming so popular it’s supposed to be like the altered state of consciousness it’s sort of becoming like a billion dollar industry and Binaural Beats are playing a huge role in it.
J.S: Yeah they really are. I mean I’m a city person I’ve lived in cities most of my life. I’m not drawn to the rural experience. I live in a town where I get a subway and I want to tune out some of the chaos going on around me and for that I out some Alpha Binaural Beats, a nice drone, some winds or some surf sounds and I am just in peaceful blissful spot reading a magazine, or reading something on my phone and I think that is an experience a lot of people have we’re all trying to make our best day.
Interviewer: So tell me J is there sort of any specific like you just said I just get into my car and I just tuned into the specific beats that I want to listen to and then I’m on my way and I suppose if I’m wanting to sit and mediate and try to get certain kind of perhaps work on my creativity just not thinking about anything else. Do I just need to tune into for example a certain music which is Alpha and just focus and listened to it, that’s all I got to do?
J.S: No actually you don’t need to focus listen to it. I’m listening to some Alpha brain waves right now.
Interviewer: Ok.
J.S: Partly to keep me calm. I get nervous in situations like this particular you know you stick a microphone in me and I’m like I’ve got to be smart all the time.
Interviewer: No you don’t need to be.
J.S: You know I mostly just talk. I don’t think about where I’m going in a conversation. I’m not a goal oriented conversationalist I’m just here to answer your questions really. So for me it’s like they’re in the background and I’m working on something else. I listen to very quiet music most of the time. Sometimes when I’m mediating I might turn it up a little bit because I do want to block out what’s going on around me. I do live in a very quiet part of the city fortunately so I don’t have a lot of city noise invading my space. I have birds and butterflies and a yard, I’m pretty lucky that way I guess you know suburban living. But five minutes I can be in the city and I love that too.
So when I’m meditating yes, I do kind of find music that is ephemeral, music that doesn’t necessarily resolve so just in terms of melodic composition there are types of music if the melody lingers and it doesn’t necessarily has a very strong resolution and it goes on to the next idea. You talk about ascension and that’s definitely something I do in that piece of music where if it makes sort of musical statements and doesn’t resolve them it goes on to the next thing and this type of voice leading and melodic leading is very helpful and helping to bring to this other place you know the Binaural Beats are amazing. But there is an element of music design. How does this melody take your design further or somewhere else and I try to combine all that into a single thing and so when I’m listening to music there are times where I think oh this really hits that button for me. Hit the like button and I’m gonna come back to this piece of music when I really want to meditate.
Interviewer: One doesn’t need to focus onit. One just needsfor daily task you can just play it quietly and just be around and your subconscious mind is going to absorb it and make you get into that frequency automatically without your efforts.
J.S: Doesn’t take a lot of effort. I think of anything too much efforts can be a little problematic. Have you ever had that experience where you’re sitting there and I just had somebody literally this morning messaged me this on Facebook so it’s very fresh in my mind. We were talking about, somebody posted an album that they like and I said I like that album too, I love that one for sleep and it was like I can’t listen to that music while I’m trying to sleep It distracts me all I sit there is think and headphones are uncomfortable and I’m sleeping and the headphones are uncomfortable and I’m not sleeping. Then I get stuck in this whole loop and it’s like well take off your headphone and get little speakers and just make it real quiet in the background don’t poor all of your energy into trying to make this music make you to sleep just let it happen. Take off the headphones put the speakers on, let it be a little quiet it doesn’t need to blasts and just go with the experience and you’ll find that you’ll probably will get to sleep pretty quick.
Interviewer: Yeah absolutely you know J we’ve got into this culture of putting too much effort on everything that we wanting to achieve or where we are to go and suddenly when I discover about this billion dollar industry that’s flourishing and this is about altered state of consciousness. What do you have to say about in terms of using it in everyday life and sort of making it like a lifestyle to see that you can actually do things effortlessly?
J.S: You know you talk about this billion dolor industry and I think this speaks to something. I think it speaks to a kind of awkward reality and that is that we have more choice than we think. I can choose to be very angry about politics. I live in Portland, Oregon there is a lot going on. But I can choose to really focus on my work, I can focus on creating beautiful things, I can choose maybe not to be so angry and there’s a time and a space for anger but I think a lot people chose that a little too much and my approach to things is if I’m going to drive into work or I’m gonna bus into work depends on the day. I often times chose to have something peaceful plan.
It is a lifestyle for me I have been listening to Binoral Beats for 25, 30 years. I think we are in an amazing place in history where we have these phones, they are so incredible, earbuds are great they work just fine for Binaural Beats I don’t know where this idea comes from that you need to have $300 headphones, you really don’t. My normal beats generally will work, just put them on, have them be quiet. I can put them on as I go to work and I can think about for the last couple of days it’s been like I gotta talk to [inaudible] I gotta do this, I gotta do that and I’m just try trying to let the experience happen and I’m choosing my path and I’m choosing my emotional response to my day and Binaural Beats are a part of that they’re not the answers they’re not the only solution but they are definitely in the mix.
Interviewer: Definitely and especially during these times I don’t know if you are there much on social media but there’s too much rage out there, there’s too much of hatred that we’re getting into currently. The world over and it can become scarier and the human mind is not able to tame it. Do you think that we can do that with a tool like- we can perhaps see the world in another light every day?
J.S: Oh it’s possible. It’s something that can be done. But like I said it’s an uncomfortable choice you have to choose. There’s this popular saying here and it was popularized at least as far as I know by Oprah Winfrey of all people and she would always say; “Do I want be right or do I want to be at peace and you know wat I want? I want to be at peace”, I don’t care if I’m right, I’m usually probably not right and when I am right I can’t make other people believe that. So that’s their choice to go with me on that journey or not so let’s just be at peace and we can worry about who is right and who is wrong later or not at all.
Interviewer: Absolutely. Tell me J when you wake up every morning and you are getting to your work and you’re focused on creating Binaural Beats. What inspires you? What do you want? Where do you want to take it to everyday?
J.S: That’s an interesting question because it always changes. I have a really popular Hemi Sync album call illumination for peak performance and it’s also available on my website, Spotify and all that just illumination and people respond so well to that music like I love this music so so much and honest to God I was living in Germany at the time actually and I was visiting my mother in California so I was kind of half a sleep in the other room at like 6:00 in the afternoon because I’m jetlagged and she was watching the final episode of ‘Sex in the City’ and there was this incredible ostinato over the next ten minutes of the TV show I guess and I was like God that’s so beautiful and I love how it communicates this idea of you know musically communicates the idea that nothing is changing and everything is changing and it communicates this idea that regardless of what’s happening things just go on and I love the establishment of continuity and hope. It was just a really beautiful sound and so I woke up out of my stupor and I thought well I’m gonna just jot down some music and played piano for twenty minutes and find something I like and low and behold six months later it was this album.
Interviewer: Wow.
J.S: It came from a TV show and one that I didn’t watch. Other times I talked about ‘Gyre’ coming from the feeling I had in a dream. I was like ok well let’s capture that. Other times I’m with Gammadrone we talked about that. I had a lot of people saying you don’t do Gama frequencies. Gama frequencies are supposed to help with inspiration and ideation and bringing in new ideas. I would love something to facilitate that experience and so I focus on very much on ok Gama frequencies, how do we inspire ourselves and at some point I thought well if you bring in and out the Delta frequencies no I’m sorry the theta frequencies and give into that imaginative visual space kind of associated with REM state and meditation combining that with Gama and merging them in and out as they shift that would be really great for creativity maybe.
Let’s try that, so it started with the Binaural Beats. Every creative project I do ha a different source, a different origin point. I think that’s why it’s always been important for me to have a body of work. I mean I’ve never been somebody oriented towards having a hit, I’m not a hit maker but I do like to try different things. I think I stared my record company in 2007/2008 and I’ve created quite a body of work over that time and it’s fun to like ok sometimes it works out really well and other times it does not work out really well. But I got to try it and I usually try to describe those in my album descriptions so that people know where I’m coming from and why I did this thing.
Interviewer: So where can one listen to your work, J?
J.S: I don’t know what services you guys use over there in India but I’m on most of the major platforms. So you can listen on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, you know that list of apps. I have a little bit on Insight Timer. I really recommend going to my website higher-music.com there’s a dash between higher and music mostly because recently Apple has kind of said enough with the meditation music. It has to do honestly with their –they don’t like storing long form of mediation pieces on their servers so I think my work going forward because of that on the services would be more short form meditations and if you like something it would probably be long version on my website. I’m putting out probably about one Binaural Beat meditation about every five six weeks so I’m going through a very experimental period.
Interviewer: Tell me J is there any duration one should listen to Binoral Beats or like you said there is no duration you can just leave it playing in the back ground.
J.S: I think the answer to that question is personal. I find a lot of my listeners- I met this woman one time I was working on a project in Seattle and I was in this recording studio and I’ve been working with this singer for a couple of days and the other person I was working with. My collaborator on this project, his name was Julio he was like hey how about that J.S Epperson and one of the backup singers was like J.S Epperson? The J.S Epperson and she pull out her ipod which we used to have ipods before phones and they used to count how many times you’ve played a song and she pulled out a track of mine on a Hemi sync album. It was maybe seven minutes long. She listened to it 4, 800 times.
Interviewer: Oh my God.
J.S: She’s like oh no I put this on loop.
Interviewer: Oh wow.
J.S: All day long. She said it’s the only thing I listen to sometimes for weeks.
Interviewer: How cool was that?
J.S: Ok there’s one approach, take something short you like and listen to it again and again. Other people I need a half hour, I need 45 minutes and then I’m done I want it to be finished and you know I think that’s a personal answer. Do what feels right for you. I tend to listen to longer things I’ve been listening to a two hour demo that somebody sent me the other day and it’s terrific his name is Brad. Thanks Brad. But its two hours long and it’s not always something you can sit and listen to in one sitting, sometimes I have to pick it up and sometimes I start over and listen again, It’s personal.
Interviewer: And J would you like to recommend some of the tracks to our creative listeners out there?
J.S: Sure let me pull up my website if you don’t mind.
Interviewer: I love Ascension that one track I listen to.
J.S: I did send you a copy of that.
Interviewer: Oh you did ok how lovely?
J.S: Minutes before we had this conversation.
Interviewer: Yes, yes, yes. I did get it yeah.
J.S: Probably in your inbox. Personally I love ‘Surf Series’. It’s a great place to start if you’ve never listened to Binaural Beats. This is available on my website higher-music.com. It’s also available on all of the platforms. This uses some ambient, very ferial ambient drum, a little bit of artificial ocean surf and there are three tracks. One is an Alpha experience called Alpha surf, the other one’s called Theta surf and finally there is Delta surf and It even says in parenthesis relax, mediate, sleep and that’s a great place to start because it’s not terribly engaging its perfect for putting on quietly in the back ground and just hey does is this Alpha thing work for me? So that’s a wonderful place to start in terms of my stuff ‘Surf Series’. Another great place to start is actually Nord wind. This is a project I did for a yoga studio in Berlin back in September so it’s almost a year ago now. This is actually just a remix project of probably about 30 or 40 different tracks. They are pretty much all in the Alpha Category so there’s a dominant Alpha pattern and then it’ll bring in little Theta, a little Delta, A little Gama and it will really kind of guide you through almost entirety of work. Other Alpha thing to listen to –we generate really just good [inaudible] is really popular yeah in terms of Alpha I think those are some good places to start.
Interviewer: Well I’m just gonna check out the surf CDsnow and see if I can get myself into an Alpha state.
J.S: Oh do you that’s great.
Interviewer: Yes I will, I will thank you so much J.
Alphachime blends four bands of audio brainwave entrainment signals with the glistening shimmer of bells and chimes. The dominant beat frequency is a pair of 10Hz alpha waves carried on Rife frequencies associated with dopamine and serotonin. The presence of a low frequency delta through the track encourages deep physical and mental relaxation and closes with an extended gamma wave to foster a state of mental clarity.
Alphachime is a low volume, play it while you do stuff kind of sound. Clear out the bad vibes and get stuff done!
Listen for free anytime at higher-music.com or make a donation to add it to your collection and/or download.
WARNING: This music contains audio brainwave entrainment technologies. People who are subject to seizures, auditory disorders, or adverse mental conditions should not listen to this music without first consulting a physician. DO NOT listen to this music while driving, operating heavy machinery, or performing any other activities that require focused attention. Although binaural beats entrainment audio may contribute to wellness, it is not intended as a replacement for medical or psychological treatment. No medical claims are intended express or implied. No statements made have been evaluated or approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. For best results, use stereo headphones or earbuds.
What is the intersection between binaural beats and creativity? Can listening to binaural beats boost creative thinking?
Yes, at least according to this piece of research conducted in the Netherlands by The Institute for Psychological Research and Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition at Leiden University indicating that divergent thinking is systematically affected by Alpha / Gamma binaural beats.
Divergent thinking is systematically affected by Alpha / Gamma binaural beat stimulation
The team found that listening to binaural beats will boost cognitive function when performing creative tasks, but there was not a significant difference between Alpha and Gamma stimulation.
One possible interpretation is that different types of binaural beats do not facilitate specific creative process types but rather support a general function that improves overall cognition. That is to say, listening to Alpha binaural beats doesn’t support one type of creativity while listening to Gamma brainwave entrainment supports another.
Your auditory system is intricately connected to your brain. Brainwave entrainment takes advantage of this direct connection to your brain through a series of techniques that, when combined, powerfully alter your mood, behavior and your ability to focus and concentrate. As you listen to the brainwave entrainment techniques found in my recordings, your brain will automatically follow the sound patterns and then recreate the desired brainwaves in a process called the frequency following response.
The frequency following response describes the brain’s tendency to follow and then lock to certain incoming audio signals. In my recordings, I have used several techniques to trigger your frequency following response to achieve states of peak performance in areas such as sleep (Delta), introspection (Theta), relaxed focus (Alpha), active focus (Beta) and total awareness and connection (Gamma).
Why Brainwave Entrainment?
The lowest frequency that you can hear is about 20 Hz, yet some of the most powerful brainwave frequencies that you can experience are often much lower than this threshold. By using highly targeted forms of stereo phasing, amplitude modulation, and rhythmic pulsing, brainwave entrainment recordings can “trick” the human ear into hearing these otherwise inaccessible frequencies. As you listen to brainwave entrainment technologies embedded into my recordings, your brain locks onto the entrainment frequencies. Within minutes, you are enhancing and experiencing your own natural abilities.
Entrainment Methods
As I’ve already mentioned, I combine a series of techniques with the naturally entraining qualities inherent to music to form what are, in my opinion, the strongest and most effective auditory brainwave tools available.
Binaural Beats
Binaural beats are the most common form of brainwave entrainment. Binaural beats work by combining two frequencies with a slight pitch offset. The offset of these two pitches slowly modulates, effectively carrying a third beat frequency which the brain understands as an unique sound. This process can be described as a byproduct of how the brain perceives the phase difference between two different, but similar, steady state pitches.
In order to experience this phenomenon, you need to put on some stereo earbuds or headphones and listen for a while. Let’s say that we play a 220 Hz carrier tone into the left ear and a 226.5 Hz carrier tone into the right ear. Your brain perceives a subtle beat frequency of 6.5 Hz, a frequency known as the frontal midline Theta associated with visual meditative journeys and the R.E.M. cycle of sleep. After a while, your brain begins to follow this frequency and you begin to experience this meditative trance state for yourself. Binaural beats are effective, but the effects are often times subtle. This subtlety allows for us to a build multiband binaural beat frequency sets that are layered, dense and complex. Binaural beats are the most nuanced form of brainwave entrainment.
Monaural Tones
A monaural tone is a form of brainwave entrainment in which the amplitude modulates to produce a beat that can actually be heard with the ears over speakers as well as headphones. A monaural tone differs somewhat from isochronic pulses in that a monaural tone is a sine wave rather than a choppy pulse that can work my nerves. A monaural tone is the most effective form of brainwave entrainment, but it is a blunt instrument: only one or two monaural tones can be used in a recording before cluttering up the mix.
Isochronic Pulses
Isochronic pulses are regular beats of a single tone used for brainwave entrainment. Similar in effectiveness to monaural tones, the interference pattern that produces the beat is outside the brain so headphones are not required, but since isochronic pulses are more pronounced than binaural beats and monaural tones, the stimuli is stronger to me. As previously mentioned, though, I find the sound can be irritating and I have only rarely used them in my work. (Off the top of my head only Namaste comes to mind.)
Music
Music is magic. Rhythm guides the heart, melodies can lead the mind, chord progressions can alter moods, dynamics can effect changes in the cardio vascular system, and so on and so forth and etcetera. And all of those brainwave entrainment technologies mentioned above? Most of those can be tuned to quietly sit in the mix without drawing too much attention to themselves.
In the dream, I could feel the rumble of the tsunami long before I could see it. I ran from the sound of the approaching wave, but there was no escape. I looked over my shoulder as I ran: the wave loomed hundreds of feet above the horizon. I surrendered to my fate, turned and faced the wave, wondering if my neck would break before I drown, but when the wave hit, there was neither pain nor fear: there is only the serene swirl of Gyre.
Listen for free anytime at higher-music.com or add the album to your collection for a minimum donation of $1.
WARNING: This music contains audio brainwave entrainment technologies. People who are subject to seizures, auditory disorders, or adverse mental conditions should not listen to this music without first consulting a physician. DO NOT listen to this music while driving, operating heavy machinery, or performing any other activities that require focused attention. Although binaural beats entrainment audio may contribute to wellness, it is not intended as a replacement for medical or psychological treatment. No medical claims are intended express or implied. No statements made have been evaluated or approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. For best results, use stereo headphones or earbuds.
It was the new year and I was meditating. A Pineapple Express was blowing through and the vibes were unfamiliar and uncomfortable, as though a portal was opening to a strange new world that I didn’t understand.
I released the track on January 1, 2020 (it’s on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, et al) and I immediately regretted it. Now that 2020 is past the halfway point, I think I understand this vibe a lot better.
What starts with a binaural (3D) recording of a late December 2019 Pineapple Express transforms into a piece centered on 963Hz carrier wave embedded with Delta/Theta binaural beats. For best results, use headphones.
The aesthetic of ubuibi.org speaks to me deeply and I think you should check this site out immediately. Anyway, they are somehow associated with Radio TroUBle, which featured Deltadream on Episode 302 – LET GO and RELAX (14-JULY 2020)
Great vibe.
Deltadream is based on the 396Hz Solfeggio tone “Ut”, referring to the “Ut queant laxis” passage in The Hymn of John The Baptist suggesting that we expand our voices to celebrate His creation. According to Dr. Joseph Puleo’s book “Healing Codes for the Biological Apocalypse”, this tone is associated with releasing emotional patterns and liberation from guilt and fear.
Woven with complex, multiband binaural beat pattern that modulates several delta bands, Deltadream is known to trigger intensely cathartic dreams in many of my preview subjects. The drifting drones and resonances lull you to restful sleep, while the magical music quietly leads you to the hidden realms of your subconscious.
This track is also available on Amazon, Apple Music, Google Play, iTunes, Spotify and many more. For direct links, visit: smarturl.it/jfl1hm
The wheel of the year turns once more: solstice is here! Renewal pushes.
The sun isn’t up yet, which means it’s pretty early considering the time of year. The windows are open, and I’m working on developing a peaceful atmosphere while listening to the birds sing between the rumble of thunder and the frequent rain showers. And that, my friends, is the back and forth vibe of Renew: a relentless blend of two alpha channels with a band of theta and a glimmer of gamma that pierces the heart of Renew.
Listen for free anytime at higher-music.com or add the album to your collection for a minimum donation of $1.
“Find some way to relax. Get those alpha waves. Alpha waves are a signal in the brain that’s closely correlated with states of relaxation. And what scientists have found is that when people are relaxed, they’re much more likely to have those big ‘A ha!’ moments, those moments of insight where these seemingly impossible problems get solved.”
Jonah Lehrer, March 19, 2012, All Things Considered, NPR
WARNING: This music contains audio brainwave entrainment technologies. People who are subject to seizures, auditory disorders, or adverse mental conditions should not listen to this music without first consulting a physician. DO NOT listen to this music while driving, operating heavy machinery, or performing any other activities that require focused attention. Although binaural beats entrainment audio may contribute to wellness, it is not intended as a replacement for medical or psychological treatment. No medical claims are intended express or implied. No statements made have been evaluated or approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. For best results, use stereo headphones or earbuds.
I always say ask me anything and a lot of people are doing just that lately and today I thought I would talk about masking binaural beats with noise
Inbox: What is masking?
There are a lot of binaural beats in the world. There are so many, in fact, that many online music stores like Apple Music have found subtle ways to ban them. (Apple, for example, black-listed the word “binaural” and the phrase “binaural beats” from use in titles and descriptions of new music submissions in 2018 or so.) And it’s easy to see why the ban exists: binaural beats alone make for a crap listening experience. Here’s some proof:
One minute of a 4Hz Delta binaural beat via 100Hz, 300Hz and 500Hz carrier frequencies.
While this tone set is deliberately uninspiring, by literally any definition binaural beats alone do not meet the minimum criteria to be classified as music and therefor do not belong in a music store. (Apps, on the hand, are an altogether different situation about which I know nothing.)
There is also the issue of listening fatigue. While not clinically recognized, listening fatigue is a phenomenon that occurs after prolonged exposure to an auditory stimulus. When listening only to binaural beats, the continued exposure to high levels of audio in such a narrow bandwidth can lead to tiredness, discomfort, irritability, headaches and even pain and hearing loss. To avoid this fatigue, binaural beats need to be masked.
Initially, Monroe’s solution to this problem was to mask the sound with noise. Masking occurs when the perception of one sound is affected by the presence of another sound. By adding noise, the carrier frequencies for the binaural beats are less likely to cause fatigue because the the sound energy of white noise is equally–but randomly–spread across the entire frequency spectrum.
In physics and audio engineering, noise is described using colors. Brown noise, for example, decreases in power as the frequency rises. The perception of brown noise, then, is that of the low roar of a waterfall: it is deeper and warmer sounding than white noise. And it was Robert Monroe’s choice for Hemi-Sync®.
One minute of a 4Hz Delta binaural beat via 100Hz, 300Hz and 500Hz carrier frequencies with a modulating pink noise (because I don’t have a brown noise generator and I’m too tired deal with that right now…)
Using music to mask binaural beats and Hemi-Sync® is pretty self evident and in the late eighties and early nineties, Hemi-Sync® launched a line of products called Metamusic®. Initially a simple experiment using music created in house, folks at the Monroe Institute began reaching out to artists to create the Metamusic® Artist Series, a collection of more fully realized productions. Higher was maybe the fourth or fifth release in the Metamusic® Artist Series.
For better or for worse, this introduced its own set of unique problems.
I always say ask me anything and a lot of people are doing just that lately and today I thought I would answer some common questions about Hemi-Sync® so here we go…
How did you connect with Hemi-Sync?
When I was in college, I attended a Hemi-Sync outreach workshop. We spent the weekend flopped out on air mattresses in someone’s living room and meditated for two days straight with headphones on. It was brilliant.
The outreach trainer and I became friends, and she eventually listened to a guided meditation that I had created with a would-be author. She sent the guided meditation to Robert Monroe. The music was re-recorded and an instrumental version was released as Higher.
Did you meet Robert Monroe?
I have never met Robert Monroe in person, but early on we spoke on the phone and even then, only once. He was curt and to-the-point. I found him to be supportive of my work (at the very least I know that he was a fan of Higher) but he was also very pragmatic in his advice to me, which pretty much boiled down to “do your work and get it out there, but keep your day job.” I’m exaggerating, but it was almost 30 years and at the time I had never heard of Robert Monroe. I later read Journeys Out of the Body, visited the Monroe Institute and met his family, so I now have a much clearer picture of the man with whom I was dealing. Had I but known…
Do you still work for Hemi-Sync®?
I have never been directly employed by Hemi-Sync® nor The Monroe Institute. However, between 1993 and 2009, I created 9 Hemi-Sync® Metamusic® albums which are listed here. Many of them — all of them? — are still available with Hemi-Sync® and some of them are exclusive to Hemi-Sync®.
Anyway, my relationship with Hemi-Sync® is essentially a licensing situation. My work has also been used at The Monroe Institute in various capacities (in-person workshops, research studies, etc.) for a number of years. I am not sure that is still the case.
What was your experience there?
I have been to the Monroe Institute several times. For anyone interested in a weeklong meditation getaway with the best brainwave audio on the planet, I think a great thing to do is try the Gateway experience. There are online options available for Gateway, but personally, I find the in-person energetic connections are the way to go. My Gateway was a peak experience: it’s where I got the idea to start creating my own music with binaural beats.
I’m going through 20 years of data on my harddrives, backing things up, and in the process I stumbled across Anugama’s Shamanic Dream. This is like one of my favorite tracks of all time, and you can get it from the artist’s website at anugama.com
Here’s a description I read somewhere:
Shamanic Dream by Anugama is especially suitable for trance meditations. A heartbeat drum accompanies the continued low repetition of the mantra “So Be It”. The second part is a journey through and meditation on the chakras, the energy centres of the human body.
Product Description, YouTube (probably)
It so happens I found the track on the YouTube. Surely it will be taken down. But check it out and then go support the guy directly. 😉
Recently, Renee Rotkopf released a series of guided meditations on Insight Timer to help listeners achieve blissful sleep. One of the foundations of this series is Hibernation, a piece of music enhanced with binaural beats to take the listener deeper and deeper into the deepest stages of Delta sleep.
I choose Hibernation for my course 10 Rituals For Blissful Sleep because I feel an immediate, profound effect from the Delta frequencies. Hibernation relaxes me so deeply, I instantly feel my mind and body begin to drift into sleep. And I knew this collaboration of Jay’s music and my meditation would have beneficial impact on our sleep community, helping listeners fall and stay asleep.
Renee Rotkopf
10 Rituals For Blissful Sleep is a 10 day course by Renee Rotkopf designed for members of Insight Timer, an app that collects guided meditations and meditation music from thousands of teachers around the world.
This course is a meditative journey through the energy centers of the body, also known as the chakras. By embodying the chakras, which communicate to every part of our being and connect to both the nervous and system, you will learn how to calm the stressful thoughts that keep you awake at night and in turn, sleep more peacefully. Each ritual will help you access your soul’s temple and dive into the living sensations of the body, becoming more intimate with the deeper parts of yourself. Using your breath, self inquiry, and guided imagery you will rest, release and heal at the deepest level of the unconscious. As you tune into each energy center and the beliefs connected to them, you will begin to call in profound rest at night and more peace during the day. Binaural Beats are included in each lesson to use brainwave entrainment to help you go deeper and deeper into the Delta state.
10 Rituals For Blissful Sleep is available exclusively to Insight Timer with a Members Plus account. Hibernation by J.S. Epperson is available everywhere
When it comes to categorizing the various states of awareness, The Monroe Institute devised a system of labels called Focus Levels™, which provide a neutral identification for each state of consciousness. Right now you are reading, indicating that you are in Focus 1, which is “normal”, everyday waking consciousness.
Essentially, the higher the number, the deeper the state of consciousness. Focus 10 is mind awake/body asleep, Focus 15 is the state of “no time”, and Focus 21 is the very edge of perception of the space-time continuum where the mind remains fully conscious and active. There are many more.
As far as I’m concerned, the articulation of the Focus Levels is Robert Monroe’s great innovation. Hemi-Sync®, a trademarked brand name for binaural beats for which he is known, is merely the vehicle for this great achievement. I respect the Monroe’s Focus Levels enough that when I was asked to duplicate the frequencies for a prospective client, I suggested he simply go to the source and license something from Hemi-Sync.com. (He did.)
But I didn’t pass on the project because Focus Levels are sacred. I admire the work of Robert Monroe and I think we benefit from understanding the labels he attached to consciousness, but at some point it belies the deeply personal experience that is meditation: it feels clinical, formal, and dogmatic. I am informed by his work and I am inspired by the man, but mimeographing Monroe’s roadmap to consciousness is just not something that interests me.
Robert Monroe’s injunction to “get it out there” is a directive I consider often, but I don’t view it as an order to evangelize his taxonomy and structure. Instead, I view it as encouragement to build upon his understanding and to let his ideas guide us as we expand the boundaries of his work.
Anyway, here’s a neat video.
Phase Evolution discusses the nuances of many of Bob Monroe’s Focus Levels.
Remembrance was the first of 6 collaborations between myself, Hemi-Sync®, and producer Barbara Bullard. Remembrance in particular pioneered the use of designer music combined with Beta frequencies to enhance focus and concentration. The music was modeled on the Superlearning® musical techniques outlined by Ostrander and Schroeder in their book Superlearning®.
Remembrance is perfect for any mental task requiring focus and concentration and may be helpful for ADD/ADHD, dyslexia and other learning challenges. Play in the background or use with headphones to enhance mental capabilities while stimulating creativity and imagination. Composed and performed by J.S. Epperson. (65 min)
This episode focuses on increasing energy and vibration by stimulating the limbic system with music. As the auditory nerve is directly connected to the limbic system, music has a direct effect on the brain and “rewires and heals the brain.” She suggests music that is both rhythmic and calming, featuring no lyrics, as lyrics stimulate the language centers of the brain and distract the listener. The music should fade into the background to the point where you don’t really notice it. In this episode, she recommends my album Solfeggio Suite, as well as our joint project, the Creative Alchemy guided meditation ($12.99) and the Creative Alchemy Instrumental Mix (Included with Creative Alchemy or available alone for a donation.)
An impressive episode showing how sound healing connects the mind, body, and spirit.
Bullard’s emphasis on intention is what draws me to her work. In this episode she reminds us of the importance of intentionally stimulating our senses to develop new habits while pruning away old patterns that are no longer serving our greatest good. We are more than passive receptors, and through intention we can create a lifestyle that brings us closer to excellence and harmony.
