Free tapes
Free tapes
Four twenty-minute binaural tapes, free, made from pure tones on this site's own machine. One per ear, a few hertz apart, under a soft bed of pink noise. They are in the tradition of the Monroe Institute's Hemi-Sync recordings, and the page that grades the evidence for that tradition sits one link away. Headphones, please: the effect does not exist through speakers.
How to listen
Headphones or earbuds, one tone in each ear; the whole idea depends on the two ears hearing different pitches. Volume low, lower than you think, so the tone sits behind the noise rather than in front of it. Twenty minutes, eyes closed for the first three. Do not listen while driving or doing anything that needs you sharp, and if you have a seizure disorder, ask a clinician before using any rhythmic stimulation. None of these is a treatment for anything.
A quiet, alert calm. For the twenty minutes before something that matters.
Download · left ear 200 Hz, right ear 210 Hz, pink noise bed.
Deep relaxation with the eyes closed. For unwinding, or before the morning practice.
Download · left ear 180 Hz, right ear 186 Hz, pink noise bed.
For the edge of sleep. Lowest carrier, slowest pulse, longest fade.
Download · left ear 160 Hz, right ear 163 Hz, pink noise bed.
For work that needs a steady head. Slightly brighter, slightly faster.
Download · left ear 220 Hz, right ear 235 Hz, pink noise bed.
Two of them, guided
Two of the tapes also come in a spoken version. Gladys talks you down for the first few minutes, a body scan and a slow count, and then stops and leaves you with the tone. There is nothing to picture and nothing to manifest in either; they are the ordinary business of settling and of falling asleep, with a steady sound underneath. The words are Andrey's. The other two tapes stay tone-only on purpose.
Gladys talks you down for the first few minutes, then leaves you with the tone. A body scan, a slow count, and no promises about what the sound is doing.
Download · the spoken part ends and the tone continues alone.
A quiet voice for the first few minutes, then the delta tone alone. Nothing to remember, nothing to picture, nothing to manifest. Just the ordinary business of falling asleep.
Download · the spoken part ends and the tone continues alone.
What to expect
Try a track at a comfortable volume and notice whether you prefer the session with it. We have not tested these recordings in a controlled trial, and we cannot divide your response into effects of the sound, quiet rest, expectation, or other circumstances. The binaural beats essay reviews studies of other recordings; those results are not a measured benefit of these files.
So use them as what they are. A ritual with a good sound in it. The third talk on this site is about exactly how much a ritual can do and where it stops, and every word of it applies here.
The manifestation use
The Monroe tradition made larger claims for this kind of sound than relaxation: altered states, out-of-body travel, and in its Gateway programme something close to what is now sold as manifestation. Those claims sit in the fourth tier on the front page, faith, and the CIA Gateway document essay reads the one government assessment of them that people cite and finds that its bibliography is the story. If you want to use a tape as the frame around a morning practice, it is a fine frame. It is not a mechanism.
How they were made
Each tape is two sine tones, one per channel, rendered by ffmpeg from a script in this site's repository, so anyone can regenerate the same bytes. Calm is 200 hertz on the left and 210 on the right, a ten-hertz difference in the alpha range. Settle is 180 and 186, theta. Sleep is 160 and 163, delta, with a forty-second fade at each end. Focus is 220 and 235, beta. Under each pair is pink noise, filtered soft, so the tone is not fatiguing over twenty minutes. There are no words, no music, and no subliminal anything; the file is exactly what it says.
If a tape helps you settle before the morning practice, that is a good use of it. If you want to keep track, the free 30-day experiment on this site offers a place to record a criterion and observations. Comparing a month with and without the tape may inform your preference, but changing circumstances and expectations limit causal conclusions.
Put an idea into practice
Choose a concrete action in the free Practice Studio, or keep observations in the Experience notebook. A personal record can guide reflection; it does not by itself establish a cause.