Music 220A: Final Project
Is it possible for music to produce mind-altering effects? When binaural tones of specific frequencies are played together, the human mind is said to create its own imagined tone: a three-dimensional audio hallucination that occurs when your brain detects the phase variation between said frequencies and tries to reconcile the difference. The result is what is known as binaural beats, which can have many effects from soothing to meditative to sleep inducing! This effect was discovered in 1839 by physicist Heinrich Wilhelm Dove.
For my final project, I made a 7 minute binaural beats composition (7 minutes is about the accepted duration for threshold effects to take place) with components of integrated music mixed from chucK and Audacity (using FFT-based Real-time Tracking). I then created 144.72Hz/ 146.33803398875 (Left/Right) frequencies to simulate a “happy” tone. I was able to invoke Delta waves by calculating the difference between the frequencies. (Delta waves cover the 0 - 4 Hz range and is associated with deep dreamless sleep, loss of body awareness, and happiness) Finally, I mixed everything into a binaural recording.
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