Based on a comment on the last post, perhaps I overemphasized how much noise an RVer has to put up with. It's hard to fairly partition the blame (for poor sleeping) between old age, the Early Bedtime Syndrome, the RV lifestyle, or boondocking, since all of these factors overlap. But for today it doesn't matter which factor is more important; it only matters that poor sleeping -- whatever the cause -- can be mitigated with the right music.
Most people struggling to sleep learn that the worst approach is to lie there concentrating on trying to sleep. Totally self defeating. The mind needs to be kept busy, relaxed, and ultimately tired of it all.
The other day I was watching the audition tape of the female lead for a recent movie version of Madame Butterfly. My gosh, how does a human being learn to do something like that? Emoting, bleeding, and practically dying in front of the camera, followed by instantly relaxing when the audition was over. This was proof -- not that any was really needed -- that listening to Puccini heroines swell and flourish in their death-swoons is not the best music for relaxing at night.
Isn't it also a good bet that the female voice, regardless of the musical genre, is too affective to be effective as a sleeping pill? There might be exceptions. In olden times many of us heard our mothers hum lullabies to us in the cradle. (Do they still do things like that?) I have found that Enya and her music make a good sleeping pill.
Long ago I expostulated on the superiority of the female voice to the male, and was surprised by the opposition in the readership. In either case, if a person does find the male voice unaffective and uninteresting, why not try to use this to advantage? For me, Willie Nelson is easy to sleep to. More generally, shouldn't we see this as a chance to turn lemons into lemonade?
The world is full of music that we pay little attention to because we find it lackluster. In fact that's the usual case. Only a bit of the world's music can cause chills to go up and down our spine, and most of it was written by Puccini, Bernard Herrmann, Ennio Morricone, John Barry, and a few others. If we find the tiny fraction of that mountain of lackluster music that is somniferous and soporific, then we have scored a huge victory at little cost.
After writing off opera as a soporific, let's consider instrumental classical music. Instantly we hit roadblocks: Mozart is too sprightly, and Beethoven is too earnest and intense. In fact symphonic music in general is terrible as a soporific: one moment three woodwinds are quietly chirping; a couple seconds later a fumarole of 130 instruments erupts. Not what we want.
In fact, we have arrived at the unpleasant truth that, for sleeptime, musical quality counts less than the music's qualities as sound. During the day a music lover might pine for lush melodies; but overnight, melodies need not be affective. A certain neutrality is better. What you need is evenness of sound volume.
You'd think that New Age music would be the ultimate musical sleeping pill, but not if that means dreamy, musical Valium. Slow moving music doesn't relax me at all. To make things worse this genre sometimes contains "sound recordings of nature". How can I go to sleep if I'm annoyed with myself for having wasted good money on the maritime mooing of whales or the squawks of seagulls shitting on a beach?
On top of that they sometimes put heavy bass tracks on top of that dreamy New Age drivel. It makes no sense musically, but a great deal of cents, marketing-wise. "See here, Mr. Arkenstone," says the marketing chief at Narada, "Sales are good with white, menopausal women taking yoga lessons after work. But we need to reach a wider audience."
Consider jazz. It's an amorphous category. Let's define it as what you get when real music is subjected to hydraulic frakking, thereby producing a moving slurry of musical pebbles, unconnected by melody. During the day I don't care for jazz but since melody is not so important at night, and perhaps even a negative, maybe jazz is worth a second look.
The jazz that might work best could be described as "easy listening" jazz; yes, I know that conjures up the image of moony-and-swoony, low bandwidth versions of easy-to-recognize lounge standards. But recognizability must be avoided.
Enough of these polemics! Time to discuss what works splendidly. Solo piano music, a la George Winston. It has the all-important property of evenness of sound volume. It isn't recognizable as a ditty or tune, but it isn't cacophonous noise either. Comparing it to sound instead of to music, solo piano music tends to sound like a mountain stream. The relatively fast tempo is most helpful, unless the pianist gets carried away with rubato. The nocturnal and somnolent brain is a funny thing: it hears the nimble tempo and becomes tired just imagining keeping up with it. Ironically, that same brain would be able to keep up with slower music, and thus be kept awake.
Recently I became familiar with mp3.com, Amazon's bargain basement. It has quite a bit of free music to download, from lesser known artists usually. Sometimes the freebies are from well known artists, but why does that matter? There are several reasons why any artist would want to hand out free candy as a loss leader. Between these freebies and CDs at the public library, my Eine Kleine uberNachtMusic playlist is now four hours long.
If a peaceful night weren't precious enough, consider that the speakers, fed from your mp3 player, are only draining a half an amp from the RV battery (plus the parasitic draw of the inverter). If you follow a commenter's advice about noise-cancelling earbuds, you drain zero amps from your RV battery since you can turn off the inverter.
Most people struggling to sleep learn that the worst approach is to lie there concentrating on trying to sleep. Totally self defeating. The mind needs to be kept busy, relaxed, and ultimately tired of it all.
The other day I was watching the audition tape of the female lead for a recent movie version of Madame Butterfly. My gosh, how does a human being learn to do something like that? Emoting, bleeding, and practically dying in front of the camera, followed by instantly relaxing when the audition was over. This was proof -- not that any was really needed -- that listening to Puccini heroines swell and flourish in their death-swoons is not the best music for relaxing at night.
Isn't it also a good bet that the female voice, regardless of the musical genre, is too affective to be effective as a sleeping pill? There might be exceptions. In olden times many of us heard our mothers hum lullabies to us in the cradle. (Do they still do things like that?) I have found that Enya and her music make a good sleeping pill.
Long ago I expostulated on the superiority of the female voice to the male, and was surprised by the opposition in the readership. In either case, if a person does find the male voice unaffective and uninteresting, why not try to use this to advantage? For me, Willie Nelson is easy to sleep to. More generally, shouldn't we see this as a chance to turn lemons into lemonade?
The world is full of music that we pay little attention to because we find it lackluster. In fact that's the usual case. Only a bit of the world's music can cause chills to go up and down our spine, and most of it was written by Puccini, Bernard Herrmann, Ennio Morricone, John Barry, and a few others. If we find the tiny fraction of that mountain of lackluster music that is somniferous and soporific, then we have scored a huge victory at little cost.
After writing off opera as a soporific, let's consider instrumental classical music. Instantly we hit roadblocks: Mozart is too sprightly, and Beethoven is too earnest and intense. In fact symphonic music in general is terrible as a soporific: one moment three woodwinds are quietly chirping; a couple seconds later a fumarole of 130 instruments erupts. Not what we want.
In fact, we have arrived at the unpleasant truth that, for sleeptime, musical quality counts less than the music's qualities as sound. During the day a music lover might pine for lush melodies; but overnight, melodies need not be affective. A certain neutrality is better. What you need is evenness of sound volume.
You'd think that New Age music would be the ultimate musical sleeping pill, but not if that means dreamy, musical Valium. Slow moving music doesn't relax me at all. To make things worse this genre sometimes contains "sound recordings of nature". How can I go to sleep if I'm annoyed with myself for having wasted good money on the maritime mooing of whales or the squawks of seagulls shitting on a beach?
On top of that they sometimes put heavy bass tracks on top of that dreamy New Age drivel. It makes no sense musically, but a great deal of cents, marketing-wise. "See here, Mr. Arkenstone," says the marketing chief at Narada, "Sales are good with white, menopausal women taking yoga lessons after work. But we need to reach a wider audience."
Consider jazz. It's an amorphous category. Let's define it as what you get when real music is subjected to hydraulic frakking, thereby producing a moving slurry of musical pebbles, unconnected by melody. During the day I don't care for jazz but since melody is not so important at night, and perhaps even a negative, maybe jazz is worth a second look.
The jazz that might work best could be described as "easy listening" jazz; yes, I know that conjures up the image of moony-and-swoony, low bandwidth versions of easy-to-recognize lounge standards. But recognizability must be avoided.
Enough of these polemics! Time to discuss what works splendidly. Solo piano music, a la George Winston. It has the all-important property of evenness of sound volume. It isn't recognizable as a ditty or tune, but it isn't cacophonous noise either. Comparing it to sound instead of to music, solo piano music tends to sound like a mountain stream. The relatively fast tempo is most helpful, unless the pianist gets carried away with rubato. The nocturnal and somnolent brain is a funny thing: it hears the nimble tempo and becomes tired just imagining keeping up with it. Ironically, that same brain would be able to keep up with slower music, and thus be kept awake.
Recently I became familiar with mp3.com, Amazon's bargain basement. It has quite a bit of free music to download, from lesser known artists usually. Sometimes the freebies are from well known artists, but why does that matter? There are several reasons why any artist would want to hand out free candy as a loss leader. Between these freebies and CDs at the public library, my Eine Kleine uberNachtMusic playlist is now four hours long.
If a peaceful night weren't precious enough, consider that the speakers, fed from your mp3 player, are only draining a half an amp from the RV battery (plus the parasitic draw of the inverter). If you follow a commenter's advice about noise-cancelling earbuds, you drain zero amps from your RV battery since you can turn off the inverter.
Comments
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good night.
ed
I've also recorded my own music onto the computer. Keyboard, synthesizer, shakuhachi and self-made pvc flutes, harmonica, and other instruments. I am no musician, but I know how to construct sounds that I find appealing. Highly recommended to others for both creative expression, "meditation" and great sleep music.
Great blog. Thanks for sharing. Nice to see some serious intelligence in the world of bloggers.
JC