A couple of questions on binaurals and voice recording

[Realm]

I've seen binaurals talked about a lot on this site and others but despite picking up a few clues here and there I'm still lost as to how to construct them. Everything I read is either too academic and theoretical or just misses the important steps. Does anyone at least have a link to where I could learn about them?

Also I've been wondering why all of the files I've listened to so far seem to have been recorded in one go. Unless you're an excellent reader you're going to stumble eventually in the 20 minutes that you're speaking, and sometimes you just don't say something as clearly as you'd like. I don't understand why you wouldn't just cut the track from the end of the last sentence and then start from there.

[MN_FriendlyGuy]

Welcome, Realm.

For you, it might seem like the difficult part in making a hypnosis recording is the scripting. For me, it's the editing.

Given your observation about the qualtity of mp3s here on WMM (they seem to have been recorded all in one go), it's possible that others (like me) find the job of editing to be the difficult part.

You asked for information about binaural beats. I'm glad to share. Discussion of binaural beats sometimes generates opinionated postings here in the forum - desireable, but possibly a distraction from your goal.

Binaural beats are an auditory hallucination that occurs while the brain is (involuntarily) trying to determine where a sound is coming from. The hallucination can be induced through sound recordings where the left/right channels are at two different tones that are close enough together in pitch. (Emphasis: close enough together)

The science behind the hallucination is an understanding that our minds hear the two distinct tones and attempts blending them into a single tone midway between the two.

The application I use for creating a soundtrack of binaural beats is Brainwave Generator.

I like BWG because it allows me to adjust a 'Binaural Beat Frequency' setting and adjust an 'Audible Pitch' setting. After I adjust those controls, the application modifies the tones produced for left/right channel - making them different enough to create the desired rate-of-beat while maintaining the desired pitch.

With your background in recording/editing, I suspect you're already familiar with adding supplemental soundtracks to a voice recording.

[DKaiser]

I don't understand why you wouldn't just cut the track from the end of the last sentence and then start from there.

Because most people making files here are live hypnotists first, and don't have a background in studio work. For a hypnotist, the rhythm of your words is important, the tone needs to stay the same, and so on. Hence, if people don't know ways to deal with screwups in a recording, they just blur it like they would in a live session. Personally, I just use the old standby of stop, wait 5 seconds, then read the line again, cutting it out when the recording is finished.

[Realm]

Thanks for the replies, they explain a lot. Looks like the binaural thing was a lot simpler than I thought. From the sound of it the tones would need to be audible but separated by just a few Hz. This wouldn't be that hard to do on a synthesizer. I don't suppose anyone knows if there's a certain kind of tone that works best? Like a particular waveform or just white or pink noise?

[Calimore]

...The application I use for creating a soundtrack of binaural beats is Brainwave Generator.

I like BWG because it allows me to adjust a 'Binaural Beat Frequency' setting and adjust an 'Audible Pitch' setting. After I adjust those controls, the application modifies the tones produced for left/right channel - making them different enough to create the desired rate-of-beat while maintaining the desired pitch.

With your background in recording/editing, I suspect you're already familiar with adding supplemental soundtracks to a voice recording.

'Nuff said.

I usually reduce default tone frequencies by half, but otherwise, the BrainWave Generator app seems to be used by a lot of binaural beat enthusiasts.

[Realm]

I've taken a look at the program. It seems easy enough to use on its own but there's nothing here that couldn't be done with more powerful, less specialized software.

[zapnosis]

The benefit of BWG is that you can program it to speed up or slow down the pulses as you like.

However, and I've said this before on the forum, for myself I think that binaurals are overrated. If you're doing it yourself, get Audacity (or something similar), generate a tone and tremolo it. It sounds better and it's a lot more flexible than messing around with different tones in each ear. You can then use multiple tones, use multiple frequencies of beats, use different amplitudes of beats, oscillate the sound left to right and so on. I've used this technique on all of my own files and I've had very positive feedback on it.

ZAP

[Realm]

Can you explain what you mean when you say you tremolo the sound? I know what a tremolo effect is but I can't see how it would replicate the effect of having different frequencies of tones played in each ear. Do you just experiment with the sound or is there a method you follow?

You can still use multiple tones, multiple frequencies of beats, amplitudes of beats and modulate the sound in any way you want with even just a simple dual-oscillator softsynth and a sequencer if you can pan the tones individually. That's what I don't like about using a program like BWG, it's easy to use but much too limited and don't even get me started on Audacity. How can you have an audio sequencer without ASIO support :(

[zapnosis]

In my experience, there are essentially 2 reasons for using background beats. One, it is something monotonous to listen to. Two, they affect brainwave frequencies. When your brain is highly active, it operates on a high frequency. When you brain is relatively inactive (e.g. during trance), it operates on a low frequency.

When you concentrate your attention on a frequency, your brain converges to that frequency to a degree. Listening to a very slow pulsing tone with your eyes closed will help to induce trance or even sleep. It slows the brain. Binaural beats seem to pulse in your head, usually at low frequencies. It is the pulsing of the sound that causes the effect.

Audacity's tremolo effect varies the volume of an audio track on a certain frequency, meaning that you can make any sound track "pulse", often with the same effect as binaurals, or better.

edit: I realise that for someone who knows about recording technology this must all sound a bit primitive, but I'm only interested in such things as far as they are useful to my projects in mind control. Audacity probably isn't that amazing for home studio use, but I can record with it, edit, generate tones and play around with them, export as mp3 - and it's freeware. I don't even know what ASIO means but I doubt it would make much difference to my files.

[malroth]

in audacity, create a mono channel, generate a tone of a known frequency, adjust the left right balance all the way to one side, create another mono chanel generate a second frequency a few hz different balanced completely to the other side change the channel all the way to the other side, tremelo both chanels a frequency equal to the difference between their frequencies.

[1love]

or you can google iso tones and download them for free!

[CerebralVortex]

in audacity, create a mono channel, generate a tone of a known frequency, adjust the left right balance all the way to one side, create another mono chanel generate a second frequency a few hz different balanced completely to the other side change the channel all the way to the other side, tremelo both chanels a frequency equal to the difference between their frequencies.

Mal --

That sounds easy enough. When you say "a few Hz" like how many is a few? Four? Twelve? I don't know enough about this stuff; I don't know what's considered effective. And what about the baseline tone frequency? Does a higher or lower pitch make any difference? Would starting at one pitch and then slowly ramping it down during deepening be of any real benefit or is it all the same (assuming they actually do anything in the first place?) Using this technique, it sounds simple enough to be worth experimenting with one way or another. If nothing else, it at least sounds cool.

I use Audacity when doing podcast bits because it's all I need; voice over work doesn't need big studio packages since I'm just cutting a raw voice track, editing & cleaning it up, and sending it to the producer. Then again, he just uses GarageBand, and puts together a fully professional quality show. A lot of the features on studio packages are just shortcuts for frequently-used operations; a simple freeware like Audacity or GarageBand will still pull most of them off it just takes jumping through more hoops. And for a po' mo' fo' like me, the hoops aren't too bad compared to the price tag of the software, considering those packages are crammed with stuff I'll never need.

[nimaid]

I either use SBaGen or the audacity plug-in http://audacity.sourceforge.net/nyquist/bitone2.zip. The former requires you to learn a simple programing language and can produce white noise in the background. I recommend the latter, a good GUI, and it can make stereo surf. Both options allow you to gently slide into a different frequency. :D