Entering Strange Territory

Our brains respond to sounds, specifically certain frequencies, in a way that opens some strange doors; last night I stumbled through one. I have several commercial CDs and tracks that explore this phenomenon with varying degrees of success; heck, even made some myself. The last few nights I've been busy in the batcave exploring a new direction. I was impressed by an older CD in my collection, which at a specific point, seems to catch the consciousness and spin it towards the netherworlds. Deciding to take a closer look, I broke down the segment at that point on the CD and ran it through my virtual lab apparati to isolate the effect.

I rotated the spectral display of the sample like some iridescent bug under a powerful microscope until I had sifted down to the exact wavelength. And an interesting wavelength it was. Going back through years of notes, eeg research and personal experiments on various entrainment frequencies, I found the section dealing with this particular one under the heading "virtual heroin." Curious indeed. I slid the timescale of the sample forward and watched how it was utilized, impressed by a certain artistry that would exceed the geek quotient of this entry to delve into; but I made some notes, discarded the sample, then set about creating my own "improved" rendition of this riff. I burned my creation to CD and hopped in bed with my headphones, intending to write up some notes on the experience the next morning on how to refine the track further. But not really expecting that much.

Soon after the initial ramp down, and making some mental notes about increasing cross-modulation on one track and boosting a parameter on another, I left Kansas. I didn't know I had left Kansas though until I heard this really loud "WOOF!" like a dog was inches from my face. I knew it wasn't anything outside, the night was frozen still. Then things started to get stranger. And ominous. Ominous is creepy, but its actually a cool thing; it means you are at the brink of unknown territory and have slipped out of the norms your conscious mind is familiar with. But then things shifted more into a muddle as the frequency changed again. So I made some more mental notes about what to delete and refine in the next version and I may have another story in a night or two :-)