Brainwave Suite (w/booklet)

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About Brainwave Suite

Amazon.com The booklet that accompanies this four-CD set refers to Christiaan Huygens, a 17th-century Dutch scientist who observed that the pendulums of clocks that were mounted side-by-side would, over time, acquire identical rhythms. The human brain, asserts musician and researcher Dr. Jeffrey Thompson, is receptive to similar patterns of "entrainment" and "frequency following responses." His Brainwave Suite, one in a series of such packages, endeavors to elicit specific responses from the brain by taking sounds from nature (rain, birds, crickets, surf) and his own modest electronic music (call him a poor man's Vangelis), and strategically fortifying them with inaudible pulses and frequencies. (Subliminal messaging, we're assured, is not used here.) If successful, the listener's brain will become attuned to the good doctor's subsonic vibe, and generate waveforms that are conducive to creativity (the Theta disc), "emotional openness" (the Alpha-Theta disc), relaxation (the Alpha disc), and sleep (the Delta disc). Is this science or snake oil? No independent corroboration is cited in the booklet, and your response likely will be proportionate to your receptiveness to the concept. As for what you can hear on the four discs (each of which is about 40 minutes in length), the nature sounds are mostly peaceful and pleasant. Alpha-Theta is quite good (check out Bernie Krause, however, for the gold standard in natural sounds), and Delta, with its rumbling thunder, is not much of a sleep inducer. Thompson's music occasionally gleams and, at other times, resembles tunes in a can. An interesting item for the curious. --Terry Wood