Sleep Song

For today's Sleep Song, composer Eduardo Rivera ran computerized string pads through an old tape recorder, resulting in the airy sound heard throughout, reminiscent of a gusty breeze alighting falling leaves. Sampled sounds of crickets, bowed kalimba, and an e-bowed piano add to the rich, sweater weather comfort and ethereal atmosphere. A perfect companion for a slow walk through crisp autumn days...

After hearing the sound of a wind chime floating through his neighborhood, composer Eduardo Rivera is reminded of a stay in the mountain town of Idyllwild. "The house had these huge wind chimes, that I later learned are called 'King David's Wind Chimes.’ These chimes are larger, deeper, and more sonorous than the ones you typically imagine. They're also in a specific key, so they sound beautiful w...

Created using a new musical software called  Collage , today's Sleep Song begins with a chord like a question, as if asking whether it's alone in the universe. The response is soothing and celestial, elegant, a drone of chords, rippling out like ribbons of color in deep space photography. There's a quiet assertion in the synth voices, that we are are not alone and are always held safe. Origin...

Today's Sleep Song is all about movement. Almost every track in this piece is constantly shifting with panning or through the use of an LFO (low frequency oscillator), creating a sense of undulation, motion, and flow, of coming and going. The strings are constantly moving, holding one note, but being bowed at different times and by different parts of the bow. The dynamics too are constantly in a g...

Inspired by surfer Garrett McNamara's episode of Meditative Story and his reflections on staring up at the clouds or, as he puts it, "waves in the sky", this piece reimagines the sounds of surf guitar as an unfurling ribbon of notes, echoing and looping over endless blue horizons. Original music from composer Ryan Holladay. Music adapted from Garrett McNamara’s Meditative Story, "Embracing everyth...

Composer Eduardo Rivera shares, "I've been using a wonderful felt piano lately that sounds incredibly intimate. It's been my main instrument for our sister podcast Spark & Fire these last few months. The piano brings out a certain introspection in me, and I let this song evolve naturally. Not forcing anything. It starts with the first note that we're all taught on the piano, C. From there, the...

Music adapted from Varshini Prakash’s Meditative Story, "Together, we move from fear to hope." Taken from the musical world of Varshini Prakash’s Meditative Story, this sleep song is built around a world of voices. Some melodic and distinguishable, others smeared and abstracted beyond recognition to create a sonic universe of the human voice to lull you to sleep. Original music from composer Ryan...

Like the best part of an ’80s pop song, this Sleep Song celebrates the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, and answers the question: What would happen if a song like "Boys of Summer" was stretched like taffy and transformed into an extended soothing melody? The throughline of this piece stems from one sound, a chord reminiscent of pastel sunsets when you cycled until the dinner bell rang. From there, pads, ba...

Music adapted from Isabel Allende's Meditative Story, "From great loss, a great freedom." A quiet stirring of high strings is followed by an exhale of bass and cello. The grounding chords of a piano then lead to reverberant synth drones, like a sifting up of anything we've been carrying, followed by the assurance that we can put it all down ... let it all go. A soulful viola duet begins, a bitters...

Today's Sleep Song is an invitation to explore stillness. Picture yourself standing in a body of water and not wanting to create any ripples, gently centered, quiet, and surrounded by the seductive lulling of piano, synth, and delicate cymbal. Composer Eduardo Rivera shares, "I'm keenly aware that I rush too much. This song will hopefully serve as a gentle reminder to slow down. Breathe. Listen. C...

Like a fuzzy shag carpet metronome, this Sleep Song begins with the metered pads of a synth rippling out, and reverberating to the edge of awareness. A reassuring celeste seems to voice that it's truly okay to let the day drift away, to let its joyful voice take you. Falling further in, the sounds move apart, separating from one another, and sliding out of sync. But the charming tintinnabulation o...

Can you zoom in and notice the fine sounds of finger pads pressing keys, the piano's felted hammers making contact? Today's Sleep Song is an invitation to play with perspective. Written during a California rainstorm, it's a cozy blanket of comfort and hope for moments when the world is topsy-turvy. Kick drums, ride cymbal, and synth drones knit the piano's contemplative musings into a window-box s...

Like the chime of Dickensian church bells, or the twinkling of a star high in the heavens, piercing the night sky, this Sleep Song opens with a sonic beacon. Synth pads sparkle and ignite, like dancing satellites, passing comets, and every point of light across the darkest night. The steady, shiny pulses radiate effervescently, lifting hearts, and calming neural networks, with the assurance that w...

For this week's Sleep Song, composer Eduardo Rivera experiments with generative synthesis, a concept in which digital sounds influence each other with very little human interaction. Chords swell and fall as they ride the wave of preceding notes, creating a surreal and dreamy Viva Magenta swirl of calming tones, like the marbling, iridescent trails of oil in rain puddles, with cymbal, kick drum, an...

When you’re too sleepy to turn the record over on the turntable, new melodies start to emerge from beyond the crackle of the vinyl. As the record spins slowly, it opens a doorway to a soft and nostalgic standup piano. Falling farther into the piano’s chords, we’re led to a cascading sheet of tones, fields of evening cricket call, a calming open drone … all in turn giving rise to muted mellow notes...

Composer Eduardo Rivera tells us that he recorded this week's Sleep Song by time-stretching a ten-minute piano piece, leaving behind an overlay, like vellum gently settled over sepia-toned photos, or forgotten images on film reels suddenly brought to life again by projector light. The sound of the piano pedal, the sounds of the hammers hitting the strings, notes, air, everything is pulled out of t...

Warm, inviting tones, and the call of a piano's voice, announce it's time for tranquility and rejuvenation. Guided by light synth breezes and Una Corda, the sound of single string piano drenches the scene in a sea of cascading petals. The sound bath then dissolves into extended drones, collecting the day's fragments into unity, reverberating chords gathering our attention into a single soft focus....

In today's Sleep Song, composer Eduardo Rivera follows the path of least intrusion, creating a synth sanctuary for weary bodies and minds. The Yamaha DX7 (an instrument made famous in the ’80s by the Talking Heads, Brian Eno, Level 42, Supertramp) takes center stage with its distinct tone, created by its unique frequency modulation synthesis. Attune your ear to the higher melodies, and you may not...

This week's Sleep Song finds composer Eduardo Rivera going back to basics with his beloved old acoustic guitar. Says Eduardo, "I bought this guitar in 2009 for $200. I never meant to keep it for as long as I have. By all means, it's lived longer than it really should have. It's been on tour with me all over the U.S., all over Europe, I ran over part of it with a van accidentally, it's been stolen...

In a long hallway, curious echoing sounds leak through the walls; a piano's chords ground our footfall, assuring us we are not alone. Rainforest and jungle sounds manipulated into white noise pads call out from the periphery, until gentle cello takes us by the hand, leading us through the wilds beyond our seeing. Woodwinds and skipping synth say, "nothing is quite what it seems." We are in worlds...

Pulsing rhythms and gauzy sonic breezes introduce this week's Sleep Song. Here, composer Eduardo Rivera experiments with what it means to feel a human connection to instruments that are completely digital. There is no wood, no metal in these instruments, they have never known air, they have never known touch — they are completely self-contained and completely isolated, yet this electronic world si...

An expectant thrum sets the tone, as the softest strings begin to slowly strum. With intentions of being the truest form of a lullaby, this Sleep Song is a duet between a Delta Wave binaural beat, known to enhance sleep, and the most diaphanous of voices. The delta wave acts as a constant pulse, much like the trusted tidal movement of the deepest ocean, as quiet and comforting voices sway in its s...

For this Sleep Song, our composer Eduardo Rivera was wondering: At what point does something new feel familiar and comfortable? A piano motif floats through a bed of textures and accompanies us throughout the song. Over time the piano melody embeds itself into the backdrop of our consciousness, like the rhythmic pendulum swing of a grandfather clock, a gentle presence, the steady repetition inviti...

Our composer, Ryan Holladay, writes: On a recent Sunday drive in East Los Angeles, I came upon an estate sale in my neighborhood of Mount Washington. As I rummaged through the items throughout the rooms, it became clear that this home had belonged to a meditation teacher as the house was full of Ram Dass LPs, bells, even a singing bowl. One item stuck out: a Magnus Electric Organ, which looked to...

Deep resounding cello opens a pathway to an unknown world, where violin, harp, and piano dance, where echos of gentle voices breathe sung revelations. Trembling strings build to crescendos, as if this new world waits eagerly for our arrival, our acceptance of this invitation. Underneath it all, the constant beat of two sine waves pulsing 98hz in your left ear and 100hz in your right, creating a de...