It feels like everyone is anxious, distracted and having trouble sleeping these days. If you're looking for an easy, non-pharmaceutical fix, try listening to noise.
Search "background study sounds" on Spotify or YouTube and you'll find tens of thousands of 10-hour loops from people hoping to cash in on the growing cottage industry. Sometimes, the track is a recording of a sound like "ocean" or "campfire" that actually exists in real life. Other times, it's just the static hum of a resonant frequency.
I just moved into a new neighborhood that feels too quiet, so I've been exploring a lot of background noises. Read on for a rundown and ratings of some of the best and worst tracks to chill/sleep/study/relax/go insane to.
1. WHITE NOISE
This is the bread and butter of the genre. It's the subtle, resonant hum of everything all at once. Sharp wind. Airplane jets and sterile waterfalls. This is what televisions used to do back in the day when you turned them to a dead channel.
White noise is created by playing every frequency audible to the human ear at the same time and volume. The effect can be calming at first, but the uniform totality of it all starts to feel a bit overwhelming after a while. Listen too long and you'll start hearing supermarket ads in the static. (6/10)
2. PINK NOISE
This one feels like white noise's aggressive cousin. Standing up too fast and feeling the blood rush to your head. Opening a can of soda but the fizzing never stops. I'd recommend passing on this one. (4/10)
3. BROWN NOISE
Brown noise — the best background noise by far — is named for 19th-century Scottish botanist Robert Brown, who was amazed by the way pollen grains moved and danced in seemingly random directions when observed through a microscope. Scientists would later refine the concept and call it "Brownian Motion." Brown noise follows this pattern. Frequencies, like suspended pollen grains, dance and move at random. They soar from high to low in a soothing chaos that sounds like the distant roar of a waterfall or an infinite wave that just keeps crashing. It's a bit like white noise, but somehow lower and calmer. The result is everything you could want from background noise. (9.5/10)
4. RAIN NOISES
This one is nice because for just a second you forget that our region is in the midst of a water crisis. (7/10)
5. U-BOAT ENGINE ROOM 12-HOUR LOOP
When I randomly came across this track on Spotify, I pictured the hellish claustrophobia of the 1981 West German war film, Das Boot. But there's something surprisingly calming about the mechanical urgency of a submarine engine noise. You'll drift off feeling cocooned in a metal hull hundreds of feet beneath the sea. (7.5/10)
6. PODCASTS ABOUT THINGS YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND
Falling asleep in class came naturally to me, so I tried listening to a podcast from the University of Oxford called "Hydrodynamics of Quantum Many-Body Systems Out of Equilibrium." I expected to zone out instantly, but the topic was surprisingly engaging. I might have actually learned something! (For sleeping: 2/10. For learning: 7/10)
7. BRIAN ENO'S AMBIENT 1: MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS (1978)
This album essentially invented the concept of ambient noise. It's the "Citizen Kane" of the genre. A little dated, but still effective. (8/10)
8. A RECORDING OF A FAN
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fan noise loops on Spotify and YouTube. My favorite is called "10 hours of Box Fan White Noise | Sounds for Sleeping (Medium Speed)." (8/10)
9. AN ACTUAL, REAL-LIFE FAN
Not so sure about this one. It makes the room chilly and juices your energy bill. Sometimes the simulation of the thing beats the thing itself. (5/10)
10. YOUR OWN INTERNAL MONOLOGUE
This one isn't actually that bad? (??/10) ♦
