do you listen to music when you go to sleep?

My neighbors are *very* light sleepers and they're sort of cranky and old (they love to file noise complaints for the tiniest rumble) so on nights when I cannot find my earbuds, I'm kind of at a loss (I sleep on my side so big headphones are impossible.) I have discovered a non-music alternative lately, though: I cart my TV and VCR into my bedroom, pop in a hardcore porno tape -- I'm talking "gonzo" material here, like rough anal or cumswapping or loud gagging coughing slobbering deepthroat stuff, lots of yelling -- and turn it up pretty loud. For some reason they never complain about that (I think they're too embarrassed to talk about sex, or, they feel they only have the right to complain about *music* noise -- that's why I only play the real amateur shit: no music, sounds like real fucking.) So I watch the porn and bust a nut and fall asleep immediately and the yelps and wet slappy noises keep going in the background for 2 hours and noone fucks with me. In the morning the tape has been automatically rewound and I hit play again, masturbate once more, and go to work. It's a wonderful life.

Fell asleep listening to my burned _Faith_ via live recordings 81-82 disc just last night. Kept waking up in the night hearing ghostly guitar parts and Robert Smith's voice wafting around the room. I lurved it.

Now I can't do music anymore, but I hate silence, so my girlfriend hooked me on white noise generators. Besides drowning out extraneous sounds, I think it has a conditioned response effect of making me relax and get sleepy when I turn it on now.

I am going to sleep now. Lately I have been listening to Angus Maclise, stuff from the Cloud Doctrine esp. that long spoken piece.

Other favorites:

Eno - Music For Airports
Spacemen 3 - Dreamweapon
Jliat
Jonathan Coleclough
Francisco Lopez - La Selva
Nocturnal Emissions - Glossalalia

yours?

i now favour stuff like the Dead C, both colourful and stoic, or composers like Tenney and Varese.

i found Boulez too exciting, as was Tod Dockstader, but i love those american post-schoenburg composers, their abstract shapes like dream wallpaper

jazz can be too exciting (Don Byron recently woke me up, too interesting) but the pass-the-hat-solo-solo thing (some Lacy dates)is acceptably boring for sleep. AMM is too dynamic.

if there was some piece of i could never learn or suus out then i'd use it all the time, but if the music becomes too familiar my mind wanders elsewhere, too much thinking, insomnia .. so i just keep turning the music over, an endless sheepy hollow

radio static and fans works nicely, too

normally, i guess its just somewhat quiet stuff - i used to sleep to music for airports all the time, and the microphones sometimes, and cluster and fennesz and belle and sebastian and scott walker and stuff.

in high school it would be Viva Hate every nite.

These days its nothing when my girlfriend is over, Coast-to-Coast AM if she isn't. I find that the more out-there the topic is, the better i'll sleep. If they're discussing Atlantis or time travel or something like that, I'll drift off into the most sweet slumber imaginable. If its political, I'm groggy the next morning.

i'll listen to something at a low volume that i know isn't going to get too loud or obnoxious

recent selections have included:

caroline - murmurs (anyone like this record?)
mondialito - avant la pluie
elliott smith - s/t
the books - thought for food
simon and garfunkel - bridge over troubled waters

i used to like listening to vespertine as well. 'pagan poetry' is fairly soothing to drift off to

I have constructed a playlist of beatless ambient music by Growing, Pan America, Aphex Twin etc just for this purpose.

Anyone ever tried going to sleep to Scott Walker's "The Drift"? If so, how many night terrors did you get?

I listen to Radio 4. (the radio station, not the band)

I went through a phase of listening to a lot of Pelt and No-Neck Blues Band while drifting into sleep, but that has since passed - back to the floor fan I bought at a Target 7 years ago.

I used to. Elliot Smith, Kind of Blue and NPR were all good choices.

Now it must silent and dark.

A few months ago I'd sometimes put Tilt or The Drift on my iPod for a while, let it go to the point where I fell asleep before I'd wake up again and be ready to go to sleep for real, putting the iPod away. (I don't want to sleep through the night with earbuds in.) No night terrors that I recall — I tend to forget my dreams pretty quickly.

I used to put on early Tangerine Dream (Zeit through Rubycon) for going to sleep. Also Eno's ambient works, early jazz piano recordings, Cornelius Cardew's The Great Learning.

I've been listening to Felt every night before going to sleep.

Life has been better as a result.

i listen to itunes on shuffle usually

I used to listen to music as I went to sleep every night. It takes me about an hour to fall asleep anyway, so it was actually a really nice way to get acquainted with new purchases. My girlfriend of the past 3 years can't sleep with any music on whatsoever, so nowadays I just lay in bed awake in dead silence.

Back then, it used to be a steady diet of Stars of the Lid, and Hope Sandoval's Bavarian Fruit Bread hit the spot nicely too.

Rap works the best for me. Something about just lying there paying attention to the lyrics like, uh, a bedtime story. The new Pharoahe Monch, last couple of nights.

In ritual fashion, In A Silent Way.

But now that I am older, I wear earplugs so it could be anything really.

Minor Threat puts me right out.

when I was 16 I was all about sleeping to SAWII on loop. Waking up to "Tree" was one of the more surreal moments that ensued, with that big creepy yawning synth swell

I fell asleep thru the entirety of Stone Roses first album, on the loungeroom floor, once.I woke up with "Don't Stop" doing its reverse guitar thing and it was very disorienting.

I dont usually sleep with any music, as I have no stereo in my bedroom.

Marsen Jules, "Lazy Sunday Funerals"

Melodies, harmonies and samples remind me of Stars of the Lid ... but instead of endlessly unfolding lines, there are distinct phrases that float in the air for a bit and dissolve.

A few months ago I'd sometimes put Tilt or The Drift on my iPod for a while, let it go to the point where I fell asleep before I'd wake up again and be ready to go to sleep for real, putting the iPod away.

I usually listen to something drone-y. C.C.C.C.'s Love & Noise and Pauline Oliveros in the Arms of Reynols have done me well.

i don't these days, i crave silence when i sleep. but when i was a teenager i would lie in bed with my headphones on, listening to the radio.
-- di, Saturday, January 5, 2002 5:00 PM (5 years ago)

me too, except i was still doing this up until 4-5 years ago

sleeping music

jean ritchie - british traditional ballads in the southern mountains
todd dockstader - eight electronic pieces
henry jacobs - electronic kabuki mambo
stuart dempster - underground overlays from the cistern chapel
eliane radigue - e=a=b=a+b
folk Songs of britain. vol 2, songs of seduction
alvin lucier- i am sitting in a room

used to be stars of the lid the whole time, but these have kind of taken over

When I have trouble getting sleep I usually put on either Jarre's "Waiting For Costeau" or Eno's "Music For Airports". It's the only thing they may be used for though.

sure - http://www.mediafire.com/?f2vclyg3xts

Half the time, Eno-y ambient.

The other half...well, I would be one of those people who turn on the sleep switch and listen to BBC World Service, but then the volume would be too low to wake me up in the morning. So instead, I play stand up comedy albums. Also, a company called The Great Courses has been sending me sampler CDs of college course lectures, which also work pretty well.

It's almost cliche, but many times of fallen asleep listening to Tim Hecker. Which is funny - sort of - because I'm pretty sure the last review I read of Ravedeath described it as "drone you can't sleep through" or something of that sort. Fucking nonsense. I'd play this to a kindergarten class.

when I was a teen I'd fall asleep to the soothing sound of FM radio static by turning the knob either to the left of 88 or to the right of 108. sometimes my right-of-the dial static was interrupted and my sleep disturbed by what I could've sworn was cockpit chatter from overflying planes.

I still use static sometimes, but most nights I fall asleep to whatever I happen to be listening to, soothing or otherwise. I always wear clunky can style headphones at home, which is fine when I'm lying awake on my back with my head propped against a few pillows, but not so fine when I fall asleep, roll over onto my side, and painfully squish my left ear between the bed and the earphone. a lot of the time I wake up while the music is still playing and take my headphones off the relieve the discomfort.

explanation II: dream sequences by the olivia tremor control (incredible, sounds like the middle of nowhere, track 4 is probably the most heavenly thing ive ever heard in my entire life. sort of like apollo by eno only less synthy)

dang, I forgot this existed and had only ever known of it as something legendary and unobtainable. thanks for the link.

seconding Thursday Afternoon, which I've hardly ever heard all the way through because it's such a great soporific.

Thanks jumpskins! xps

but not so fine when I fall asleep, roll over onto my side, and painfully squish my left ear between the bed and the earphone. a lot of the time I wake up while the music is still playing and take my headphones off the relieve the discomfort.

Ha, this is exactly what I do too. Luckily by this point I am usually in some sort of half asleep state and fall right back to sleep. I also used to have a playlist on which the last track was a long mix of Underground Resistance stuff and I would be awaken at 4 in the morning by thumping, speedy techno. Very disorientating.

When I was 14 I thought this was cool kids did so I did turned on the classic rock station every night even though it is much more difficult for me to fall asleep with any sound happening. Every night at around the same time they would play "Locomotive Breath," and I'd fall asleep because of the silence at the start, and then get woken up once the non-silent part of the song started. So "Locomotive Breath" still makes me cranky every time I hear it because I associate it with getting jarred out of rest.

Music in particular is hard for me to sleep to because my brain pays extra close attention to it, especially if I am already familiar with it. If my neighbors are playing anything my brain will forget sleep exists & devote itself to trying to figure out exactly what Three Six Mafia track is keeping me up.

I think that would still work with a lot of this stuff though. I get totally absorbed by, for instance, the Kent Sparling track - which is made of recordings/samples of all kinds of sounds and tunes and is really quite complex and it still sends me right off after about ten, fifteen minutes.
(I'm aware that I've repped for this track all over ILM but I do think it's a lovely thing and at only 79p or whatever on amazon for an hour is a bargain).
The DJ Olive things he calls 'sleeping pills' and again, although quite complex - compared to say, the Steve Roach tracks, really do seem to work like that no matter how hard you're listening.

When I bought Nevermind I played it to the end of Something in the Way and drifted off. The whole secret loud track thing made me cautious about doing that again

What's really cool to fall asleep to is that listentolosangeles website, that juxtaposes live LA police radio reports with ambient music...

I thought Jim O'Rourke's 'Bad Timing' would be ideal for this, but that bloody last track....

Geir Jensen's Field Recordings From Tibet is highly recommended. I tried Jeff Mangum's collection but kind of hated it - not fit for such a purpose.

Also National Trust: The Album - produced by Jarvis Cocker, is perfect (and free):
http://www.uniquefacilities.com/files/nationaltrust.htm

When I lived in NYC, I fell asleep every night listening to 'Metal Machine Music' at low volume...it did a nice job of drowning out street noise, especially when I was living in the East Village. In Boston, I live in a big crazy house covered in vines, facing a giant garden filled with birds. It's a lot quieter. I fall asleep listening to William Basinski sometimes, or Phill Niblock, but I generally don't listen to anything at night anymore. The birds do their own Messiaen soundtrack.

(also: hello ILM! I just realized that I've been posting here, on and off, for over ten years!)

I think we should at the very least get commemorative coffee mugs on our 10-year ILM anniversaries! (The again, the coffee would only keep us up at night.)

Ha, yes, coffee mugs at the very least! Or maybe purple hearts? Red badges of courage?

What's really cool to fall asleep to is that listentolosangeles website, that juxtaposes live LA police radio reports with ambient music...

― henry s, Saturday, May 21, 2011 11:49 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

I like this and I like...

http://youarelistening.to/deepthought

...which is various 'thinkers' wittering on to an ambient background. Terence McKenna's ...erm... thoughts are particularly good for dropping off to.