do you listen to music when you go to sleep?

Probably because you had to pee the whole night? It's not bedroom- music but actually made to read old magazines on the toilet...I can browse entire annuals of fashionmags there, reasearch and development I'm in my element as Momus would zing, very soothing...

I tend to listen to anything really, on the proviso that it's not going to wake up my parents, but there are good reasons not to listen to anything too new (like never knowing what the album sounds like after the first two songs).

Before that it was Galaxie 500's This Is Our Music CD. And in my teen years, I would just leave the radio on all night, or have a cassette play me to sleep (although if I wasn't entirely out at the end of the 45 minutes or so, the loud sound of the play button stopping would jar me awake).

When I do, it's almost always minimalist .. either Selected Ambient Works Volume II, or Steve Roach + Vidna Obmana dark ambient, Harold Budd, Brian Eno .. oh, Oval works surprisingly well for me. "Ovalprocess" lulls me into this strange, lucid-dream-enabled warm coma. I tried Beequeen two nights ago, actually, and it was just creepy.

listen to lotsa glitch,mellower stuff like the delgados,really almost anything i'm in the mood for that night.

And Ned, sleeping to Main? That's just scary.

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

Last night I listened to Morbid Angel - Covenant. Out like a light.

iPod on shuffle. My wife stays up later than I do and turns the music off when she comes to bed. When she says "I can't believe you could sleep through whatever that was," I go check and it's usually either Naked City or Blind Idiot God.

Is "Tree" SAWII CD2 Track 6? Cos that is the reason I don't go to sleep with that music on.

"Hello this is Echoes with John Diliberto."

I usually crash listening to this on the radio, but if he goes into playing a bunch of that celtic sounding stuff, I've got to put on something else. There have been a few artists I have found out from this show and Music from the Heart of Space (which the local station quit playing).

every now and then I'll throw on the humpback whale CD to help me drift off...

i cant unless im totally totally knackered. keeps me awake and i end up concentrating too hard on the music.

Albums i've been using for sleeping purposes solely of late - gives me a somewhat skewed perception of them:

Sally Oldfield - Water Bearer
Orb - Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld
Yeasayer - Odd Blood
Bel Canto - Birds of Passage
Can - Ege Bamyesi
Prince - Sign 'o' the Times (mostly disc 1)
Stereolab - Margarine Eclipse

can - future days
the mike gunn - hemp for victory
peaking lights - 936
la planete sauvage - OST
grouper - wide
spiritualized - lazer-guided melodies
arthur russell - world of echo
electric wizard - witchcult today
angel'in heavy syrup (various albums)

not allowed to listen to tunes at night any more, as it keeps the missus awake. I miss it, but have to admit I do sleep a lot better without it.

can't listen to music as i go to sleep, the idea of the stereo not being turned off really bothers me.

only when im piss drunk.

It's savages who fall asleep with the TV on who I absolutely cannot abide or understand.

the necessity of switching off all electrical things was hammered into me as a child and after witnessing various others' lackadaisical approach to this, i'm glad of it

One of my best iPad purchases was a sleep timer app so I can set it up to shut down after a few minutes no matter what music is playing, so it's quiet by the time my wife comes to bed.

standbys for trying to sleep on trains, boats, and planes (and buses):

eluvium - talk amongst the trees
stars of the lid - the tired sounds of stars of the lid
william basinski - disintegration loops
labradford - e luxo so
belong - october language
klimek - music to fall asleep, DUH

have been pretty lazy (ha) at seeking out more of this stuff, sure a few hours digging round boomkat etc wouldn't go awry.

i dunno, once you get into a routine of falling asleep to the same thing every night, it works better than sleeping pills. I have a stack of old Dr Whos that are now guaranteed to put me out within 10 mins.

The best thing I ever fell asleep to was a Papa M mini-album which I can't remember the name of. I decided to take a nap and had it on repeat - I'd keep waking up and hearing the same 6 songs running round and round and something about it was very nice and peaceful.

if i do its usually George Winston or classical. Just cant fall asleep listening to anything else.

oh yeah, and fell asleep listening to the new lady gaga the other night, as a means of familiarizing myself. would set it on play and drift in and out as it went, get up when it ended and do it again.

sleeping alone, obv

*rimshot*

at the very least.

rimjob

I have a playlist specifically for this, I cannot sleep without it.
This is the top ten.

Rain & Thunder natural Sounds - Medwyn Goodall (obviously not really music - there is a lot of 'rain' out there but this is the best)
Darkest Before Dawn - Steve Roach
Echoes of light/A slip of darkness/The passage - Vidna Obmana & Alio Die
Evening Air, Freeway Birds, No Wind Birds - Kent Sparling
Piano and String Quartet - Morton Feldman
Buoy - DJ Olive
Sleep - DJ Olive
Thursday Afternoon - Eno
The Barometric Sea - Deepspace
The Barometric Sun - Deepspace

have to fall asleep to music, thanks to tinnitus...current faves are the How To Dress Well album and anything by John Phillips...

Ahh, that sucks, Mrs Trifle suffers similarly - she finds the rain one is good for blocking, or she opens the window and listens to the trees at the end of the garden. Obviously depends on how bad your tinnitus is.

Unrelated to that but I like this. I have to be a good mood though or it gives me the fear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xv9KLm0Vf0

I do, but it is usually a streaming radio station (80s alternative or old soul music), as the dogs prefer it, it calms them down.

I don't sleep to music because earphones are uncomfortable when lying down but Sleep Research Facility supposedly makes ambient drone specifically for insomniacs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD1rzzbnk-o

i cant sleep much without music now. unless theres other people around. its become my favourite way to listen to music i suppose. some kinds of music, anyway

helios - eingya
most emeralds stuff
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)
disintegration loops - basinski
all 3 colleen albums, delicate and wonderful...
SAW vol II - aphex twin
sleep well - electric president

i guess i like most of this stuff to sleep to because i have little emotional attachment to it(aside colleen and helios) but um, going to sleep to something that doesnt make your mind wander in the way lyrics do is just really nice.

I can remember as a kid drifting off to the song "Round And Round" by Aerosmith, and being able to recall the EXACT MOMENT I drifted off, which I would not have been able to do without a vocal track to use as a reference...bet I couldn't do that again!

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)

Want to hear this.

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.