S O V Awithin

Notes from the House

Music for Deep Sleep: What to Put On, and How Long to Leave It

For sleep, the length matters more than the track. Something that runs the whole night means nothing wakes you when it ends and nothing decides what plays next.

Put on ten hours of one held tone, with no words and no build, and let it run past the point where you stop hearing it.

Why most sleep music stops working around 2am

It ends.

An hour of something lovely finishes at half past midnight, and then either the room goes abruptly silent or an algorithm picks the next thing. Both will surface you. Most people don't wake fully, they just come up a layer, and that layer is the one where the thinking starts again.

The other problem is the music itself. Anything with a melody keeps a small part of you following along. Anything that swells has a moment coming, and you'll wait for it in your sleep.

What you want is dull, in the most literal sense. One tone, held, going nowhere, long enough that the ending isn't your problem.

The one to put on

Sleep Music

10 Hours · 528 Hz

Ten hours because the night is long and because you should never have to think about it again once it starts.

528 Hz is the tone that runs through nearly everything we make. It doesn't do anything dramatic, which is the entire point.

Start it before you're tired rather than after. Sound is easier to fall into than to be rescued by.

If you wake at three

Different problem, different answer.

The ten hour track is still running, and usually that's enough. But if you've come all the way up and the thinking has started, putting on something new is better than lying there negotiating with it.

Music for Overthinking · 2 Hours · 528 Hz + 852 Hz

Two hours, which is roughly the amount of night left when this tends to happen.

This is also the one moment where reaching for a phone is reasonable, and the app holds shorter versions of the same sound with a few short practices for exactly this hour. It's built for the dark, so it won't blind you.

For the three am hour

SOVA Within on iPhone

Shorter versions of the same sound, made for the dark.

Free to start.

Get the app

If getting to sleep is the part that's hard

Music for Falling Asleep · 1 Hour · 396 Hz + 174 Hz + 528 Hz

An hour is enough when the problem is the beginning rather than the middle. This one is emptier at the front than the long tracks, because the first ten minutes are where most people give up.

If you sleep but wake unrested

Music for Restless Nights · 8 Hours · 528 Hz + 174 Hz

For nights that are technically sleep and don't feel like it. Eight hours, less low weight underneath than the ten hour track, easier to surface from without jolting.

A few practical things nobody mentions

Keep it quieter than feels right.

Sleep volume is lower than listening volume. If you can pick out what's happening in it, it's too loud.

Not headphones.

They shift, they press, and they wake you. A speaker across the room is better, and further away is better than closer.

Let it run.

Don't set a sleep timer. The timer ending is the thing that surfaces you, which is the problem we started with.

The other long ones

If the ten hour track isn't the one

Free, and nothing to sign up for.

If sound hasn't worked for you before, it's usually one of two things. It was too short, or it was too interesting.

Both are fixable, and neither is about you being bad at sleeping.

Put on the long one tonight, quieter than you think, and let it be boring.

SOVA Within · sound for coming back to yourself

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