Rhythmic Randomness and Relaxation

Rhythmic Randomness is a concept that I have outlined earlier in this blog, which defines the characteristics of nature sounds and their beneficial effect. This entry is how the presence of rhythmic randomness plays a role in relaxation. The presence of rhythmic randomness in our hearing and sight is most beneficial for relaxation and health.

As a music student years ago, I started taking a course in electronic music, where I was introduced to sound synthesis. Every week, we booked studio time to work with the synthesizer on our own and I developed a habit to begin my studio time with programming the synthesizer to produce about 5 minutes “ocean waves”. It started out as a very simple algorithm and every week it got a little more complex.

Right from the beginning, I found listening to these “waves” helped me relax, regroup, and get the creative juices flowing, but only for short period of time. The novelty would wear thin within minutes and I would want to “enhance” the sound more. These refinements ended up creating more randomness in parts of the resultant sound, which gave the sound more life and reality.

The rhythm part was easy to achieve with the machine. But the rhythm was accurate down to the millisecond, which is not the most relaxing or comforting sound because it always has that hard, relentless, “mechanical” feel to it. The more I tried randomizing certain parameters of the sound generator, the more relaxing and realistic the final result became. Unconsciously, I was trying to develop a sound with the correct amount of rhythmic randomness in it. It was a goal that I never fully realized using machines. Even back then, I ended up recording real sounds to get the exact effects I wanted.

And I never lost my attraction to the sounds of waves. (What a primordial sound!) Over the last several years I have searched out some wonderful recording locations and created wave and beach downloads, each with its distinctive and different character. The natural variability, combined with the slow rhythm in the natural sound recording of waves is both pleasing and comforting to the senses.

This is a perfect example of how rhythmic randomness manifests in real nature sounds. Because of this presence, natural sounds are better than artificial sounds for relaxation, meditation and sleep.

Here is a link to compare different shore sounds on the Nature Sounds.ca website.

Karl Hamilton BFA
Nature Sounds.ca
www.naturesounds.ca
www.youtube.com/NatureSoundsCa

Rhythmic Randomness – Large Scale and Small Scale

Some examples of Rhythmic Randomness:

The Seasons:

The concept of Rhythmic Randomness can be applied to weather to gain a better understanding of it. If you live at mid latitudes, you experience yearly seasons and in any particular month you know basically what kind of weather to expect because of the yearly rhythm. For example, I have a good idea of what the temperature in July will be like, even though I am writing this in October. However, the weather for any particular day, such as a daily high temperature, the amount of precipitation, will it be cloudy or clear, is unpredictable even a month in advance because there are so many factors that come into play, that there is a high degree of randomness. Even the temperatures and rainfall in any particular July can differ by quite a bit and can still be considered “normal” if not “average”. In the case of weather, the closer you look at the details, as in daily details, the more random the situation gets from one year to the next.

Crystals:

If you look at a crystalline structure, the effect is the opposite. If you look at the over all crystalline structure, the outer shape will often appear somewhat haphazard and random. As you examine closer more details of the structure, there is less randomness and the rhythm or repetition of the precise structure becomes more evident, and you can see precise geometry dictating the structure. It is the outer shape of the three dimensional edges of the crystal where more randomness is observed.

Water Wave Sounds:

Waves have a very regular rhythm. However, there is a degree of randomness in their timing that adds another dimension. There is also randomness in their height and shape that changes not only how they appear, but also how they sound. These subtle differences, the randomness, serve to engage that part of the mind that processes the senses.Compare different Wave Sounds at Nature Sounds.ca.

How Rhythmic Randomness Effects Us:

If that randomness is taken out, and the sound of water waves is changed to be exactly equally timed, and with the occurrence of each wave sounding the same as the wave before it, then the result becomes quite tedious to listen to. One can listen to such a recording for only a short length of time before it starts to become dull, even irritating. It will be fatiguing rather than refreshing. The difference between the two sounds is the presence of rhythmic randomness. That is why machine generated white noise, or using loops to generate white noise, is ultimately not as soothing and calming as naturally recorded white noise, or in other words, as sounds recorded from nature.

Karl Hamilton BFA
Nature Sounds.ca
www.naturesounds.ca
www.youtube.com/NatureSoundsCa

Rhythmic Randomness - Introduction

When you look at where we have originated, as a species, humans have evolved (or have been created - if you prefer that wording) to function within the natural environment. Therefore, it seems only natural to assume that we perform better when we have a natural environment around us, and that we will feel most relaxed in certain types of natural environment. As the world becomes more industrialized, and more and more people live within a human-made environment isolated from nature, questions about the qualities or properties of natural phenomena that has this beneficial effect on us become more relevant and important. What is it that makes nature relaxing, refreshing, and otherwise beneficial to our well-being?

Rhythmic randomness. Rhythmic randomness postulates that all natural phenomena exhibits an inherent variability and repetitiveness within its structure. The variability aspect suggests that there is a uniqueness to each and every instant, event, and entity. The repetitive characteristic suggests that all natural phenomena have cyclical aspects to their form, structure or reoccurrence.

For example, in the image of a forest the vertical lines of the tree trunks form a visual rhythm. However, there is a natural randomness in tree placement, that is, the trees are not equal distance apart. So the visual effect is of a natural rhythm but with an element of variability within that rhythm. This is what I call rhythmic randomness. Also there is a variance in tree thickness and straightness, creating more randomness in the visual rhythm.

Another example is the latest recording from Nature Sounds.ca. Creek Relaxation features the rapid flow of water over a creek bed, which creates a sound of random
splashes. The random tones and pitches of the splashes are caused by the creek bed
which is composed of randomly sized rocks. The constant volume of water combines with the unchanging rock positions to create the rhythmic aspect of the sound. The sound has a high degree of totally random aspects to it, yet has enough repetition in it so that it sounds exactly the same from beginning to end. Creek Relaxation page.

Our senses are optimized to deal with these types of complex stimuli. The repetitive nature of the sound is reassuring and relaxing, while the randomness creates the interest and holds the attention.

Karl Hamilton BFA
Nature Sounds.ca
www.naturesounds.ca