Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Lullabies in birdland


The Australian composer John Levine, creator of "Alphamusic," or sound that affects brainwaves and brings on a calming "alpha state" that enables the listener to sleep, is demonstrating the effect this weekend at a music festival. His subjects are budgies, Amanda Greaves reports in the Bradford (UK) Telegraph & Argus:

http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/8464799.Healing_music_is_not_just_for_birds/

(For those of you who don't watch enough British TV, a budgie is a pet bird.)

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And a survey by a hotel chain of 6,000 Britons found that 20 percent used classical music to help get to sleep. The three most sleep-inducing composers were Beethoven, Mozart and Bach, BBC Music Magazine reports:

http://www.bbcmusicmagazine.com/news/classical-music-makes-sleep-inducing-top-ten