Tonebeats
TONEBEATS is a browser-based sound instrument that carries an attentive mind from one state to another with a slow binaural beat, then back again. Read once before your first session. The instrument will keep your place.
What it makes
The instrument produces a slow binaural beat: two close tones, one in each ear, whose small difference the ear cannot hear directly but the mind registers as a soft pulse. The theory it is built on holds that this pulse can potentiate brainwave entrainment, coaxing the mind’s own rhythm toward the rate of the beat.
Move that difference across a session and the pulse moves with it: a descent from a brisk rate toward a slow one, a hold, and a return. One composed path is an excursion. Excursions are commonly used for winding down, focus, and drifting into sleep. Nothing here treats a condition; the instrument is not a medical device.
The bands
The rate is read in hertz and falls into named bands, low to high. Each carries its own associations, drawn from a century of watching the waking mind slow down.
| Band | Rate | Associated with |
|---|---|---|
| delta | 0.5–4 Hz | deep, dreamless sleep |
| theta | 4–8 Hz | drowsiness and deep relaxation, meditation, the threshold of sleep; memory and inward focus |
| alpha | 8–13 Hz | calm, relaxed wakefulness, settled but awake |
| beta | 13–30 Hz | alert, analytical, ordinary daytime attention |
| gamma | 30–40 Hz | heightened attention, insight, the binding of perception |
The bed of noise
Under the tones sits an optional bed of shaped noise: an ocean, a wind, a low steady wash, in six colors (white, pink, brown, blue, violet, and grey). It is not filler. A field of even sound gives wandering attention something plain to rest on and covers the small noises of a room. When the bed is set to breathe, its filter opens and closes in a slow cycle you can pace your own breath to.
On entrainment
The instrument works on an old premise: that a steady beat, held long enough, may draw the mind’s own rhythm toward it. Researchers have tested this for decades and reached no verdict; some find the pull, others do not. The instrument does not settle the question. It presents the beat plainly and lets the operator observe.
Headphones
The default excursion is binaural, and binaural requires headphones: the two tones must reach the two ears separately. On speakers, open the studio and switch the excursion to isochronic, which works either way.
Listen, the front panel
Everything needed to run a session is here. Nothing is more than one touch away.
Two reels sit in the well at the top. As a session runs the left empties and the right fills: the wound tape is the progress bar. Drag across the reels to scrub.
Below the reels, the counter shows the time remaining, counting down.
Rewind and forward step by a minute. Play resumes from your place; Stop holds it. Record writes the current excursion to an audio file you keep, at full quality.
The long scale is the frequency dial. The white needle rides the live beat, gliding down through the bands during a descent; the numeric readout shows the same rate and its band.
The deeper settings
Four knobs shape the session without opening the studio. Each has a neutral detent at center; double-tap to return there. At neutral, every knob leaves the excursion exactly as its author intended.
How far the descent sinks. Raise it to reach deeper toward delta; the starting rate never moves.
The level of the noise bed, the wash you settle your attention on. Down toward silence, up toward a fuller sea.
The slow sweep of the noise’s filter. Raised past center it synchronizes to the excursion and slows as the beat descends.
A slow orbit of the noise around the head. Off at the low end; wider and slower as you raise it. Headphones.
The session’s total running time, from ten to ninety minutes. It scales the whole excursion to fit.
Listening level. It sits after the safety limiter, so it only ever attenuates and never pushes the output past the ceiling.
The plate at the bottom names the current excursion. Step through with the arrows, or open the full list: the shipped presets and anything you have saved.
The STUDIO key opens the panel to the workshop. Your place is kept.
Studio, the workshop
The studio is where an excursion is drawn, tuned, saved, and rendered. It speaks in plain instrument terms: hertz, minutes, curves. Nothing is committed to a file until you ask for it.
The large recessed display draws the excursion as a trace across the bands, left to right over time. Every circle on the active trace is a node, a junction between two segments. Drag a node up or down to set its frequency; drag an interior node left or right to move it in time; double-click the field to add a node. An excursion holds up to five segments per tone, over a total up to ninety minutes.
Each tone layer has a base carrier, a level, and a waveform (sine, triangle, or square). Stack up to three. Set the tone type here: binaural (headphones), isochronic (speakers or headphones), monaural, or bilateral (alternating left and right, for the EMDR-style audience).
The noise bed: its color and level, an optional resonant filter (lowpass, bandpass, or highpass) with a slow sweep that can breathe with the excursion, and an optional orbit around the head. Up to three noise layers.
Save keeps the excursion as a station on both faces. Export renders it to a real audio file, WAV (lossless) or MP3 (320 kbps), computed at full quality in your browser, independent of the preview. Everything is synthesized: the noise never repeats, and the file is yours to keep and play anywhere.
Read these
For relaxation and focus. Not a medical device; it treats nothing.
Do not operate while driving or operating machinery.
Not recommended with epilepsy, seizure disorders, or a pacemaker. Consult a physician if pregnant or if you have a neurological condition.
Keep the volume comfortable. Begin quiet; the ear settles quickly, and a session run too loud undoes its own purpose.
Your first session
- Put on headphones.
- Tune to a station. Deep Sleep Long is a gentle first descent.
- Set LENGTH to the time you have.
- Press play. Leave the deeper settings at their detents.
- Sit, or lie down, and let the instrument do the work. If the bed is breathing, let your breath fall in with it.
← Open the instrument
TONEBEATS is in free beta. Monthly, lifetime, and per-download pricing are planned, and commercial partnerships will be available soon.