How to use Gnaural (click here for a quick start guide) Gnaural can play sound

How to use Gnaural (click here for a quick start guide) Gnaural can play sound directly through your computer sound system, or create a sound file that you can burn to CD or put on your iPod/MP3 player. Either way, y ou will need earphones or earbuds to actually experience binaural beats, as the principle requires isolating the stimulus to each ear. While there are many ways to explore binaural beats, the standard "relaxation" a pproach is to listen to the sound while lying down with eyes closed. The volume should be at a comfortable level, and the noise just barely audible beneath the tones. If your headphones are connected properly, you should immediately notice a gentle "wow-wow-wow" beat from the mixing of the tones in your head. These are binaural beats. Often when starting a session I'll quickly test my headphone co nnection by pulling one side off my head; the "wow-wow-wow" should disappear isn tantly then reappear when put it back on. But if I still hear a "wow-wow-wow" so und with one side off, my headphones weren't plugged-in to my computer or MP3 pl ayer, mixing the stereo output to mono. Once satisfied that all is functioning properly, you should simply relax and let the binaural beats take your mind on a ride. Within 8 minutes, you're brain sho uld be fairly well in-sync with the binaural beats. It is my own observation tha t as my brain starts to synchronize with the beats, it actually becomes hard to hear them, as if my overall brain wave activity is cancelling them out. Which is one of the reasons I like to place spikes -- short, 12-second rise-and-falls in the schedule -- in my session schedules every 6 minutes or so. These help me ke ep my mental focus as my brain activity slows-down, by gently nudging me periodi cally, and thereby keeping me from drifting in to a sleep-like unconsciousness. My sessions generally last about 17 to 25 minutes, although 8 minutes is probabl y enough to produce the desired effect. While you can design schedules any way y ou like, the default session ("schedule") built in to Gnaural is a "relaxation" schedule, and runs for around 74 minutes -- basically because that is the most t hat will fit on a standard CD-R disk. While I have only rarely had a session tha t long, in general, I've found it a whole lot more useful to have a session prov ide more duration than I need, because I can always just stop before it is done. But if a schedule ends too early, it can feel a bit like getting woken-up in th e middle of an interesting dream. Designing your own Schedules (click here for a quick start guide) When Gnaural starts, by default it looks for a file named "schedule.gnaural" [an cient version of Gnaural called it "gnaural_schedule.txt", witha structure expla ined here]. In Windows, Gnaural looks for this file in the installation director y, usually C:\Program Files\Gnaural. In Linux and Mac, Gnaural looks in the ~/.g naural directory created when it is first-run. If Gnaural doesn't find that file , it creates a new one with a default meditation-oriented schedule. This file is in XML format, and can be edited with any plain-text editor. But editing XML by hand is complicated (you can find more information on their format here), but f ortunately Gnaural has a built-in GUI editor (the graph at the lower-half of Gna ural's window) which makes it easy to edit schedule files without ever having to look at their contents. For instructions on the graphing editor, see here. I am not an expert on the brain or on what frequencies induce specific mental st ates, so I can't offer any good advice on areas of the brainwave spectrum to exp lore. The generalities I've used to make my schedules include: The lowest end of the brainwave spectrum is called the "delta" range, with frequ encies less than 4 Hz. This is usually considered a sleep range. The "theta" range (between 4 and 8 Hz) is often associated with deep states of m editation. The high end of brainwave activity is called the "beta" range, and extends from about 14 to 40 Hz. The alpha range (from 8 to 14 Hz) is often considered a area of high focus, possibly good for reading or for mental endurance while cramming for an exam. My approach is to start with a beat frequency in the alpha range, around 12 hz, because I understand this is approximately the range where an active, wakeful br ain will go when the eyes are closed and mind consciously relaxed. From there, I slowly let the beat frequency slide downward toward the low theta range. I've f ound 5 minutes to be enough time for me to get there, but it will probably take longer for people who haven't done it before. The whole idea is to gently encour age brainwave activity, through binaural-beat entrainment, to the range of frequ ency we want to explore. The binaural beat technique can't force this to happen, it facilitates entrainment. So with that in mind, the more slowly you can desce nd, the better. The one caveat to that, though, it that one can basically just " go to sleep" if not occasionally perked-up. For this reason, I include spikes in the schedule every 6 minutes or so, in which I raise the frequency to around 7 or 8 hz in around 6 seconds, and them back down again in 6 seconds. Where your " spikes" should be is really a matter of what feels right; I know the spikes are too close together when I am fully awake when they arrive. Contrarily, they are too far apart when I simply go to sleep and wake up an hour later. They are in t he right place when they catch me just before the point where I am no longer con scious of my participation in the session. I have found that a lot of the "inter esting stuff" happens in the stage right in between wakefulness and sleep, know as the hypnagogic (or alternately hypnopompic) state. You may want to experiment with mixing binaural beats with other sounds (waterfa lls, rain, waves, etc.). Gnaural can play many types of sound files; simply add a new voice (Ctrl-j), choose "Audio File" for voice type, then the "Choose Audio File" button to tell Gnaural what to play. Once loaded, its volume and stereo p arameters can be treated like any other voice. Please use this technique responsibly. For instance, don't use it while driving or biking, etc. Reality "off-the-sofa" requires the full range of brain activity . Also, while I may not have heard of any bad reactions to the Binaural Beat tec hnique, you might want to ask a clinician before using it if you have epilepsy, for example. I can personally attest to having never had any negative results ov er the many years I've used this technique, but I am by no means a medical exper t. Presets "Presets" are already-made schedules that you can download and run in Gnaural. I 've collected a number of them and amassed them at the Preset Site, divided in t o two categories: presets intented for mental states ("Minscapes"), and presets that are strictly audio-compositions ("Soundscapes"). I am always looking for mo re good ones, so if you've been working on one that's working for you, please se nd it my way (gnaural [at] users.sourceforge.net), or post it in the forums, wit h a good description of its intended purpose and there's a good chance I'll put it up there. On the site you can see the number and the overall trend of downloa ds for each preset, which can be a good indicator for what other people are liki ng. Btw, if a schedule doesn't download as expected, but instead "open" as an XM L page in your browser, don't worry, just just do a "File->Save Page As" and it is the same as downloading. Using Gnaural's Graph Editor A main feature of Gnaural is it's visual interface to edit/create Schedule files without the tedium of hand-editing text files. The actual interface is the grap h on the lower half of the application; by clicking in this area, you can add, d elete, move, and edit data points. The approach is mouse based: Left button: selects, moves, and creates (by double-clicking) data points Right button: opens an editable dialog that can modify en masse any selected da ta points Middle button: deletes data points Some random tips to get you started: Double-clicking creates a new data point Click-and-dragging across data points selects them Add more to a selection by holding Shift and selecting more points. Likewise, s ubtract from a selection by holding Ctrl Selected points can be moved en masse by dragging any single selected point Use Shift with uploads/s3/ gnaural-guide.pdf

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