Things to Listen to When You Don’t Want Silence

For the evenings when you do not want more stimulation, but complete silence is not especially appealing either

There are evenings when I have had enough noise but do not particularly want silence. I do not want the television demanding that I follow a plot, I have no interest in starting another conversation and I certainly do not need someone on the internet shouting advice at me, but switching everything off completely can make the room feel oddly empty.

This is usually when I start looking for something that can be there without requiring very much from me. Sometimes it is music, sometimes rain, an audiobook, an old radio programme or somebody talking about a subject I am only mildly interested in. I have also been known to put something on, listen to approximately none of it and still feel annoyed when it ends, which suggests that whatever I was listening to was doing something even if I could not tell you what had been said.

There is a type of listening that is less about paying attention and more about having some company in the room.

SOMETIMES A ROOM JUST NEEDS SOMETHING IN IT

We tend to think of listening as something active. If a podcast is playing, surely we are supposed to follow it; if an audiobook is on, we ought to know what is happening; if music is playing, presumably we are listening to the music rather than forgetting about it halfway through the second song.

In reality, sound often sits much further back than that. The radio can play in the kitchen without becoming the main event, rain can fill a room while you read, and a familiar voice can be around for half an hour without you taking in every word. It changes the atmosphere without necessarily requiring your attention.

Our brains continue to register the acoustic environment even when we are not consciously listening to every sound, which is presumably useful when that sound is somebody calling your name and considerably less welcome when it is a neighbour intermittently drilling into a wall. Predictable sounds can fade into the background surprisingly easily, whereas irregular ones have a remarkable ability to occupy your entire personality.

Research into sound and stress also suggests that music, natural sounds and some forms of speech can influence how people feel and respond physically, although preference and context make a considerable difference. There is no universally relaxing sound, which seems sensible when you consider that one person's beautiful whale song is another person's distressed submarine in the living room.

The better question is probably not what sound is supposed to be relaxing, but what you want the room to sound like tonight.

MUSIC DOES NOT HAVE TO SOUND LIKE A SPA

Search for relaxing music and you enter a world containing an extraordinary amount of piano, flute and what I can only describe as the distant possibility of a waterfall. There is nothing wrong with any of it, provided you like it, but relaxing music does not have to sound as though you are waiting for someone to come back with your massage appointment.

Music has been studied extensively in relation to stress, and the findings are encouraging without being wonderfully neat. What works appears to depend on the music itself, the listener, the situation and whether the music was chosen by the person listening to it. Scientists have therefore failed to identify one track capable of calming the entire human population, which is probably for the best because I would deeply resent being informed that my nervous system could only recover while listening to affirmations.

The music that feels right in the evening may simply be something familiar. It could be Fleetwood Mac, an old dance album, classical music, a soundtrack, something you played endlessly at seventeen or an artist you have heard enough times that nothing in the next four minutes is going to surprise you.

Familiarity can be useful when your concentration is tired because you already know where the music is going. There is no need to work out whether you like it, wait for the song to develop or pay much attention at all. You know the chorus, the change in tempo and the bit you particularly like, so the whole thing can occupy the room without becoming another source of information to process.

There are evenings when discovering new music sounds lovely, but there are also evenings when I do not wish to discover anything whatsoever.

THERE IS A REASON RAIN KEEPS TURNING UP

Rain has become so firmly attached to sleep videos and relaxation apps that it is easy to think it is simply part of the decoration, along with candles, blankets and suspiciously tidy bedrooms.

There is some research behind the popularity of natural sounds. Studies have compared them with silence and more mechanical or urban noise, with some finding differences in physiological measures such as heart rate, blood pressure and breathing. The results vary, so I would not go so far as to suggest that ten minutes of rainfall is a medical intervention, but there is enough evidence to support the fairly ordinary observation that many people find sounds such as water, wind, birds or rain pleasant to have around.

For me, part of their appeal is much simpler: there is nothing to follow.

There is no storyline in rain. You cannot miss a crucial part of a river because you stopped paying attention, and a thunderstorm does not suddenly introduce a new character whose motives you are expected to remember twenty minutes later. It can be interesting enough to fill the silence while remaining completely indifferent to whether you are listening.

The only real challenge is choosing the correct level of nature. Gentle rain against a window is one thing; a recording entitled Violent North Atlantic Storm with Realistic Ship Creaking – Ten Hours may create a slightly different atmosphere.

I would still click on it.

SOMETIMES YOU WANT ANOTHER PERSON IN THE ROOM, JUST NOT LITERALLY

There is a place between wanting company and wanting to speak to anyone, and this is where radio, podcasts and audiobooks become very useful.

A human voice gives the room a sense of presence without creating any responsibility to answer. Someone else can carry the conversation, change the subject and fill the pauses while you are free to pay attention, drift away or forget what they were talking about entirely.

The way somebody speaks appears to matter too. Research into vocal delivery has found differences in how listeners respond to calm, natural speech compared with more artificial forms of speech, and there is also evidence that familiar voices can require less effort to understand. I suspect most of us have already discovered our own version of this without needing a laboratory.

There are presenters and narrators I could listen to discussing almost anything, while others could announce that I had won the lottery and still somehow irritate me before reaching the amount.

Pace matters, tone matters and the subject certainly matters. When I am tired, I am unlikely to choose an investigative podcast involving seventeen interviewees, three overlapping timelines and a map that needs downloaded from the website. Something conversational, familiar or mildly interesting is much easier to let drift in and out.

You are allowed to miss bits. Nobody is testing you afterwards.

SOMETIMES THE THING YOU HAVE HEARD BEFORE IS BETTER

We tend to associate entertainment with finding something new, but novelty can be quite demanding when you are tired.

An old audiobook, a familiar comedy programme, a podcast episode you enjoyed years ago or even a television programme you know so well that you do not need to look at the screen can make excellent background company. You already know the people, the voices and roughly where everything is going, so your attention is free to wander without much consequence.

I think this explains why some programmes end up being played repeatedly long after we could recite half of them ourselves. Their entertainment value is only part of the appeal; eventually they become part of the atmosphere of the room.

There is a useful distinction here between background sound and background demand. Something can be playing without constantly trying to pull your attention towards it.

Of course, if you suddenly stop what you are doing because whatever is playing has become interesting, there is no problem with that either. It has simply been promoted from background noise to the evening's main activity.

ASMR MAY BE YOUR IDEA OF HEAVEN OR HELL

ASMR probably belongs somewhere in this conversation because it sits in the strange territory between sound, voice and physical sensation.

The initials stand for autonomous sensory meridian response, the tingling sensation that some people experience in response to certain sounds or movements, often beginning around the scalp or neck. Whispering, tapping, slow speech and repetitive sounds are common triggers, and studies have found measurable changes such as reductions in heart rate among people who experience the response.

For some people this is wonderfully relaxing, myself included. Others can hear three seconds of somebody whispering while tapping a fingernail against a bottle and begin seriously considering throwing the headphones into the sea.

Both reactions seem fair.

ASMR is a particularly good reminder that relaxing sound is personal. There is little benefit in persevering with something because millions of strangers apparently find it soothing when it makes your shoulders rise towards your ears.

If mouth sounds make you want to leave your own house, you have my full permission to move on. Mouth sounds are horrific, I agree. Not my style of ASMR.

SOMETIMES THE SOUND IS THERE TO COVER SOMETHING WORSE

Not everything we play in the background is there because we particularly love it. Sometimes its only job is to make something else less noticeable.

Traffic outside, neighbours, doors closing, plumbing, another television in the house, occasional voices or the mysterious nightly furniture-moving operation taking place somewhere nearby can be much harder to ignore because the sounds are intermittent and unpredictable.

A steadier background sound can soften those changes so that individual noises stand out less sharply. This is essentially what sound masking does; instead of attempting to create complete silence, you create a more consistent acoustic background.

Fans can work well, as can rain and different types of broadband noise. White, pink and brown noise have all acquired devoted supporters online, although the research is nowhere near clear enough to justify joining a team and defending its colour on the internet.

The best choice is probably whichever one makes the irritating sound less noticeable without becoming irritating itself.

This is not a particularly glamorous standard, but it works.

LISTENING DOES NOT NEED TO BECOME SOUND THERAPY

With enough research, apps and specialist playlists available, it would be very easy to turn listening into another thing we are supposed to optimise.

I would rather not.

You might want an old album while you make dinner, rain while you read, a podcast while you potter around or an audiobook after you get into bed. You may even want the radio playing so quietly that you cannot quite hear every word, which sounds pointless until you have tried it and realised that hearing every word was never the point.

Sometimes the most useful sound is one you barely notice.

If having it on makes the room feel better, that is probably enough. If the birdsong begins to irritate you, turn it off. If the podcast host has become unbearable, find somebody else. If the relaxing piano has started to make you feel as though you are trapped indefinitely in a spa reception, there is no obligation to persevere in the interests of relaxation.

You have not failed at anything. You simply hate that playlist.

KEEP A FEW THINGS YOU ALREADY KNOW

I like the idea of having a few reliable things for evenings like this, much as you might keep a handful of books around that you know you can manage when your concentration has disappeared.

It does not need to be an enormous playlist requiring twenty minutes of browsing. In fact, that rather defeats the purpose.

An album you have loved for years, a narrator whose voice you like, a podcast that can survive you missing half of it, rain against a window, a crackling fire, an old comedy programme, waves, woodland or the steady sound of a train moving somewhere in the dark may be plenty.

There may also be nights when you want even less from whatever you are listening to. You do not want a plot, information or a conversation that needs followed; you simply want a voice somewhere in the room with a little sound behind it.

That is one of the reasons I became interested in making sleep audio in the first place. I was never especially interested in the idea of telling people how to sleep, because most of us already know roughly how that part works. What interested me was the company of it; having something there when you no longer want to be entertained but are not quite ready for complete silence either.

That does not mean you have to be ready for sleep now.

Sometimes an evening simply sounds better with something in it, and if you already know what that something is, there is no need to search for the perfect option.

Put it on, get comfortable and let somebody else make the noise for a while.