/ Maggie Koerth-Baker / 7:06 pm Wed Jul 14, 2010

The bass is not THAT amazing

Music cannot get you high. Except, perhaps, metaphorically.

17

  1. I heard this program this afternoon on my local NPR affiliate and was rather disappointed. While I do agree that binaural beats won’t get you “high”, I have found them quite beneficial for meditation and achieving a relaxed brain state. I’ve been using a binaural beat generating program called SBAgen for years with great success. Its a command line binaural beat program that can generate binaural beats, run patterns that cycle through frequencies and much more. Its lack of an interface can turn away some people but this one is FOSS and very useful.

    I’m a little concerned that the “study” had only 4 participants, control or otherwise…but perhaps thats what passes for scientific credibility these days… Is this really that much of a concern with tween/teen parents that NPR felt the need to comment on it?

  2. That’s ’cause you’re only listening with your ears, maaaaaaaannnnnnn… right?

  5. “Studies haven’t shown [effect purported] from [procedure]” =/= “[procedure] cannot produce [effect purported]”. Black Swan Problem.

  6. Assuming this was true, and just listening to music could get you high, what precisely would “parents, school districts and even law enforcement officials” be concerned about?

    I mean have we reached the point that enjoying a really good movie is cause for concern? What about relaxing at the beach. That could become highly addictive. Falling in love?

    Parents, school districts and even law enforcement officials should chill the fuck out and get on with real work.

    1. Anything that detracts from the message that you must be on a constant anxiety alert in order to be easier to manipulate by the tribe/government/church is not permissible.
      Didn’t you get the memo?

  8. Oh, they mean you can’t get high listening to music. I sure as hell have gotten high from playing music. Whatta buzz.

  9. Because anyway there is nothing more objectionable than people getting high. It´s not like that´s been part of the human experience since humanity exists at all. Sensory stimulation is devil´s work.

  10. @ Evil Paul

    I’ve got high listening to music… and experienced a most bizarre and trippy auditory hallucination whilst copping an earful of whale song!

    You’re dead right about playing. Years ago I was in an all-night jam session at a local studio which the engineer recorded – totally sublime experience. Two weeks later I was over at the engineer’s flat and he was playing a tape. I listened and thought it rather good. I asked, “Who’s the bass player?”. He looked at me quizzically and replied, “You, you bloody great prawn!” I’d got so into the “zen: of the moment that was instinctively playing stuff that in the normal light of day, I wouldn’t have thought that I was capable of playing.

    What a rush!!

  11. Here’s proof these places are full of sh*t:

    From http://www.digitaldrugs.info/

    “Absinthe: Our engineers went back to first-hand accounts recorded as far bast as the 1850s, and attempted to simulate the effects of of this mystic green drink. Did we succed? We may never know for sure, since Absinthe was banned long ago.”

    Typos aside, they’re saying this drug hasn’t existed for decades?

    I drink it all the time!

  12. And I thought music is my anti-drug.

    But then I mix my anti-drug with drugs for some real explosions. Weeeee!

  13. Brainwave Entrainment is highly beneficial for relaxing but I especially enjoy using it for heigthen awareness/focus (Beta frequencies will improve studying). I also personally recommend downloading a freeware program like Gnaural on and then setting Pandora to play infinitely in the background (a good setting is an ambient station of Brian Eno/Harold Budd). You never have to change the music this way and you can focus entirely on your work. NPR should not be so close-minded about something that can enhance Human Potential. Who cares if some forms are designed/peddled for a legal high? Its a positive thing if kids are creatively exploring what their minds are capable of even if it is a placebo effect, we should be way more concerned with teenage minds being addicted to drugs like Facebook.

  14. This raises several questions:

    1) Do binaural beats change brainwave frequency? This should be frankly academic to prove / disprove. Yet it seems ultimately ambiguous via wiki. What’s the scoop. It seems clear that under a specific set of circumstances, the brain will interpret two different audio frequencies as one, but it seems not as clear whether this will change EEG frequency…

    2) There seem to be some websites that purport to use binaural tech to mimic the specific effects of chemical agents, such as cocaine, ecstasy, viagra, etc. What are these websites? I can’t find them via the NPR site.

    3) The alternate is that music simply has replicable effects (clearly music is effective in some respect), but not binaural on brainwave frequency or whatever metric similarity to chemical agents.

  15. shhh, don’t tell the kids… it’s like that chef boyardee commercial where the mom starts banging the pans.

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