I'm love to listen to music as I fall asleep, I find it really helps me to relax and get a fuller sleep. Recently I've started to get board with the things I'm listening to and I was wondering if anyone else does the same thing and has some suggestions. Here a short list of some of the current stuff I cycle through depending on my mood.
Erik Satie especially Gymnopedia No. 1
Usually I browse the Internet at my desk until I pass out, but on the odd occasion I'll listen to some podcasts. I've gone through the entire collection of Ricky Gervais podcasts with Karl Pilkington and Stephen Merchant, but sometimes those would keep me up because they would make me laugh. Often times I would fall asleep, only to be woken up again by the sound of Ricky Gervais cackling loudly into my ear. I also listened to the Stuff You Should Know Podcast, which is really fun and informative.
Haha, I can relate to being awoken by Ricky's howl more than once. Have you also listened to all the old XFM radio shows? All great stuff. I also listen to the Stuff You Should Know Podcast, as well as the TED Radio Hour, How To Do everything and my current favourite, The Bill Burr Monday Morning Podcast. This is all with a trusty thunderstorm recording running underneath.
I've been wanting to listen to the Gervais podcasts. Is there a particular season/episode that was the best, or a good place to start?
There's a lot to be listened to and as rezzeJ said, it's nice to see him evolve through the XFM shows and hearing Ricky and Steve slowly peel back the curtain on Karl's ridiculous mind. However, for a new listener, it might be a bit weird because it's mostly Ricky and Steve at the start talking about what horrible radio hosts they are, so I usually suggest listening to a couple of the podcasts from the first round they recorded to see if you like it or not. They get very addictive.
I recommend going back to the original XFM radio shows before Karl Pilkington was even a thing and was just their producer if possible. Some of it is absolutely classic. The features that they'd make KP come up with are hilarious and as he gets more and more confident it just keeps getting better. He's a lot more natural back then as well where as now it seems he plays it up a bit for the camera/mic.
RainyMood.com w/ calm music. Perhaps Nujabes? Calm.com Various Podcasts * Alan Watts Podcast * Audio Dharma * BBC All Things Considered * Bill Burr's Monday Morning Podcast <- Not the most soothing. * Bullseye with Jess Thorn * BBC Global News * BBC In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg * My Brother, My Brother and Me * NPR Intelligence Squared U.S. Debates * NPR It's All Politics * NPR Snap Judgement * NPR TED Radio Hour * RISK! * Radiolab * Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine
Rainymood with Nujabes is perfect. Or with Miles Davis, or with classical. I rarely have a night with so much luxurious time that I can sit down and listen to the entirety of the Planets (or my old Mozart disc, which I loosely remember was called something upbeat like 'Mozart whilst at the bath'), but when I do it's ace.
I found this Spotify playlist a while back which is a nice collection. I also like Chris Ayer for sleepy time. Recently, I've been falling asleep catching up on This American Life or Planet Money. Nothing like Ira Glass's voice to make you sleepy and happy.
I've never thought of falling asleep to a talk show! I love listening the This American Life on the way to work but falling asleep to it might be just as good. I do use stuff from Spotify quite often but I've never stumbled across this play list.
Thanks for the Sea and Cake link. I love their music so much and I often forget to listen to it. It's incredibly soothing. Oui is one of my favorites. I no longer listen to music when I'm falling asleep. No matter how soothing the music, it's too stimulating. It makes me think to much to sleep. But when I was a kid I used to listen to Sun King by the Beatles on loop. The crickets, the guitar, the choral-vocals all made me chill in a great way. Plus for many of the lyrics I have no idea what they're singing which doesn't make me "think" as much as lyrics in english. Love the bass.
Sea and Cake is great both for daylight listing and some of their more instrumental stuff at night. I find one of the great things about the fan like captainduncan mentioned is that its just enough to break up the silence but repetitive enough to not simulate your mind to much.
I start to notice my tinnitus when I'm in bed, so in addition to a fan I'll play a recording of rain on a car roof or something similar. Occasionally I'll throw on the latest Giant Bombcast.
I've been using Basinski's Disintegration Loops for a while with pretty good results. There's another that is an hour long which is perfect because if it stops before I go to sleep it always makes me wake up
Typically I can't fall asleep with anything other than white noise. I usually turn on my fan to drown out the noise of the city.
In high school I used to have music play to fall asleep to, just a general mix of trance, dance, rock, pop, a real mish-mash. Then for years, nothing: just silence. Lately though I've started having streaming radio from Berlin or London play, or some of the extended chill-out mixes on YouTube if I want to spur on some lucid dreaming.
I can't listen to any music with lyrics other than Sigur Ros or it'll keep me up. Usually I just listen to a different sleep sounds video on youtube every couple weeks. Rain on a tin roof is really good, right now I'm on Pennsylvania forest
I lived in a house in Boston where I shared a bedroom with three other people (we each got a wall). One roommate listened to cheesy house music to fall asleep. It took some getting used to. Another roommate listened to Tom Waits, often Rain Dogs. I really enjoyed falling asleep to that.
I've been doing that for the past ~10 years. It doesn't affect how soon I fall asleep (as far as I can tell), and it makes things less boring and frustrating on the nights I'm laying awake for hours. I usually listen to indie, folk, classical, or ambient/post-rock type of stuff. I use the Pvstar+ app to make playlists (lets you use YouTube videos and caches them), which is a recent discovery that I quite like.