How To Create Isochronic Tones Ramp

Brainwave entrainment is most effective when the frequency you are entraining for is near the point where you are presently at. For example if you are wide awake (your brainwaves are in beta state), listening to isochronic tones at the lower beta waves can bring faster brainwave entrainment compared to listening to theta isochronic tones.

If you were to entrain your brain to the theta state from a wide awake state, it would take a longer time or not at all for your brain to follow the frequency of the isochronic tone. A solution for this is to create an isochronic tone ramp to gradually take your brainwaves from one frequency to another.

Making an Isochronic Tone Ramp

Making an isochronic ramp using the Audacity software is easy but requires a bit of work. The idea is to create several files of different isochronic beats and tie them up together to create an isochronic tone ramp. The image below will serve as the basis for the simple project that will follow.

For our simple project, we'll start off at 14hz then ramp down to 10hz. This is great when you are fully alert and you want to entrain your brain to a relaxing state of the alpha range. Stress from our daily routines can  effectively be toned down when your brainwaves are entrained to the 10hz alpha waves .

Tone Durations

As illustrated from the figure above, 5 different tones are needed. The object of this project is to entrain your brain to the 10hz relaxing state starting from a fully alert state. The first tone at 14hz is long so as to entrain our brain to that state then gradually shifts to lower frequencies till we reach our desired state. For this project, we'll set the first tone to about 6 minutes. We'll give the ramps or steps about 1 minute each - you can experiment later on with the duration of each ramp. We'll assign another 6 minutes for the final frequency of 10hz.

For the isochronic beat, we have to calculate for each frequency. We can do it manually or use a spreadsheet program such as Excel to ease the work. Below are the values using the Excel spreadsheet. This can save you a lot of time especially when you are designing a span of several frequencies.

For your convenience I have made this spreadsheet file available for download. You can find the link at the bottom of this post. The cell formulas for the values are:

Cell B10 and below:

=ROUND(1/A10,4)

 1 second divided by 14 to get the duration of 1 full cycle. If you want to round it off to just 2 digits, just replace 4 in the formula with 2.

Cell C10 and below:

=ROUND(1/(A10*2),4)

14 hz consists of 14 times 2 half cycles

Cell E10 and below:

=A10*60*D10

multiplying the frequency by 60 gives you the number of full cycles in one minute. Multiply the product again with the desired duration gives you the number of full cycles required.

Isochronic Pitch

For this project will use 90hz as the pitch or carrier frequency. This frequency is said to produce well being, security and good feelings. Just great for relaxation.

Now it's time to create your files. Please refer to the following posts in creating isochronic tones:

Creating Isochronic Tones Using Square Waves

Creating Isochronic Tones Using Sine Waves

It would be best to first create individual files for each of the five tones. You can name your files whatever you want but it's best to have a system for naming files. I would suggest you start the filename with the frequency followed by the duration: e.g. 14hz-1sec.wav.

After you have created the individual files using the values in the spreasheet as your guide, all you have to do is assemble or tie them together as one file.

Hope you will gain faster entrainment with this procedure. Enjoy and have a relaxing day.

Experimenting Further with Ramps of Isochronic Tones

The project above only uses one carrier or pitch of 90hz. You can experiment further using different pitches for the different isochronic beats. For the project above, you can start your pitch with 94hz then bring the pitch down in 1 step decrements to reach the final frequency of 90hz.

Do share your experiences with the experiment.