focus Alpha band
Study & Learning Enhancement
12 Hz beat · 440 Hz carrier · 4 phases · 45 min · beginner
Forty-five minutes at the top of the alpha band, sized to a long study block rather than to a task.
The beat and carrier in the heading are the main phase — the part of the session it was built around. They are not what plays for the whole length. Every programme here opens in the alpha band, wherever it is going afterwards, and most come back up before they finish. The full phase plan is on this page, and it is the honest picture of what you would actually hear.
Hear it
Thirty seconds rendered at the parameters of the phase named above — not an excerpt cut from a finished file, because sessions are built to order and yours does not exist yet. The figures the player draws are computed from the audio or from plate mathematics; none of them is a measurement of your hearing.
What this actually is
Twelve hertz sits at the fast edge of alpha, just below the beta boundary. It is the briskest beat in this catalogue that is still an alpha rate.
Alpha runs from eight to thirteen hertz. It is the most-studied band in the consumer category and the one people usually mean when they say brainwave audio, which also makes it the band with the most overstated marketing around it.
The full phase plan
Four phases across forty-five minutes, and the shape is not what the name suggests. It opens at ten and a half, works at twelve for twenty minutes — then drops to seven and a half hertz for a fifteen-minute phase before coming back to ten. The long slow stretch after the work block is the largest part of the second half.
| Phase | Role | When | Beat | Band | Carrier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open Mind | induction | 0–5 min | 10.5 Hz | Alpha | 528 Hz |
| Active Learning | main | 5–25 min | 12 Hz | Alpha | 440 Hz |
| Memory Encoding | deepening | 25–40 min | 7.5 Hz | Theta | 417 Hz |
| Integration | emergence | 40–45 min | 10 Hz | Alpha | 432 Hz |
Where the 440 Hz carrier comes from
Standard concert pitch. The A above middle C as standardised internationally, and the reference nearly every instrument you have heard is tuned to.
This one is simply a standard. It carries no tradition and claims nothing, which is exactly why it is used where a neutral carrier is wanted.
The carrier is the pitch you actually hear. The binaural difference — the part that makes this a structured session rather than a tone — lives between the two channels and is set by the beat, not by the carrier. Choosing one carrier over another is a tonal choice, the way picking a key is a tonal choice. It is not a functional one.
What this does not claim
This is the programme where we most want you to read our evidence record before buying. **Cognition is the least supported domain in the published literature** — the reviews we have read say so themselves, and one of the two records published on this site is about exactly that. The name says enhancement. The evidence does not support the word, and we would rather tell you that than sell it to you quietly.
Who it is for
Somebody who already studies with audio and wants something structured instead of a playlist. Not a study method.
Nothing here is for sale yet. These are the starting points a session can be built from, published so you can see the whole range before anything is priced.