sleep Theta band
20-Minute Power Nap
5.5 Hz beat · 396 Hz carrier · 3 phases · 20 min · beginner
Twenty minutes, and the length is the design. Short enough that you are not meant to reach the part of sleep that makes waking unpleasant.
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
Five and a half hertz sits in the lower theta band, below the relaxation programmes and above the delta sleep session. It is a deliberate middle: slower than winding down, faster than settling in for the night.
Theta runs from four to eight hertz. It is the band most of this catalogue sits in, and the one where the published literature is least thin — the reviewed trials on procedural anxiety cluster here.
The full phase plan
Three phases across twenty minutes, and it is the only sleep-category programme that comes back up. Eight hertz to drop, five and a half for the ten-minute middle, then twelve hertz for the last five — faster than it started. The session is built to return you, not to leave you at the bottom.
| Phase | Role | When | Beat | Band | Carrier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quick Drop | induction | 0–5 min | 8 Hz | Alpha | 417 Hz |
| Light Sleep | main | 5–15 min | 5.5 Hz | Theta | 396 Hz |
| Gentle Wake | emergence | 15–20 min | 12 Hz | Alpha | 528 Hz |
Where the 396 Hz carrier comes from
Solfeggio. The first tone of the classic six, sung as UT, associated in the tradition with releasing fear.
A twentieth-century assignment to a medieval hymn tone. The hymn is documented; the hertz value is a later addition and is not a historical measurement.
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 a twenty-minute audio session, not a nap. Whether you sleep is up to you and your afternoon. The length is chosen on the same reasoning people usually give for short naps; that reasoning is about sleep, not about this file.
Who it is for
An afternoon where you have twenty minutes and somewhere to put your head. Set your own alarm — the audio ending is not one.
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.