I’ve gone quiet for a minute because I just had a son. This is a photo of little Archie a few minutes after being born 4:37 AM 02/06/09, looking at the world. He shares a birthday with Robert Nesta Marley and is an Aquarius. One of the interesting new questions of being a parent is trying to get a full nights sleep (impossible, but one tries). Being a musician, I’ve been doing some research on the internet about lullabys. My lady Karla has been reporting Archie’s reaction to my different songs as I work on them while he was still in utero (mainly punching and kicking when the bass would come on) and this got me thinking about trying to compose some music for baby. So I started by doing some research. Google threw up some interesting stuff, I had no idea that you could buy washing machine, vacuum cleaner and hair drier sounds on CD. I settled on this one, free via babysleepnoise.com.
Baby Sleep Noise Combined Mix (15 min version, also available in 60 minute mix)
[audio:http://babysleepnoise.com/7gpNKMGR/audio/babysleepmix15.mp3]To me it sounds like Rhythm and Sound, and yes, it is pretty peaceful to listen to. It sounds like it’s composed of a fetal heartbeat mixed with several different kinds of noise, including hair drier, car on freeway, and white noise. All of these can be found separately in files of different lengths, here. It seems to work, although not when he’s hungry. I wonder, is this why we like Rhythm and Sound so much? Because it sounds like a heartbeat with a hair drier or an electric fan mixed with some nice reggae chord stabs? Because it reminds us of our first 9 months breathing water and listening to our mother’s muffled heartbeat? I know that Moritz has kids so perhaps this is the secret to their success. Actually I am gonna go find my R+S CD to try on Archie tonight. More research is definitely needed.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RskJZOoY34[/youtube]
update: I tried it with this youtube clip, he likes it. I need to get him some little speakers that play bass for his crib.
Congratulations! I found that my son (now 3) also had strong reactions to bass heavy music. The first time we felt him kick was a a Lee Perry gig, and since then he has had a fine taste in music. We also took him in utero to see Ryoji Ikeda, which he seemed to enjoy! Again, congratulations!
Big congrats man. Cheers.