Phase Temple 440 - An exploration of isochronic and binaural beats.

1 Jun, 2025

I've been using various meditation "tapes" off and on for quite a long time. Recently, I got back into them via the Gateway tapes from the Monroe Institute, and then discovered Tom Campbell's material. All of this re-ignited my interest in exploring binaural beats^[1] as an aid to meditation.

(An aside: I fully acknowledge that these are "crutches," and being fixated on various tones and so-called focus levels can be counterproductive. But for me—and for many others—these tools can still be beneficial.)

Not that there was a gap in the market for binaural beat meditation tracks, but I felt like taking a detour down the learning and exploration rabbit hole, reacquainting myself with Ableton Live and the process of creating tracks like these.

What I wanted: A pleasant, organic-sounding "noise" that pulses and moves throughout the stereo field without being too distracting.

How I accomplished it: I used Audacity to generate two hours of brownian noise^[2], so I would have plenty of material when building tracks with a noise base—whether for 15, 30, or even 120 minutes. I then used a built-in LFO set to a very slow rate to modulate both a delay filter and the gain, creating a subtle, evolving pulse.

What I wanted: A cool, analog synth-style intro tag reminiscent of the Gateway Experience tapes.

How I accomplished it: At the start of the early Gateway tapes from the Monroe Institute, there was a really cool analog synth intro that sounded like a random sample/hold arrangement. I chose a more tonal arpeggiation for my intro tag.

You can hear this at the start of every track on this album. I used the Stochas plugin to run the arpeggiation:

The next part was having a continually changing binaural tone anchored to the carrier. To accomplish this, I once again used an LFO to take the 128 Hz carrier and 132 Hz binaural tone and vary it between 131 and 134 Hz at a very slow rate. In addition to the 128 Hz carrier, I added an isochronic tone^[3] pulsed at 40 Hz. Depending on the track, this is one of several solfeggio frequencies:

I used Auto-Pan with a sine wave at 40 Hz to let the pulses sound without clipping.

Solfeggio Frequency Table

I created one 15 and 30 minute track for each of the frequencies in the table above. The 15 and 30 minute tracks are identical apart from the runtime. I personally like to have the "meditation ending" sounds and use them as timers if I'm doing things like sauna, or have a limited time for meditation (like lunch break, etc).

https://templeofexla.bandcamp.com/album/phase-temple-440

This is pay what you want, and by all means, put $0 if you want, or more, it's up to you. They were created as a personal experiment, so I have no expectations of monetary gain on this project!

Additional Notes & References

• The Monroe Institute developed the Gateway Experience series, a foundational source of binaural beat audio for altered states of consciousness.^[4]
• Tom Campbell (author of My Big TOE) often references the use of binaural beats as part of consciousness exploration.^[5]
• Isochronic tones differ from binaural beats in that they use single tones pulsed on and off, whereas binaural beats require headphones and use two close frequencies to create a beat in the brain.^[1:1][3:1]