Repetition

I was in Morocco recently. We stayed in an eco retreat, run by the warmest people you could imagine and had a delightfully relaxing time. The food, the markets, the wildlife, the morning call to prayer and above all else, the people made for a thoroughly inspiring holiday.

On our last evening we took part in a kind of mystical, sensory experience. We were blindfolded and led into a room here we sat down to be offered smells, tastes, sounds and eventually sights of Morocco. It would have been a relaxing experience but for the choice of music.

I don't mind new age music as it's normally pretty inoffensive but in this case I did because it was extremely repetitive.

Why are car alarms annoying? They are loud and they are repetitive. They are repetitive, in a way that only man made sounds can be. Natural sounds always have an element of randomness. When you listen to the sound of a stream or the wind in the trees there doesn't seem to be any repetition, there's nothing for your mind to latch onto and become annoyed by.

In my own compositions there is little repetition. Sounds repeat, but there is variation and if there are loops, they occur after at least 10 minutes, meaning they are imperceptible. I've always composed my relaxation music in this way and have never really thought about it, until now.

I want it to be particularly conducive to relaxation, so whilst my tracks tend to use repeating patterns of notes, sonically and rhythmically, there is a lot of variation.

It's not that I dislike repetitive sounds. As well as therapeutic music, I also compose a lot of experimental arty stuff. These pieces may sometimes be quite repetitive and, to some people, possibly irritating and that's fine because they're not supposed to be relaxing.

But my relaxation music is supposed to be relaxing, which means no heavy guitars, no thumping beats and very little repetition.