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It is said and shown that “just 45 minutes of relaxing music before bedtime can make for a restful night”. And that people who make this into a regular practice can notice “a 35% improvement, including better and longer night-time sleep and less dysfunction during the day". (BBC News, 2005)

Well, music can have beneficial effects on our sleeping patterns. Some medical practitioners would even claim that music therapy is 4 to 8 times more effective than tranquilizers! How come?

Looking from the neurological side, sleep music both works on:

• your conscious mind level, where the sounds will be a source of distraction that in some point keeps you awake;
• your subconscious level, where the sounds will actually start to create brain waves guiding you into “the falling phase*”.

The reassuring tunes of rest sounds operate then physically and mentally. Reducing blood pressure, lowering breathing and heartbeats, melting tension away, decreasing anxiety and relieving stress, soothed and quiet music helps your body reach its “cozy point out”, magically allowing you to fall asleep. Positively acting on muscle relaxation, a soft consistent flow of sound has powerful effects on distraction from thoughts, putting your mind off issues, which maintains you relaxed as you meet absolute and delightful comfort.

In a nutshell, sleep music is an amazing organic technique tuning your brain to quickly and deeply go to...sleep! However, it can appear that any type and level of music disrupt some people’s sleep, being yet a form of stimulation.

“The power of Sleep Music” series.

These days on the net it seems that there are a hundreds of free VST effects to choose from, which is fantastic but when you want to find effects that inspire you, it can be a bit daunting.

Here is Polybonk’s top 5 recommended free VST effects:

5. FerricTDS

Made by varietyofsound Coming in at no 5 is an unusual piece of kit to add to your arsenal of sound sculpting tools, and not because of what it sounds like on its own. But, surprisingly, for what it does to echo delays. As you may or may not know, the big sonic attraction of old analogue delays were there ability to have long slowly devolving mutating repeats. These tripy time machines of old were particularly used in dub and reggae and they played a heavy role in the sound. The lo-fi repeat is one of the things missing in standard digital echo delays. If you are looking for a way to have the longest slowly mutating decays in your dub echo, look no further than FerricTDS. Just whack a standard VST delay unit on a aux send with this baby after it, Eq or filter to taste and send the send into itself. Sound confusing? Just look at the picture or better yet listen to “Waveforms of a distant sun” to get why we are so entranced with FerricTDS.

Get FerricTDS.

4. Dblue Glitch

For those that don’t know it already Dblue Glitch is the gateway to chopped up skittery stuttering musical mayhem. Whether its a crunched out falling apart breakdown or a random jittering drumtrack, Glitch has it in spades. With an interface and usability that leaves most payed software for dead, If you haven't already, you owe it to your ears to hear just why this is one of the most popular VST effects on the net.

Get Dblue Glitch.

3.ValhallaFreqEcho

Simple, straight up and yet surprisingly deep. This is one of the nicest delays we have heard in both hardware and software. Capable of those long decaying dub washes that are so essential round these parts. The pitch shifter puts it into a whole new realm of effect from subtle choruses to fantastic builds and even a binaural beat generator. What more can you ask for from a free delay!

Get ValhallaFreqEcho.

2. Paulstretch

Yet another glitch machine. Smear your audio sample of choice using a variety of styles into one long stretch of hazy ambient. Or use it to process break beat samples into new down tempo loops from another dimension. Whatever you do Paul stretch always seems to sound interesting and more importantly good.

Get Paulstretch.

1. Buffer override

From Destroy FX, this is the one! Responsible for more subtle weirdness and more upfront glitched out madness in more tracks and albums than any other effect used on Polybonk’s variety of musical offerings, period.

Get Buffer override.

Have you found any free VST effects which has inspired you?

At the moment Polybonk is under heavy development. Coming soon is a brand new design with a new intense focus on you having a great listening experience. After all the main purpose of Polybonk is to serve great music to people in the most convenient way.

In our new focus we have started to rebuild our blog and here is a bit more information of what we are about:

Polybonk is a place where talented electronic artists can share there unique creations globally in a way that is unrestricted by the high cost of physical product manufacture and distribution. A place where new music scenes can be formed without financial "risk" being a restrictive factor dictating style etc. Where those artists can make a viable living off there music. And where audiences can have unrestricted access to a wealth of such music.

Experience Powerful Deep Sleep with Dawn II by Sleep