Recently I’ve had several people contact me telling me they find my music useful in triggering ASMR. If you have no idea what ASMR is (I didn’t at first) it stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. It’s a physical (but almost internal) sensation usually characterised by pleasant tingling feelings in the scalp or down the spine, although it affects different people in different ways, and sometimes not at all.
From what I’m told, it’s an abstract experience that’s hard to explain but often likened to things like water rushing under your scalp or having your brain gently massaged or tickled! While I’ve certainly experienced similar tingling feelings when listening to music before, I wasn’t really aware of it as a specific phenomenon, but it’s interesting that so many people report shared experiences.
Common things that can bring about these pleasurable feelings are known as ‘triggers’ and include things like quiet soothing talking, soft whispering or even something as abstract as watching videos of people carrying out simple but deeply-focused tasks. There are thousands of ASMR videos on YouTube if you want to find out more. From what I’ve been told, it’s a very unique experience and what triggers ASMR in one person may have no effect on another.
It seems that my ambient space music is the most common trigger out of all my tracks to use as ASMR music, probably because it’s often very calm, atmospheric and soothing. I also tend to put a lot of detailed but subtle layers of sound in my music, so I guess that’s certainly likely to enhance the effect.
I’ve put together a playlist above of some of my ambient music videos that you might want to take a listen to and see if it triggers anything for you! And there’s links to more tracks below if you want to try them out (some are also available on Spotify/iTunes/Rdio etc.) and you obviously don’t have to license them if you’re just downloading for your own listening:
http://www.thebluemask.com/tag/asmr/
Obviously, listening on headphones is likely to reveal more detail and make the experience more intense. If any of my music does anything for you, I’d love to hear about your experiences -- feel free to let me know.
My music score for the documentary Evolution: The Grand Experiment (episode 1) has just won a Gold Medal for Excellence in Music for a Documentary Film at the 8th annual Park City Film Music Festival! I finished scoring episode 2 earlier this year which should be available soon.
