Everyone needs some peace of mind...
I'm Kurt Leege, a father and musician. I was late to fatherhood. My wife had a rather surprising pregnancy when we were in our mid 40's. A cause for celebration! Alas, our daughter was not one of those legendary infants who slept through the night from four weeks old. We kept reading that newborns sleep between 18-20 hours a day. We were lucky if we got 12. And sleeping through the night? Not a chance. So we started to frantically search for sleep solutions. What could we do to help soothe her and get her to want to close her eyes - and keep them closed!
After reading numerous articles about how music is a wonderful way to help create a sleeping ritual for a child, we downloaded a number of lullaby oriented playlists from Spotify and gave it a go. It was the missing piece. By playing the music at low volume on a loop at every nap and every evening, we were able to create a sleeping ritual and not only helped our daughter get to sleep, but prepared her for the process of wanting to sleep. And she began to sleep through the night.
• Even without children 40% of Americans don't sleep enough. This can lead to any number of health complications including high blood pressure and type II diabetes.
• Not only do infants need sleep training to learn how to fall to sleep, it also immeasurably benefits their development and the quality of life of the parents.
• It's been demonstrated in scientific studies that not only does music soothe babies and help them learn to sleep, but music also improves brain function.
I'm a professional musician and the problem, unfortunately, with most of the lullaby oriented music on the internet is that it can be headache inducing for the parents. It is overly simple, repetitive and sonically uninteresting. Listening to these playlists on repeat every nap, every bedtime can become antagonizing background noise. As a guitarist and composer, I set out to produce a cycle of songs that are both simple and repetitive enough for children to fall to sleep to, but also sonically complex enough to appeal to adults - with the added benefit of providing soothing and relaxation for adults that listen to them. In the process, I also incorporated certain motifs that aren't in a lot of the standard lullaby fare which mimic womb-like sounds [using delay effects to create swells and swooshes that would be familiar to an infant from their experience in the womb]. Current sleep science tells us that mimicking the sounds experienced in utero can reassure infants as they experience this new world.
The result of this work is 'Sleepytime Guitar'. Released on January 1 2018, it is available everywhere on the internet for streaming and download. As the reviewer on New York Music Daily put it, "An album that puts your kids to sleep but doesn't bore you to death." It contains an hour of music consisting of 14 songs most of which are traditional lullabies, old folk melodies and spirituals. All are geared towards creating a soothing environment for a child to sleep and a relaxing, sonically rich album for parents enjoy - which is important given that using this technique to help your child sleep requires you listening to it innumerable times. Most importantly it works! Our daughter falls asleep to this album every nap and every evening. It's also been road tested on many of her playmates and their parents swear by it.
What's even better is that the album is multifaceted. As noted in the Adobe and Teardrops review, " I absolutely plan to use the album as the background to my daily meditation practice. If you, too, are in need of something to calm you (and you know you need one), Sleepytime Guitar will ease your weary heart." Yes, its intention is putting children to sleep, but I find it very soothing to listen to on rush hour subways to help me deal with the anxiety of my claustrophobia. It is also wonderful to listen to in the context of yoga, meditation and other activities calm the mind and body. It can help put you to sleep too!
Many more albums in this series are in the works. I've just begun the next cycle - Sleepytime Jazz.