Tom Middleton - From dance floors to deep rest: A journey of sound and healing

Lo and behold, I played this and people are crying. A room full of Japanese in tears because it moved them so profoundly. That was a really interesting insight into the power of sound and music. Around the ages of seven, listening to music that was profoundly stereo and really otherworldly. My first sonic immersion experience, the age of seven, was this wow moment of hearing all these sounds and frequencies whirling around me. I kind of know which is the right thing to play at the right time to create an effect. that, guess, is the secret sauce is that you have to have watched and observed people. Yes, you could probably study this, but have you actually watched what happens? We just having fun. It was just entertaining ourselves, but at the same time, scientifically curious about sound and what it can do. We're the only species that intentionally sleep device. There's no other species that does it. The burnout moment is where you know that your nervous system is saying, Yeah, it's just not healthy at every level. was saying, medicine in the future is frequency medicine. Yeah. We're already there. Yeah. We've got wearables. Can we use that tech and have a better health promoting soundscape? Invited people to listen to the album, make up their own mind. Soldiers on manoeuvres saying if it wasn't for this tape it wouldn't have helped me through these really dark times. Can we be a bit more empathetic about how we're delivering the experience? And it's not just about sound, obviously that's an area that I love, but yeah, it's weaving sound in. Sound is very powerful sense that could be leveraged in a more useful way, think, more intentional and functional way. Is there anything we can maybe leave the audience with some reflections around how they can maybe think or shift or think about sound? What can we leave them with to reflect on? Steve (01:55.512) Tom, welcome to the Experience Designers podcast. Pleasure. Thank you for watching me, Steve. Yeah. So where are we sitting right now? Let's just share with the audience of where are we and a little bit of context to this, maybe this kind of little experience that we're sitting in today. Yeah, so this is the good hotel situated on war Victoria dock I've been in this area now for over 20 years Wow, and I've seen some really interesting things happen in particularly in terms of the experience of living here one morning I woke up and The good hotel are just appeared. They'd apparently Pulled it over from Holland. This is an ex-prison that's been we contextualize into a hotel And also empowering local, empowering ex inmates to give them a new chance, which is a really lovely idea. it's quite a novel way of looking at hospitality. Let's help the underserved that might not get a chance to be in that space, give them a step in the right direction. It's amazing. And the design is great. It's that lovely kind of combination of, know, urban modern warehouse. Tom (03:09.127) meets or a philic green design next to the water. It's a great location. good, very good. let's dive in. For those that don't know you Tom, of a certain age should we say, younger generation maybe, I don't know, just tell us a little bit about yourself, just a bit of an intro into your background and you as a person. So, born in London, grew up in Cornwall. I've always had an interest in sound and music and one of my earliest memories, my dad sat me in the stereo sweet spot between the speakers listening to this album by a Japanese composer called Issao Tomita. Yes. And this one particular album called Snowflakes Are Dancing with a really evocative sleeve. On the back of the sleeve, there was this studio shot of all these synthesizers and gadgets. What is all this? And this is very early. This is around the age of seven. Listening to music that was profoundly stereo and really otherworldly. I think you'll testify that even if you listen to this music today, it's quite peerless in the sense that very little sounds so ethereal. Yes. Classical music. So Claude Debussy or Ravel, but reinterpreted using synthesizers. So my first sonic immersion experience at the age of seven was this wow moment of hearing all these sounds and frequencies whirling around me. And then I think since that point, there was always a total fascination with sound and music and vibration, frequency and resonance. all the music that I was exposed to as a kid from listening to the radio, finger on the pause button, making cassette tapes. was the life there. Yeah. Every night is there something new to listen to? Yes. And then from, you know, learning and listening. Tom (05:01.758) I'm studying, I was a cellist in an orchestra and playing piano and guitar as well. Yeah. What I really wanted to do is was being, Depeche Mode, OMD or, humanly, that was basically, and I wanted to play a synth, in a kind of a synth pop band. So I remember annoying the heck out of the local, staff at the music shop that started to import synthesizers. Yeah. So there'd be, you know, me and my brother headphones on just mucking about with the synthesizers and all afternoon after school. that sort of curiosity led me into, you know, expanding the sort of styles of music from what I suppose is popular and accessible music to more underground and difficult to find, experimental. Think Kraftwerk and think... US electro music, you know, suddenly there was this whole new movement. Yes, that moved from instruments to synthetic sounds. Yeah, always fastened by that. Fairlight synthesizer, I think was, you know, seeing was it 19 by Paul hardcastle. And suddenly there were these bits of technology that were on stage thinking, is this? The sampler, the agent sampler. Got my first sampler and cost about 100 quid, I think. Oh, wow. And at that point I was kind of hooked on sound recording, reproduction. My brother very speeded my cassette deck so that I could speed up and slow down and theoretically mix cassettes, which was a fun idea. We had a good one turntable as well with a very spear. There's this sudden interest in mixing and blending and making sounds. My friend at school bought a kit. there was this company that would basically send you the components and you'd solder and make your own booboo synth drums. So there's that world and physics, electronics and science school was kind of where I was with that with mixed with art and music. and then just completely fell in love with dance and music, breakdancing, body popping, graffiti, that whole movement to me was mung blower. Yeah. And that culture around it. Tom (07:23.104) And this grew up in Cornwall. So there's a surfing culture and now there was this b-boy culture mixed with surfing. And so, yeah, we started going out. There's also about time there was acid jazz movement. Yeah. And so, when about. interesting. Steve (07:37.966) That would have been... Yeah, and then Acid House music kind of kicked in late 80s, wasn't it? Roughly. Yeah, yeah, I remember. So suddenly there was this sort of shift between me wearing a D-Mob jazz kind of dance suit with spats and doing that kind of jazz dance to wearing this kind of stuff, which I haven't kind of got out of. Me, it's a booties and cats and being a B-Boy. And we used to kind of break dance at the weekends and have battles with local crews. All the while I'm more interested in how is this music being made and could I make it at some point? Rolls on a few years. clubbing and the whole kind of culture sort of shifted in Cornwall. There was a club near Newquay called the Bougie Inn and every couple of weeks a DJ from London would come down, the late great Paul Guntrip. He used to play at the Wag Club and yeah, Shun and the first generation of acid house raves. He brought down that music culture and shared it in Cornwall. We can imagine. Right down the bottom of England, we're getting to hear the latest US imports. Chicago, acid, Detroit techno, New York garage, Belgian, no, a beats and experimental kind of early days techno. Plus all this stuff that's happening in the UK. So great diets to kind of, yeah. I mean, it was a. in at that time. When did Moog kick in in terms of the synth with Moog? Was that around about 90s? Tom (09:09.934) I mean, rewinding now, if you go back to the history of synthesizers, which is something I'm fascinated about, I mean, you can go back to the nice shell and thirties and forties, there's certain instruments like the, the theramin, you know, that way you move your hand in front of a, uh, a rod. Yes. And so you can kind of change the frequency in the tone. I won't make an impersonation. We can add that sound over a sock. So if you think about the advent of, of, um, know, transistors and tubes, and experimental music. I think I'm right in saying in the 1950s, the Phillips Laboratory was one of the first places where they really started exploring creative sound with magnetic tape. So they'd record sounds to tape, cut them up, and then make really interesting kind of creative rhythms. Then you had the BBC Radiophonics workshop. there's an amazing heritage and culture of experimental electronic and tape recording music that didn't sound like instruments was otherworldly. Yes. Scene tunes, sci-fi, know, yeah, where we're coming from. So yes, all the stuff you kind of grew up listening to and you would have sort of heard these sounds that were quite otherworldly and not like a guitar or a drum kit. So that fascination obviously led me to this point where I'm in a nightclub in Cornwall and there's a guy on the decks that we never heard before. And suddenly he plays this track that didn't sound like anything else any of us have heard from mixtapes or radio. To describe it, really fast kind of proto breakbeat jungle with a kind of acidy squelchy noise underneath it. Filthy bass. And in this moment where all of a sudden, Julie Andrews voice comes in, a kind of sample from the sound of music and we're kind of, you know, flipping out on the dance floor hearing this crazy piece of music. And so rushed up there and discovered that this guy was playing tapes of his own music. It was the Apex Twin, Richard D. James. Finally meeting this early days. At that time he wasn't even called Apex Twin, he was called Peabod, Onyc Boy On Doe. So he got a chatting, he invited me to his place, showed me how he's making music and went from kind of, Tom (11:26.082) friendship to mentorship, he showed me how to, to literally sound for, to synthesize, to mix, to master and arrange. And so in his bedroom, he helped me make my first two records, which was a lot of fun. Amazing. Off the back of that. I, obviously with his mixtapes that are now legendary, was playing it to everyone. So you've got to listen to the Apex twin is his incredible music. One track analog bubble bath that gave me the goosebumps. think I replayed. in consecutive order about 150 times, just waiting for that drop every time. Mind blowing. There's a record shop in Exeter called Mighty Force and Mark Darby was running it, loved the music and let's say the rest is history. There was a record deal was done, the record was cut and I remember vividly going up to London with test pressings and back in those days, no one knew who Richard James was. No one knew who Mighty Force records were. We were just, you know, crying our luck. Yeah. Going around touting, would you take some of these records on sale or return? Here's 10, you know, white labels that I've hand pressed and stickered. With Amlog bubble bath, Apex twin, Apex as it was then. And, and so there we have it. That's the start of that conversation. And then he got, you know, signed up to war for RNS records and you know, the rest of story with the literature. I just asked, for that era, look back now, looking back, we plot our journey backwards, it always kind of makes sense. In that era though, if you look back at that period, what strings can you kind of go, yes, like Tom's sitting here today with me talking, yeah, that's still as true as it was back then. Maybe even sitting there with your dad at five years old, being captivated by amazing sounds that you heard. What's still some of the elements that you can say, yeah, that I can... definitely say that was a grounding my foundation elements are still true today in how you think or how you work even. Tom (13:24.529) Great question. I think curiosity number one, know, we're with these things. don't, you can't turn them off. You've got eyelids. We don't have ear lids. So you're absorbing referencing sound all the time. You're locating yourself in space for typically for safety. And then beyond that, you know, the intrigue of what does that sound? sort of sounds? I've been fascinated by sounds. I Hannah Barbera sound effects. was like crazy for what's making these sounds now. Um, all the way through to listening and learning from Richard in his studio, opening your mind to the possibility that anything you can hear could become music. So he'd be in the garage, be ashing things and he had two speakers set up in his bedroom, literally suspended from the ceiling. And if I look back, I think the experiments that we were doing with his hacked synthesizer, that he could basically slow down the frequency in hertz of his synthesizer. So you could see the cones doing this. Now, what we're talking about is basically early days, binaural beats. You're exposing yourself to, in for sonic frequencies that are below human hearing range. And what's amazing about that is that, you know, you're, you're getting a strange sensation at what, wow, I feel different here. So we were kind of experimenting with the neuroscience and psychoacoustics of sound back, you know, age of 18, 19 in his bedroom in Cornwall. Wow. And then sort of to this day, there's always that thread of what is it doing? Can we test it and try it out? And now obviously it's more about the ethics and social responsibility is can you create healthier sound? I've always felt that, you know, making this music with integrity, emotionality, and with authenticity, people resonate with that. So moving from Cornwall to doing design in Taunton, meeting my other music partner at that time, Mark Pritchard. again, another studio in the middle of, the countryside with a field full of cows and sheep and more experimentation. one particular project, global communication was, I suppose an idea around creating music without agenda. Most of the music was club music. It was for dance, but we thought, why don't we create something that's more about storytelling? We removed the titles and just gave them the durations of the track. Steve (15:39.362) Yes. Tom (15:47.98) And we invited people to listen to the album, make up their own minds. I did movies if you want, you know, what does this make you feel? Where does it take you? And we've got some incredible feedback, know, soldiers on maneuvers saying if it wasn't for this tape, it wouldn't have helped me through these really dark times. people send, literally paintings, drawings, poetry, all kinds of interesting responses to an album of music that was just durations and not titles. and to this day, that album, you like, sort of set the tone for emotional authenticity, telling stories and also leveraging different kinds of sounds to create different environments. So we use nature sound. I wasn't even thinking, well, why was that a good idea? We now know that exposure to nature sound in itself is a very powerful therapeutic tool. That got me really fascinated with soundscape ecology and one of my heroes, Bernie Krause, came up with these three different terms. Geophony, biophony and anthropophony. Geophony, geophony is the base layer of the soundscape. It's earth sounds, it's elemental sounds, it's wind, the cracking of fire, thunderstorms. don't know you've it, So you've got this lovely combination of geophony as the base layer. Then you've got a layer of biophony, which is creature sound. I'm fascinated and always try to remind people of these two layers, which are often so quiet because of urban noise. So base layer, geophony, biophony, creature sound. And then above that, you've got anthropophony. And with that, you've got intentional and unintentional. Yeah. So Tom (17:48.002) We own an environment here where there's some unintentional anthropophony. It's humans are just making noise, but without intention, it's just a byproduct of life. Yes. Noise pollution, planes going overhead. We've got background noise. We've got chatter. All of that is actually summing up to create a stress on our system. So yeah, what's really interesting is go to the countryside, remove that layer of unhealthy background noise. Yeah. And you've got geophony and biophony, is what you really need to reset the nervous system. Then you've got intentional anthropophony, which is music. So there's manmade sounds with intentionality. And I love the idea of my arm, there's three layers of the sounds. love that. So that's really become a big factor in all of our work throughout the years, looking at these layers and I suppose inviting you to reset your listening. and to really tune in to those subtle layers that are very quiet, almost imperceptible. At the weekend I was at Wasing in the park and I invited people to just stop and pause, take a breath and just close their eyes and listen. And all we could listen here was the sound of wind through these incredibly ancient trees and forest. And it was the most wonderful thing to just have a moment. When do you get that in open environment? That's just so rare. So in a sense, it's almost prescriptive use of nature sound. And the reason why it's so popular on streaming platforms as a therapeutic modality is because it's stochastic. It's sonic fractals that are literally resetting your nervous system, reminding you what it used to be like before, you know, industrial revolution and noise. Yeah, there's so much to unpack on that. So question before that, because I'd love to dive because I think white mirror your business is a beautiful representation of how this kind of natural curiosity that you clearly have for sure and experimentation is kind of, yeah, is being presented or yeah, how you're expressing that through your business today. But you mentioned that also about like from a human evolution point of view and some of the challenges that we're facing. Steve (20:02.478) particularly being a lot of population in urban environments and not being exposed to nature enough, all these things. And I'm just curious as well on the element of your journey of I think what was a big catalyst was during your DJ years. Can we just like dive into that a little bit? Because your journey is like, is quite amazing. And also as well, this profound moment that happened for you as part of that. And also then we'll definitely kind of bring it all together as some of the work that you're doing today and how you're solving some of that. I really believe that. But just share a little bit about your kind of DJ years and that life that you endured and experienced and enjoyed as well, and no doubt at times as well. Absolutely. So I always feel like of imposter syndrome in the DJ world because I grew up in Cornwall. We were just mucking about, know, everyone that knows Richard's Apex and the reflex crew and all the people we used to hang out with there. It was just having fun. It was just entertaining ourselves, but at the same time, scientifically curious about sound what it can do. Then accidentally falling into the DJ and remixing world as a kind of producer DJ touring artist didn't ask for it. Just was, you know, we making music in, in Somerset, releasing records and then invited us to come and start to play this music in clubs. We were originally just played music in Cornwall. Suddenly, you're paying me to play music. Wow. That's a privilege. Thank you. So I've always had this approach of if I'm going to play music and sounds to people, can I be more socially responsible and ethical about it? Can I kind of deliver something that's almost nutritious for the soul. Yeah. So it's not just any old sound or piece of music, but she rating it specifically so that there's aspects of that, you feel like they're delivering some meaning and value beyond just entertainment. So that's always been the rhetoric. Long story short, I got an opportunity to basically travel the world playing in 58 countries to millions of people. Tom (22:13.838) a different soundtrack, soundscape journey, if you like, three, four times over a weekend. But if I kind of rewind through those weekends of kind of intensity, wow, you're basically traveling through different time zones. Your whole body clock is being absolutely decimated. And what I noticed was there's one tour that I think it started LA. flying over to Auckland, over to Melbourne, up to Sydney, up to Tokyo, across to Dubai, over to Paris, London, and then back to New York. mean, so imagine the disruption to your body clock. You're going through a multitude of time zones and what, you know, what I've come to realize is your body anticipates consistency. It wants you to sleep at one time. to wake up at one time to eat a few times in the day at hopefully the same times. that predictability and consistency is what helps you to kind of calibrate your body clock. Now imagine what happens if you have to force yourself to sort of stay up all night. And then, mean, I've got another anecdote for you. So I went to the winter music conference in Miami Miami. And there's something about the five, six hour shift to that coast. That's different to going to. to see middle. Yeah. And this is like my first time on kind of newbie in the dance music scene. Uh, went to a sushi Samba. think it was with some of my heroes. like, you know, try forcing myself to sort of stay up. So, wow, this will be a bit overwhelming this. And then the next thing I remember is sort of waking up with sashimi salmon. My it's I've basically got narcoleptic from being so tired. You know what happens on a plane? They kind of they feed you once they feed you twice or three times you arrive back in time and then you have another two meals so my poor body had been exposed so I don't know seven meals and at that point I'm you know Carbo overload destroyed so I just collapsed in a plate of sushi and trying to kind of know, oh Get the last in the giggles for everyone Steve (24:34.232) So how was it? Just describe to us for a moment as well, because you were talking about the power of like music and sound and this transition for you to stand on a stage in front of thousands of people and see how humans in real time are reacting to that journey that you're taking them on. How does that feel? Like, what's that? It's incomparable to anything really, because I guess again, for me, I sort of feel this responsibility to make sure that what I'm delivering has a positive impact. And we can come onto my favorite words, salutogenic in a while. Is it creating a positive health impact? Is it health giving, health cause them? And so that feeling of watching faces and arms and different environments, different cultures. And the universality of some pieces of music did the same thing. Yeah. So it was almost like I had two and a half decades of empirical observation of sound and music and its effects on humans at scale, like millions of people all responding in pretty similar ways. Yes. And so that has sort fed into what I do now is a little observation of that sound, that frequency, that rhythm, that context has done something really powerful here. For example, a New Year's Eve in Japan, I remember playing a particular piece of music that I just had a feeling that it was going to deliver something impactful. And lo and behold, I played this and people are crying. Now you know in a culture that's as emotionally closed and private about how they feel in public, there's been a sort of a dark nightclub and sort of observe a room full of Japanese basically, you know, in tears because it moved them so profoundly. That was a really interesting insight into the power of sound and music. Going to a classical concert, think another anecdote is those that might have heard of Pat Matheny, a guitarist, and La Mays, a pianist. He's known to be the person that the guitarist that makes grown men fry. Where is he from? From middle of America, Kansas. Yes. Tom (26:54.97) an amazing guitarist, very lyrical in the way that he plays it sort of an expressive, almost as if his guitar's singing. Yes. So that translation of emotionality really, really interesting. And I've met people over the years like Goldie, the drum and bass legend. He's a massive Pat Metheny fan. And it's really interesting to sort of, when you meet other people that get, you know, this age of emotionality and a hearing, choir or an orchestra or All these different moments where live music or even played back music can deliver this frisson effect, profound kind of overwhelming deep emotional connection. That's what we want to leverage with what we do now in an ethical, responsible, inclusive way. Can we use what we know about the neuroscience and the behavioral psychology of sound perception and how it's processed and make it useful? long story short, I got completely burnt out. So, yeah, was going to ask you, because I mean, you know, just describing that one journey, you have a mind like years have been consistently traveling. What happened? What happened? How did it manifest? yeah, you share my sharing, then just give us that. How did it start to kind of unravel and start to have an impact on you? short. essentially your nervous system is destroyed because you've been pushing yourself over this threshold of natural tiredness. We're the only species that intentionally sleep defies. There's no other species that does it. Whenever any other creature gets tired, they sleep because that's what you're supposed to do. So we push through, we intentionally stay up and we've been doing it for thousands of years as bribes, know, dancing around fires at night. However, Not that good if you're doing that on a regular basis in different time zones. So I realized that my body, my emotions, my work and family, there was aspects of how I was feeling, how I was performing and behaving that was really not good. So this, burnout moment is where you know that your nervous system is saying, you need to stop now. Yeah. It's just not healthy. Yeah. Every level. And what it encouraged me to do is to take time out and to look at Tom (29:11.158) sleep. What was the thing that I was craving? mean, God, wish I could sleep. Imagine after a DJ gig at four or five in the morning, going back to this lovely hotel and then looking at the room and then there's a call, the cab to take you to the airport. So you don't even use the bed and you're like, well, I've got to now sleep on a plane somehow. It's unsustainable. Anyone that's touring will all... you tetherify with a later. Yeah, not easy. It looks rock and roll and fun, but it's really grueling. Yeah. So keep, you know, resilient on every level. You've got to be working out mind, body and soul. fascinating, are two lenses to look at that, know, as a punter to one of those and being standing there, you know, the feel good factor and the impact it has. But then on the other side, it's also, there's a lot of potential suffering also going on and deregulation and just not conducive to necessarily a positive human experience in their own right. Well, we could could definitely sort of throw in that night shift work is a known carcinogen and that's actually somewhat more predictable. So if you do a night shift, you know that maybe four days of the week you're staying up all night and you have three days that are not back. Yes. This is different because that's one time zone. Imagine night shift work. The let's say the concept of what night shift work is applying that to entertainment. So not only if you got, you know, this astonishing oscillation between a peak moment on stage where, you know, you're bullsing like you can't believe because of the thrill entertaining thousands of people. And then this huge pivot down back to the hotel room on your own, you know, from to nothing, but just to just sit and they're going, what just happened? How do you manage that, you know, emotionally, physiologically? Steve (31:02.424) chemically, I it just what's going on in your body at 100%. So the neuromodulation that goes on every time we perform and then to recalibrate, you've got to really be on your game with mindfulness and all of the hacks, the saunas and the ice baths and the mindful conscious eating movement. All of that stuff is essential to sustain a career as a touring artist. So how did you flip that experience then in towards what you're doing now? What's been that kind of journey for you? Cause you, you, you got curious again. Yeah. what was some of the channels or things you started then experimenting with as you started to come out of the back of that, that period. So I used to play regularly at the Big Chill Festival and I loved very much playing the Big Chill because every year I was given the possibility to do something a little bit different. So over the course of from beginning in sort of the late 90s in the Black Mountains playing ambient music in nature to a small group of people that were receptive to that and it became a very kind of therapeutic scenario. And I like the idea of Therapeutic music. Interesting. And then let's say applying that in different contexts. The first album that we talked about global communications, 76 14, which is an album without the time. Yes. Has been known to be a very therapeutic album. It's been utilized for literally counseling and therapeutic sessions. People have given birth to it. They'd used it in all. I've, I've, I've met kids that have said, I'm, know, you're Tom (32:43.214) album was responsible for me, you the album for conception as well. there's this whole kind of story around the purpose and the functionality of music and sound and getting to a point where I've gone back through all those moments of it's either, you know, music in a club environment or a chill out room or it's feedback from people. How can we pull that together and then somehow create something really useful and meaningful and purposeful? So I retrained as a sleep science coach to understand how to hack our sleep. I knew that I was personally literally using a particular piece of music for me to fall asleep to and it got me. And that got me thinking, well, can I create soundtracks to life, life tracks? Can I create these pieces of music that are going to be useful? released an album called Life Tracks, of which they were kind of moments to help me through the day. Then that spawned this whole idea of concept for the Sleep Better album was to help people in that journey into sleep to deeply relax you. leveraging what I could find using research that was out there at the time. This is 2017. So there weren't many people that were really looking at the literature around what sound and music can do to help support different nervous system states. So my hypothesis was slower music might slow your organs down. Started looking at entrainment, rhythmic entrainment. So we know that your resting heart rate, let's say it's 70, 80 BPM. What if I was to create a piece of music that slowed you down intentionally and gently under 70 down to 60, 50 more dBPMs over the course of a piece of music, you're getting slower and slower slower. Equally, could we do something where it was functionally useful? You didn't have to turn the music off at the end of it. So it just fades down. Can we do this trick where the first part is active listening? So I want you to be present. and listening. we use melody and harmony, context and sounds and instruments to intentionally make you listen. So I made the first bit like an introduction to a movie and a lot of people talk now about this lovely moment that they've been using it to help their kids sleep for years now and soon as the harp plays, it's like, ah, and then the waves come in, there's these sounds that trigger sounds, cue sounds that Tom (35:06.434) have had such a positive impact that you only have to listen to the phrase few bars and you're ready primed for that deep relaxation. So we know there's a lot about that priming. So capture your attention. And we know that after about five, six, seven minutes, there's this golden opportunity to start going from music that has a structure like a rhythmic structure and a flow and then making it more random stochastic and unpredictable. That kind of novelty and unpredictability is a really useful trick because suddenly you start to kind of drift off in daydreams. So from focusing you making grounded and present into allowing you to kind of passively listen to this warm, lovely audio duvet, if you want to call it that. Nice. there's geophony and barphony in there. We're leveraging all the tricks we know about to gently ease you into this state, this parasympathetic state. So meeting you where you are, you're probably stressed out. So we focus you, we ground you and then We intentionally, responsibly lower down your heart rate where breath rate comes down. Your heart rate then activates the parasympathetic response. We know that at that point, blood pressure is going to come down. Cortisol levels are going to come down. And that's obviously what we're trying to fight here is cortisol and melatonin, melatonin to help you into that journey to sleep. Whereas cortisol is wakefulness. So the whole path of 60 minutes is moments where you get slower and slower and slower and you drift off into this dreamland and all of the kind of sounds that I've fallen in love with over the years in soundtracks to movies, know, harps and flutes and the kind of ethereal sounds, very slow lullaby waltz rhythms. We know that a 4-4 rhythm is not necessarily conducive to making you feel sleepy, but I did a whole study around a lullaby and a waltz rhythm. Think about Eric Satie piano music, he something more abundant. Rock, we've been rocked to sleep for years. So can you induce a feeling of being rocked whilst you're in bed? So all leveraging basically every trick in the book, yeah, help you feel sleepy. And throughout that, it's paired with a phone app that basically uses only the orange and red wavelengths of the screen, simulating a sunset. So you've got a sunset that starts to dim down and fades to black and then switches off. Tom (37:32.322) You've got a piece of music that makes you focused and present, actively engages you in the soundscape and the journey, and then eventually switches you off and you just kind of drift off into, into slumberland. So amazing. very effective, some great feedback on that. If you like the template for what I've been doing more recently, which is leveraging what we know, what literature supports these psychoacoustic tricks, if you want to call them that. And then it's intuition. I've, I've just seen. millions of people respond to specific sounds, specific rhythms. I kind of know which is the right thing to play at the right time to create an effect. So that, guess, the secret sauce is that you have to have watched and observed people. Yes, you could probably study this, but have you actually watched what happens in a space to PS? yeah, wonderful time to be experimenting with this and also I've just been reading about, where we are right now in terms of music for health and wellbeing. I'm on the board of Global Wellness Institute, Music for Health and Wellbeing Initiative, which is tasked with creating a little bit more transparency, a little bit more regulation, opening the doors to these conversations around the lexicon. How do we actually define the words in terms we're using? This is new. The DSPs, all the different platforms are delivering playlists of music that being used for function. So you have sleep playlists, have focus and study playlists, but there's no regulation. There's no real science to support it. There's just arbitrary, you know, two, three minutes of one track into the next one. Yeah, that shouldn't really work because that's not how we worked. No. So it's a great time to encourage more discourse and conversation around best practices in creating functional, intentional music for experiences. Exactly. And you know, you've mentioned this word as well, this intentionality for it. And I think, I think most people who are going about their every day, probably don't even think about sound. They're probably thinking about their wardrobe or what fragrance they're going to wear today or yeah, where they're going to head to or work or what are they going to have for lunch, et cetera, et cetera. And maybe they go to yoga or they go to the gym as part of a wellness routine. But how much more do you think we can go with sound if we Steve (39:55.16) Being a sound geek is like, you know, this is in your passion, which is amazing. And I love that you've got this like this view of the world from the lens of sound. And I think that's really like, think a lot of people can learn from that. so how, how, how do we, how can we start to think differently about sound other than just sticking on headphones and listening to Spotify and all one of our playlists? Where are you kind of looking at finding that intersection between meeting people where they are? and how we weave this kind of sound into everyday life for the benefit of then and us as humours. So it's looking at all those opportunities and a daily journey from when you wake to going to work, the commute in the workplace, if that's what you do, or are you studying at school or are you in a healthcare environment? What is that environment you're in? Let's say that's a canvas. And what are the opportunities to soundscape that canvas more intentionally with a solitogenic approach? Can it cause health? And it induce a better positive result for health, longevity, happiness, retention in the workplace. And we have all these challenges getting people back to work. Yes. The sound of spaces has is basically overlooked. Yes. It's noise, pollution is bad acoustics. It's having to kind of deal with all of the other distractions that make it difficult for you to focus on the task at hand. So At that point, you put your headphones on and what do you actually listen to that is conducive to their brainwave flow state? So one of the projects that we came up with for Platoon Apple Music was spatial functional music. So we commissioned a white paper with Paul Newman of the Spatial Sound Institute to look at the power of spatial audio. So for Apple Music and Platoon, we looked at this idea of unpacking what happens when you are Tom (41:57.364) listening to sound in their spatial audio format, is pretty similar to Dolby Atmos. Yeah. Now it's magic. Working with Paul Newman from the Spatial Sound Institute, we came across this fundamental, let's say, universality. Presence, the power of presence. Now, right now in this space, we are hearing sounds in three dimensions. There's sounds bouncing off here. Yeah, we can hear things over here. There's voices. There's all kinds of things that are giving us information about the environment. Now, when you put the headphones on, you've got an opportunity now to now place sound objects around you. That makes it more believable and it becomes a more authentic experience. Therefore, it's more powerful. So there we go. know, the power of spatial audio is it can actually be like, let's say, a more effective tool for delivering authenticity. And our point of this is, can we do it with health promoted music? So Spatial Sleep Music Album. was all about using that experience to take you on a journey from inside a cottage with a fireplace and a cap, erring literally on your lap. So when the headphones on, we placed the sound of a cat where it would be in your lower, go away fireplace. We've got rain on the window here. We've got a clock here. We've got a radio in the kitchen, the background, so all of these things that make you feel safe. Yeah. We created that sound environment and there's a beautiful kind of piece of piano music. again, leveraging that active listening that's get you into the space and then slowly becomes a dream. So you kind of float out of the door and into the forest and eventually out into space. that storytelling combined with spatialization of sound is a very effective tool for delivering relaxation before sleep. The next project we've been working on, um, spatial focus music. use this piece of technology called a muse headband and I'm going to use their news headband. So it's a very small EEG brainwave tracking device. Yes, you can actually use for biofeedback. So I learned from our neuroscientists, Francisco, how to get into flow stage and to understand what does that feel like to be in flow state. At that point, we took my brainways. So high alpha on the left side and high beta on the frontal Tom (44:23.15) portion of the brain that's deep focused awareness and engagement and emotional engagement. So it's basically like the potent coupling of emotionally engaged with something is where you are in flow state. So you're not distracted. So whilst I was kind of feeling what that's like, imagining in my head, we took those brainwaves states and then sonified them. So we've made a piece of music using focused brainwave states to create the album. So we have an entire album at a tempo that's conducive to focus and flow. It's designed using literally my brain waves in that state. So it's about as close as you can get to focus music from the brain. so you went from the brainwave and then created from that place. Interesting. How long did that take to evolve? I mean, there's a concept that kind of grew over the space of a few months and we bought a musician and train the musician also to, to sort of think in that way. So for making music, can we make it in a way that feels like we are flowing whilst we're creating it? And obviously as a virtuoso keyboard player, he was in the flow zone and we're just discussing this whole idea of flow state, which is super interesting. So once you've understood that we all like to get into flow state, and if we can, we could be more productive. Here's where sound. becomes super interesting in experience design. You meet someone where they are. What do you want to do at that point? Well, you probably want to ground them, make them feel safe, so they're more receptive. And over the course of the projects we've been involved with, no better, let's say, experience is that of a massager, a signature treatment. So probably stressed out. Now we know that the massager, the whole point of that is to de-stress you, but what if you're really stressed and Tom (46:13.186) You're kind of so tense that you can't receive here. Queue points during that whole session to make you feel safe, slow your body down to more effective and therefore amplify the effect. This I think is translatable in any scenario. Interesting. The journey. Yes. User journey is this meet you where you are, make you more receptive, make you feel safe and open to whatever that journey is. Yeah. You're probably going to go, if we're talking about experiences and in general, it's entertainment and all, you know, we want to wow you. Yes. Off world and back again. Yeah. But how do we then safely return you at the end of that journey, that experience? So I think that's what I'm finding really interesting about the world of experience and the events that we've been to recently is how do we help create awareness around this, if you like, the use of sound in a responsible, ethical way that's caring and kind, empathetic. Yes. And also to your point there, were sharing, it's a really nice example because when you go to a massage, tend to, you know, get undressed, get under a towel and then they come in the room and then you're off, you know, just start straight in. So how could sound as part of a sound experience, as part of that kind of initial enter grounding and even like post massage to really deepen it even further, like, as in you've really not only been more receptive, you've then probably gone into a deeper massage experience you would hope. And at the end, really leave them in that space. What could emerge for that individual and their experience just being left in a space just to be for a while without having to go, right, thank you very much. Put your clothes on and go and pay. So I think there's something in that. think it's, yeah. So this is pretty much, we're getting down to the nitty gritty of the white mirror philosophy. This is an act for good. It's leveraging technology in what we talked about canvases. What is the canvas? Is it a phone? Is it your room? Is it your house? Is it your car? Is it your commute? Is your workplace? Is it a healthcare environment? A school? Is it an experience at scale? Is it a museum? What is that canvas? What is that user journey? Tom (48:25.038) And then how can we really leverage the power of sound in a more meaningful, intentional way? So the pre and post experience, you feel better. Yes. You're literally, quantitatively saying, God, feel great. So we love the idea of awe moments because awe can be this fusion of different senses. White Mirror is about sensory congruence. It's about leveraging all the senses and innovating with, these wonderful tools that we've got. Typically, it's neuro arts is the vehicle. we kind of tricky the Trojan horse of wellness is the arts, whether it's, you know, extraordinary, you know, visuals at scale, or it's a sound sent combo is, you know, Augusta toy feast where you've got all different types of senses being activated at once. I'm underpinning all that obviously, my role in white mirror is is a sound expert and what the therapeutic benefits so sound therapeutics is a a tool, a language into experience design. so meeting my partner Rami, we kind of just jelled, he's come from VR and immersive, particularly looking at some really sort of stressful situations like journalists in very dangerous areas, how do they navigate and deal with the emotionality of being faced with war zones. So he's come from tech for good, know, how to use that, those devices and immersive experiences to train you. and to help you, doctors, end of life palliative care, loads of different interesting use cases. And I've come from sound. Some examples, creating an experience that is cold for ladies that are on chemotherapy for breast cancer. So one of the awful kind of side effects is hot flashes. So we looked to a way of creating an environment that made you feel cooler. And so that's been tested now and it's great to think that the power of sound to amplify a visual inertial effect that's down regulating your perception of temperature that makes it easy to navigate chemotherapy. So it's an incredible applications of this sound for breath work. Can you create a different types of content that can can really help support this brilliant thing that we should know how to do, but we're not very good at it. Platform called breath onyx though. Yep. We literally made hip-hop you could breathe to or drum and bass you could get used to. Tom (50:49.998) So leveraging different styles of music as the structure and the format, but layered over the top, we had these brilliant Breckwork techniques. had a reset power up or help you navigate the day. And I relate to that. I I found BreathWork a couple of years ago and went to a wonderful studio in Stockholm and it's a very, it's a beautiful, calm environment they've created. I always walk out of the studio just thinking, I'm just breathing. It's quite an amazing thing. But to add to this, the music element, there was one particular facility that was holding this space and he added this musical element that was really you know, deep drums that were just kind of building up with the breath as we were going deeper and longer with the breath hold. And it was, mean, it's phenomenal. Now I've done breath work without sound and with sound, and there is a huge difference in terms of its impact. mean, you know, of course, but it's a, it's a beautiful way of like, yeah, but combining those forms and taking people on these journeys and it's a, yeah, deeply impactful. I've loved it. It's astonishing, isn't it? we've forgotten. We're at the point where we were sat down on a chair as an infant. Yeah. We've stopped breathing properly. We don't diaphragmatically breathe. You look at babies, they breathe naturally. It's a diaphragmatic breath. So to unlearn the bad habits and to relearn the new habits. And what better way than, know, plug in some headphones and learn to breathe along to his style of music. That's, that's fun. there's some wonderful applications of, sweetened. Tom (52:22.338) Vibroacoustics, is felt sounds. So beyond psychoacoustics, which is the perceived sounds. How can we utilize sound transducted into the body and felt and experienced viscerally? think it won a Cannes Golden Lion, a project that utilized a device. What I loved about this campaign was it was addressing a quite fundamental problem. Cystic fibrosis, you need to basically move mucus out of the lungs. Now wearing a device playing this music with lots of low frequencies, essentially shifting the mucus in the lungs. So what an amazing application that a wearable device using sound and music, bass music, when I call it that, to help those suffering with cystic fibrosis. Brilliant. So on a daily basis, I'm really encouraged that we've got these applications of sound and music that are therapeutic and taking such trajectory where, you know, Einstein was saying the medicine of the future is frequency medicine. Yeah. We're already there. Yeah, we're doing it. And we've got wearables. We've got devices. Can we use that tech for good in a way that was synchronizing? Yeah. It's high personalized. Is our canvas for the day, the different place that we're going to going to have a better health promoting soundscape? Yeah. And I think we're heading more on my knife and awaring, which I love. And I think this personalization of data, because it makes me love it. I look back in the old kind of dieting fads that we've had over decades. And of course, now we know to be true that it's absolute nonsense because what you eat and I eat is totally different. Your arbitrary bodies respond completely different. I could have a croissant and I could have a spike in all sorts and you could just comfortably eat a very nice buttery croissant. and it not affect any of your sugar levels and just that alone. So the more we learn about ourselves individually, how we respond and where we can weave these therapeutic elements into our lives based on our own data and how we respond. So we're only going to get more and more of this now. It's amazing. So look, Tom, can I just as a kind of kind of closing and just for the audience and the listeners, because I think you share such an amazing perspective and I'd love to just is there anything we can maybe Steve (54:42.324) leave the audience with or with some reflections around how they can maybe think or shift or think about sound. maybe, yeah, what can we leave them with to reflect on in this conversation? So at White Mirror, we like to this term experience as medicine. And we sort of think about the opportunity. So whatever experience it is that you're designing, whatever that journey is, can we be a bit more empathetic about how we're delivering the experience? And it's not just about sound. Obviously that's an area that I love, but it's weaving sound in. Sound is a very powerful sense that could be leveraged in a more useful way, think, more intentional and functional way. What can we do with that journey looking at it through the lens of empathy? That's my starting point. Maybe a bit more caring about the journey because ultimately, if it's a thrill or an experience, neuro-endocrine modulation, you're literally playing with a human's chemistry set. Yes. And those hormones are going all over the place. So how do we be more intentional about the utilization of these different experiences and different senses that being combined to create an effect. So input output and throughout that journey, are there moments where we can give you a bit of respite from that intensity? Because often it's so full on that you need to decompress afterwards. So could there be a case for spaces, onboarding off boarding spaces with environments that are just allow you to have a moment to just calm down a little bit. and then reintegrate with society after that journey that you've been on. Could we think about the interplay of all the senses and at that point where we're designing experiences, we bring academics and research to the table and unpack what do we know? How can we be more mindful and caring to the recipients of this experience? And are there some insights we can take from what we do know to Tom (56:49.538) have fun and play with the arts to deliver these immersive experiences. And I think at that point where you've got the science around the table as well, and those that have got expertise in specifically sound with intention, visuals with intention. So it's not just any old team. there's some amazing people that we've worked with that really get it. Point in case Thurman group Joseph Fund commissioned this project or La Pluna Forest Baiting. They basically wanted to create an installation that was creating accessibility to what it might be like to go to the Amazon jungle in the rainforest. Marshmallow laser feast, a phenomenal tea, are, let's say, the preeminent experts in visualizing with LiDAR scanning the dynamics of flow of liquids and trees and mycenae networks. making beautiful to see in terms of data into visualized pixels. So they were tasked to go to the Amazon to capture these trees and these native environments to, to, film this incredible species called queen of the night that only blossoms for one night of the year. Yeah. And to, let's say, scam capture to sound record in, surround sound. And then. transfer that into an environment in a giant sauna space where you walk through a waterfall. You're then in a room with a rain shower. It has the humidity. There's water on the floor. And then you enter this room with giant vibroacoustic lily pads where you lay down on the lily pads. You have this all immersion of all senses at once. The sound is moving around you look up and see me and there's a screen and it takes you through a day in the Amazon. So you think about the future of immersive experiences to give those that will probably never be able to go to the Amazon junk. No, the access to this duty, this moment of all. And it's therapeutic. So, you know, the tests that have been done subsequently on, you know, how did it make you feel working in that way so that you're finally tuning experience to make sure that it does deliver an upside that's better for you. Yeah, that's what it's all about. Steve (59:12.75) a beautiful example because it's the growth of urban environments. I think it is as much as 80 % are going to be in urban environments in a human population. the way in which we can bring nature into the urban areas and space and give them more accessibility to this. And I think we talked about this as well is this next level of wellness experience. We have this sort of, oh, we have a steam room, a sauna, we have a maybe an area with a fire in that we may be able sit on some beds. But that's pretty much, you know, how do we take that upper level that really is way more intentional and uses all of these amazing technologies that we have from sound to light up to the work that Marshmallow Laser Feast does. Yeah, it's phenomenal. I it was a really wonderful project to be supporting on, helping to find the talent to, let's say, bring to life the vision of Franz Hofstetter and the team at the firm group Joseph Foon, because what they do is really quite astonishing. They are really innovating in this space right now. It's not the high-end luxury where you have to spend a lot of money a year to be a member of a space. This is affordable. immersive wellness, sensory wellness. I think that's why, you know, we were so excited at Wynmere to be partnering with an entity such as that. We have this vision to make it, give this, provide this to as many people as possible. Because it is health promoting. And, know, beyond what you say, which is the traditional sauna spa environment, let's bring in light, let's bring in scent, let's bring in vibro-tactility. Let's leverage all these wonderful technologies. We work with the Love Triangle on this. Obviously they were great because they work in creating installations for expos and museums. So what a privilege to help facilitate these moments of magic for people to feel better. And it's expanding all the time here. We're looking at different areas, whether it's in car using the vibroacoustics through a seat, the Tom (01:01:27.726) The car is an incredible canvas. If you think about that micro moment for could we help support your nervous system when you're really stressed out to relax you? Or if you need to be more focused and hyper vigilant so that your attention is increased, sound and frequency can do that. Can we look at an audio analgesic to reduce the perception of pain? Can we look at audio nootropics, so focus enhancing? In the workplace, we're in an environment right now where we're competing with background sound. Yep. Now, how can you rethink the environment? Well, acoustics could be better, but the background soundscape, we just assume that a playlist is sufficient. It's easy. Now who's curating those? Are those curators and editors of playlists scientifically informed? Nope. Nope. You know, it's a lot to do with, you know, placement gets, there's an algorithm involved. we know that there's There's a business model behind it, commercial model. I don't know if that's necessarily supporting health. It's little bits of moments of kind of sound that seem to be clones of something that might have been popular at some point. How can we really look at soundscaping environments or sense scaping environments so that they are more conducive to the function? with one of the hospitalised brands that were working, we've looking at different spaces and how can we utilize speakers within space in a more effective way? So here's a problem. When you come to reception, you want to be able to communicate with the staff. You probably don't want beats and lyrics. What if we design a system where the soundscape is divided into different layer lines and so that's more ambient and nature sound. And as you move around through the space, the energy is in the bar, the lounge areas for discourse and communication. So you start adding elements here, harmony, harmony, melody, and by the bar, you've got the beats in. So you kind of gravitate energetically to that area that's needed. That's transferable to any space. So we're really excited about the pioneering work we're doing with these kind of future facing brands that are open and receptive to leveraging technology to just solve these human problems. It almost feels like we're stepping into the future here. Finally. Steve (01:03:50.734) And also as well, mean, just say here, like we've just got one track that goes across all of these zones. So I think just to be able to like just dice that up and actually be way more intentional about those different modalities of where the customers flow. Right. And also the staff as well every day. I if you've got the same music on repeat, I mean, that's just mind blowing. Not very good on the employee experience. That's where you need a genitive system that can create a soundscape in real time that's maybe plugged into elements. It's plugged into human motion, the sonography of humans moving through space, tapping into this magic of the technology that can actually, in real time, sonify a space. Yeah, that's what really excites me is when the guests, the customers are participants in the art. I mean, is, TikToks are right there. Well, hold on a minute. Did you hear that? You know, there's a space we're looking at over here with this lines of wood. Yeah. What if each one of those lines was a different note? You could play the space and therefore the space becomes an instrument. It becomes the orchestra, it becomes the band. So I guess that the take-homes for this are let's look beyond what we currently leverage as the backdrop, which is an arbitrary soundtrack that's using other music that's not necessarily really appropriate. Let's look at what the human interactions within those spaces can deliver, not only for joy and awe, but for health longitudinally. Yeah. So I'm obviously an advocate of sensory wellness innovation because that's what we're doing at White Mirror. But yes, I would just argue that I think everyone that's designing building spaces should be a bit more thoughtful about are they using the senses in a way that ultimately is promoting health here. Yeah, I agree. agree. Tom, thank you so much. Amazing to make this happen and for you to be on the podcast. It's called The Experience Designers. You are a true experience designer, mate, and an absolute pleasure to have you on. So thank you so much. Thank you. Pleasure.