Why rain and thunder are my most popular tracks

If you look at what people actually listen to on Tranquology, it's storms. My six-hour Theta Thunderstorm is my most-watched video, with more than a quarter of a million views on YouTube. I make plenty of other things, from bilateral music to chants, but rain and thunder are what most people come for.

I've been listening to sound at bedtime for nearly twenty years, since Holosync audios got me through a long run of nights I couldn't sleep. Rain was always the sound I came back to. So I can tell you why I think storms work, and how I build mine.

Why a storm is easy to sleep to

It covers up everything else. A steady wash of rain sits over the top of traffic, a neighbour's television or a partner's snoring. Your ears stop picking out the small sudden noises that keep you half-awake.

It never asks for your attention. Rain has no tune to follow and nothing to wait for. It's busy, but in a way your brain can stop tracking after a few minutes.

It feels safe. Most of us have a memory of lying in bed while a storm went on outside. You're warm and dry and the weather can't reach you. A recording can bring a bit of that feeling back.

Thunder adds depth without drama. A distant rumble every so often makes the room feel bigger and the night feel longer. The trick is keeping it distant. Close, sharp thunder does the opposite of what you want at 2am.

None of this needs any science to be true, and I'm not going to promise it fixes anyone's sleep. It's simply a sound a lot of people find easy to drift off to.

How I put a storm together

Every storm on Tranquology starts as layers. I build a bed of steady rain first, often two or three recordings blended so no single loop stands out. Then I add thunder by hand, spacing the rumbles out and keeping most of them low and far away. Getting that balance right is where the time goes. Too much thunder and it's jarring; too little and the track feels flat. I can easily spend days on one track.

Many of my storms also carry a binaural beat. I build these myself: two steady tones, one in each ear, a few hertz apart. On Theta Thunderstorm, for example, one ear hears 78 Hz and the other 84 Hz, which you hear as a slow 6 Hz pulse underneath the rain. If you'd like to know what that's about, I've written a simple guide to binaural beats. You don't have to care about the beat to enjoy the storm, though, and some of my tracks, like Just Rain, have none at all.

On YouTube I keep the pictures in their place. The long videos show rain on a window or a stormy sky at the start, then fade to black after about ten minutes, so a bright screen isn't lighting up your bedroom all night.

Making it yours

Everyone has their own idea of the perfect storm. Some people want a downpour, others want a gentle drizzle with thunder miles away. That's why I built the mixer: it has real recordings of rain, thunder, wind and more, and you can set each one exactly how you like it, then save the mix for tomorrow night.

And if you'd rather not depend on Wi-Fi or a screen, the storms are also on the Music page as downloads to keep. They play offline, with no ads, all night.

For relaxation, not a medical treatment. If you're struggling with sleep, please talk to your doctor too.