Prior to channeling your inner HiTech Dad on gadgets let’s focus on music selection. The right kind of audio pumping out of your portable speakers in the nursery will make all the difference in your child sleeping successfully and long through the night.
My interest peaked when my sister, who has two toddlers, used music as part of their night time sleep routine. They employ a portable compact disc player with a CD that is either on repeat or standard one-time play. Music of choice? Either some type of Baby Einstein or even a standard classical selection.
So here’s the challenge, how do you give you child something to listen to at night that won’t keep them up? Additionally, if you’re going to play it through-out their entire sleep cycle, the music needs to be consistent, soothing and basically no vocals or loud AC/DC style guitar riffs. Maybe some Deep Forest? Sigur Ros? Only a few tracks out of 4 albums. Enya? What about the wildly popular bedtime classics as sung by some random women, or maybe even played by an entire symphony? Still no.
Most music compositions have beats per minute shifts, periods of quiet, then loud or mid-loud that is caused by a vocal range increase (low to high), stringed instrument, horns or guitar. All of these sounds will cause a child who may be in a light stage of sleep to waken up and perhaps tune-in. See where I’m going with this? The child will most likely not sleep successfully through the night, or at the least, sleep for long periods of time.
So, what kind of music is best fit for this situation? Simple, composition that carries a nice consistent, soothing tone with minimal shifts in tone, beats per minute and over-all “loudness”. The best example I can give for this is an band from Iceland called Amiina. This band is great because they do not employ any vocals and give a nice soothing noise. I have personally been using Amiina’s music on our night-time play list since my daughter was 2 months old and sleeping on her own.
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