Mind Control

Introducing Harmonal Binaurics, our fleshy new mind control drone synth! It combines Binaural Beats with Isochronic Tones to hijack your brainwaves and bend your unconscious mind. Its a psychoacoustic powerhouse – and just generally an intuitive and playful musical instrument!

Hide your parents, because binaural beats can make you trip….

Wait What?

Harmonal Binaurics is centered around Binaural Beats. Technically binaural beats require headphones to work their magic, though they sound great no matter how you listen to them***. Binaural Beats work by sending subtly different frequencies to each ear. Rather than hearing two frequencies, you mostly just hear one frequency, but a third rhythmic frequency – THE BINAURAL WOBBLE – is created by your brain. The speed of this wobble is the difference between the two pitches (for example, 420hz in your left ear and 426hz in your right ear creates a 6hz wobble in your brain). We dont know why the brain creates this, but what this hypothetically does is something called Brainwave Entrainment – it synchronizes your brainwaves to the wobble and induces altered states of consciousness. This may sound crazy – but who cares – it sounds great.

*** On speakers you still hear the rhythmic wobble – and the sound appears to move around the room – but its the product of air vibrations interfering with each other – not brain illusions – so it doesn’t do Brainwave Entrainment.

Examples of Binaural Beat frequencies and their effects:

Delta 0.1-4hz: Deep Sleep, Healing, Pain Relief, Anti-Aging
Theta 4-8hz: Creativity, Power Naps, Meditation, Deep Relaxation
Alpha 8-14hz: Flow States, Relaxation, Decreased Anxiety, Positive Thinking
Beta 14-30hz: Concentration, Problem Solving, Improved Memory, Stimulates Energy,
Gamma 30-100hz: Peak Awareness, Memory Recall, Transcendental States, Cognitive Enhancement

Binaural Beats are amazing, but Harmonal Binaurics doesn’t just do binaural beats – it also does Isochronic Tones. This is just like binaural beats, but doesn’t require headphones – instead it uses a repeating tone that can induce similar results. With Harmonal Binaurics, you can use both of these techniques at the same time for some really weird spatial and consciousness bending experiences 🤯.

But wait, thats not all. Harmonal Binaurics doesnt just do one Binaural Beat and one Isochronic Tone, IT DOES SEVEN. These seven beating tones are tuned to a user scaleable harmonic series.

UPDATE: December 2022 update version 1.2 adds multichannel output support, meaning you can get all seven of those binaural/isochronic tones out to separate channels in your DAW! Now you can add different effects to each line or hook Harmonal Binaurics up to a 14 speaker sound system!

The Details

Harmonal Binaurics is built up from seven identical binaural/isochronic beat generators. Each generator can fade between Sine and a user defined waveform (Triangle, Saw or Square). You can control the binaural beating speed, isochronic tone speed, isochronic amount, the shape of the isochronic tone (Sine, Triangle, Saw, Ramp and Square), and a stereo field swap (LR or RL). Theres a master speed control for both binaural beat and isochronic tone speeds, meaning you can globally slow down or speed up the whole instrument. Oddly enough, Harmonal Binaurics doesn’t take MIDI note input – this is not an oversight, but an intentional way of forcing a different approach to playing it. The seven oscillators are tuned to the harmonic series (fundamental, +octave, +fifth, +fourth, +major third, +minor third), but you can shrink or expand the harmonic series via the Harmonic knob to create dense cluster chords or wide spectral chords. You can sync all the oscillators/beats with the SYNC button, and of course – theres SLEW.

One Slew To Slew Them All

Faded Instruments loves the SLEW. Slew comes from modular synths and basically what it does is slow down knob movements. Turn a knob and wait as it slowly gets to where its going – which frees you up to twiddle other knobs while it does its thing. Slew features prominently in our Spectral Disturbtion plugin and turns it into a really expressive and unique performance distortion. Well, the slew is back with a vengeance: every parameter on Harmonal Binaurics is controlled by the SLEW knob – allowing you to create long grand gestures – great for drone or slow oriented music (but can be useful for any!).

Extra Vids / Tutorials

Installing Faded plugins on a Mac

Recording Audio from Harmonal Binaurics

Harmonal Binaurics multichannel output in Ableton

Harmonal Binaurics multichannel output in Logic

IMPORTANT USER NOTES:

Hold down the CONTROL key while moving any knob for fine tuned control.

You can double click any knob to return it to its home base.

You can click on the Fundamental Frequency, Binaural Beat Speed, and Isochronic Tone Speed number to input it manually with your keyboard.

Download the Manual

Specifications:

Faded Plugins are all 64 bit and run as a VST on Windows and an Audio Unit (AU) on Mac.
There is no Mac VST at this point.

Faded Plugins should run on all versions of Windows, and are tested to work on all recent versions of Mac OS.

Faded Plugins are not M1 native (yet!).

MAC USERS! Apple makes it difficult for developers who don’t pay a yearly “Apple Tax”. We disagree with this policy and don’t pay into this system… Which means that there are a few extra steps for installation. Check out this video showing how to place the installation files. There is one ‘authorization’ step after this – instructions in the included PDF.

Our plugins are tested on a few DAWs, but not all! Please get in touch if there are any issues.

Windows users may need some common support files called the “Visual C++ Redistributable Package”. Odds are you already have it, but just in case you don’t you can download them here.