An alternative to sleep music.

Why it works

Music is organised to be followed. Even very slow music sets up an expectation and resolves it, and part of you stays up to hear the resolution. Then the track ends, the next one begins in another key, and you are awake to notice. The wind on this page has movement and no tune.

If you want something to follow, a story is a better thing to follow than a melody, provided it is the right kind. This one is told so slowly, and with so little at stake, that following it and losing it feel much the same. The second fader brings it in.

What you are hearing

• Night wind. Pink noise through a narrow band at 400 Hz, rising and falling slowly on a pattern that never repeats. Shaped after wind heard from indoors; it is not a recording.
• The voice. The first four minutes of Aristotle, the Greatest Philosopher, a Lullable story, in a synthesised voice. It only plays if you bring it in.
• The ending. The preview lasts four minutes. Its last ten seconds are a straight fade to silence, so it never stops abruptly.

For a real recording that runs forty minutes, the Lullable iPhone app has rain, waves, a campfire and plain noise, with no voice and no music.