Relaxation music comes in several flavours: The beautiful genre of Ambient music - mellow music for relaxation but also worth listening to in its own right. Also Music that just happens to be relaxing, which often overlaps with ambient music. And music specifically created as 'Relaxation Music', with a New Age bias. Relaxation Radio.
Listen to the full-lenth track 'David' at my space, or the track 'Twenty' on the player (right) from the fabulous on-demand radio station Deezer.
Beautiful, calming electronic music with real tunes too, not just drifting along. Or, as one reviewer put it 'like polar bears swimming in clear blue freezing water'. Listen to the whole album at Last.fm.
This covers general music that just happens to be relaxing. If you like classical music you can buy compilations with titles like 'The most relaxing album in the entire Universe - ever!!' just about anywhere. Here are a couple of other suggestions but you could also try the relaxation/ambient radio page, or just enter your favourite relaxing artist in the Pandora 'Station Creation' box to generate a radio station playing similar artists.
Contemporary classical music that is very simple, hypnotically repetitive and absolutely beautiful (audio clips and more reviews). Listen to a full-length version of one of the tracks, Spiegel im Spiegel, at Arvo Pärt's Myspace page.
Relaxation through music that's in time with your resting heart beat. It comes as a triple CD, with three versions of the same album, each 'Sonosync' processed to a slightly different tempo. The music itself is very peaceful, and if I put one of these CDs on I'm usually deeply relaxed well before it ends.
audio samples of all 3 versions.
mp3 download £6.95 from Shopsonic.
CD
£11.95 inc. delivery ;
£14.45 inc delivery from Shopsonic.
Dawn Awakening has a good collection of music that isn't too New Age:
Free Spirit by Christopher Buckman; one of the tracks is called 'Floating on Air' that pretty well sums up the feeling of this album, which has lots of synthesisers and ethereal voices along with rain forest sounds. 40 minutes. You could also try anything by L'Esprit for music that has melodies, which are soothing without being sickly: his albums include Far Journey and Language of Touch. Midori's Spirit of the Pan Pipes is also worth a listen.
CDs £11.95 (tapes £6.95) plus delivery from Dawn Awakening , t 01803 864822. No audio clips as yet, but they will exchange any tapes you don't like. Delivery:
£1 p&p per order
£1 shipping for a single item, shipping at cost for multiple items - email for details.
Music originally designed to relax mother and baby, this CD uses humming, music and natural sounds to create a warm mellow lullaby-effect, but also includes a 20-minute spoken relaxation. It's proved helpful to adults with stress, insomnia and pain relief too.
Audio sample and more information from Calmtime.
mp3 tracks available individually (£8.40 for the whole album),
CD
£9.99 + £1.20 shipping worldwide.
A huge catalogue of relaxation music, with
audio samples available for most CDs/tapes, t 01986 781 682.
New World Music.