Blog1 min read
Music for the night before a flight
Falling asleep is harder than usual; waking through the night is more likely. Music sits between the sleep and wellness rooms.
The night before a flight is a particular sleep environment. The bags are packed; the alarms are set; the mind is rehearsing the morning. Falling asleep is harder than usual, and waking through the night is more likely. Music for it isn't quite the sleep room and isn't quite the wellness room — it's both, mixed.
What works is something with even less event than a normal sleep track. The mind is already running through a list; any small surprise in the music will catch and hold attention. Long sustained tones, breath-paced piano, recordings with no visible edges. The wellness room is closer than the sleep room until the lights go out, at which point the sleep room takes over.
Avoid anything you'd normally find interesting. New music is exactly the wrong move because the brain is in a 'don't miss anything' mode and will latch onto a melody for an hour. Familiar music tells the brain it can skip the audit. That's most of the job.
By the morning you'll either have slept enough or you won't have. The music can't decide which. It can only make 'enough' slightly more likely than it would otherwise be, which is, on the night before a flight, a useful percentage.