Day 1 is complete.
I have a few comments - I'll PM you as well as posting here, to keep the discussion open for others to contribute. I'm hoping constructive criticism is welcome, since this is a trial?
• Just to clarify, you'd like us to listen to the exact same track every day for 21 days?
I'm just wondering because you finish by saying, "continue on to the next track."
A lot of this track feels like a once-off introduction, and I agree with those who have suggested that it may become tedious listening to the same recording so many times. In particular, it could become annoying hearing the same stories about your friends every day, and being told that we're just getting started and know nothing about what's to come, etc.
• I have done a fair amount of guided meditation/hypnosis and visualisation exercises before, and I find that the person's voice is a really important factor in my ability to be absorbed by it. An issue I've found to be quite common is unclear diction. I think clarity of each word is really important, and I noticed that you quite often slur your words into each other.
Another issue I had was with the voice itself. Your voice started out sounding fairly relaxing, but it became croakier as the recording went on, and it started to remind me of Christian Bale's Batman voice in some parts. I assume that you were trying to lower the tone of your voice to be softer and more relaxing, but for me, it had the opposite effect.
There are also a few words that you stumble over, and some moments of hesitation which break the rhythm of your speech, which is also distracting for me. I would recommend re-recording those sentences, but be sure to use smooth transitions between the audio tracks and adjust the volume levels to match.
• The audio is a bit jolting at 23:12 ("Where did that pleasant dream go to?") because it cuts out momentarily and loses the ambient background noise. Perhaps you could use an audio/video editing program to smooth that out. It also happens briefly at 25:39 ("So, I'd like to have you return now") but it was less of an issue. As a filmmaker, I generally use programs like Sony Vegas or Adobe Premiere, or Final Cut Pro on Mac, to add a simple crossfade effect between audio tracks. I'm sure there would be freeware that has this function, too. You need to leave a head and tail on your audio tracks, so you can use the ambient noise in the crossfades.
Note: I've just noticed that the times vary between music players. I'm using iTunes, but I've included the sentences that come immediately before the audio dropouts so you can find them. By the way, it may just be that my ears are especially attuned to sound variances, but it's something to think about if you want the track to be polished.
• Are you sure it's a good idea to reinforce every day that it's natural to forget our dreams instantaneously? (23:23) It seems counterintuitive to be repeating that to ourselves while in a suggestible state, when we could be using autosuggestion to convince ourselves that we WILL remember our dreams upon waking. Other things you mention are that dreams can be hazy, and that sometimes we don't realise we're dreaming (from 7:06-) which are both things that may not the best to hear repeatedly, in terms of LD incubation/induction.
That's my initial critique, I hope it's valuable.
I also have a couple of questions for you:
1. What kind of training/experience do you have in hypnosis? If you're self taught, what are your sources?
2. What would you like us to report daily exactly? Do you have a list of questions?
Thanks, I look forward to discussing this further.
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