All Things Techie With Huge, Unstructured, Intuitive Leaps

Digital Energy Drink for the Brain -- Opposite of Digital Marijuana


Most people get brain storms. I just get a little drizzle now and again, and I am lucky if it doesn't leave a brain stain in the nether regions. However, since we only use about 3 percent of our brains, I figured that I could experiment with some of the other 97 percent, so I went and filled my brain with binaural beats, which turned out to be a form of digital marijuana.  You can read about it here or scroll down a couple of blog posts: http://coderzen.blogspot.com/2015/01/how-to-stop-thinking-and-clear-your.html

Essentially binaural beats are sound processing artifacts created in the brain when you feed a different frequency in each ear, and the brain synthesizes a third which is the difference between the two, and then you get entrainment or synchronization between the brainwaves and the effect is like meditation.  It turns off compulsive thinking, or initially any kind of critical thinking and just lets you be.  That is why I called it digital marijuana.  If you want to read the full account, click the link above.

So the upshot of all of these experiments on my brain, is that today I wanted to see if classical music would have the same effect as the binaural beats.  If you recall, I went for a 4.5 mile walk when I was playing the binaural beats on my iPod.  So today, I went for the same walk, and instead of binaural beats, I had a classical music play list.

Well, the effect was absolutely just the opposite.  First of all, my walk takes me along a scenic road, and I experienced first hand, the digital enhancement of reality with classical music.  As my eyes took in the scenery, it was augmented by the beautiful music playing in my head.  I had seen people exercising, jogging, running, or skateboarding with earbuds, but never tried it myself before.  It is a natural high to be stimulated by music while being stimulated by enchanting scenery,

And when it came to thinking, particularly to creative thinking and idea generation, it was like an energy drink for my mind. As I walked, looked at the scenery and listened to the music, creative ideas surged through my brain in one wave after another.  It was like wow man. I got the idea of having a transistor for a silicon based artificial neuron (instead of a software multilayer perceptron), and the transistor bias would be the weight that determined if the logic fired.  I got an idea for a new app, that I can't disclose.  I hearkened back to my hardware engineering days, and I created mental schematics of how voltage multipliers would control transistor based logic circuits mixing analog and digital for discrete machine-learning functions.  It was wild.  I just let my mind gallop on, and it did.

After a couple of miles of walking, I decided to analyze the music that I was listening to.  It was mostly piano and violin with some energy to it.  A lot of classic music is polyphonic and stretches into "I am bummed" music that is a perfect for accompanying a suicide. Whereas when you get a guy like Mozart, he does have a light air and a playfulness about his melodies that is rich in genius.

So it was quite illuminating today.  For the curious, following is a fragment of the playlist that I heard today:


  • Vivaldi - 4th symphony in G major
  • Chopin - Etude 3 in E major
  • Cinema Paradiso - Yoyo Ma and Chris Botti
  • Mozart K622 Clarinet concerts - Adagio
  • Zipoli - Adagio for Oboe, Cello, Organ Strings
  • Mozart - Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
  • Mozart - K284 Piano Sonata in D major III Andante
  • Mozart - K330 Piano Sonata in C major II Andante
  • Mozart - Piano Sonata 11 in A major K331
  • Mozart - Piano Concerto 17 Part 1
  • Boccherini Cello Concerto
  • Boccherini Minuetto
  • Mozart - Concerto for Piano and Orchestra 4 in Gmajor
  • Mozart - Elvira Madigan Piano Concerto 21
  • Mozart - Wiengenlied
  • Toselli - Serenata Rimpianto
  • Mozart - Violin Sonata D major KV7
  • Schumann - Träumerei


So there you have it -- my Digital Energy Drink for the Brain. Head Bull if you will.  I will let you know what head techniques create fabulous revenue streams -- or maybe I won't.

However, the above works for me in a superb kind of way!

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