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For your convenience, some sessions mentioned in this episode in an easy-to-find format. The next instalment of Getting Longer – An Auditory Experience will arrive next week.
Transcript
Welcome to Audio Tools for Femdom Hypnosis. Specifically, for my version of Femdom Hypnosis. This is totally a self-indulgent episode. It’s me talking about the way I like my sessions to come together and work as experiences. You know what I mean… auditory ones..
And this means taking a deep dive into some of the tools that I’ve made use of… I say me, I do not edit, produce, etcetera, the things, I just put my input in there. So it’s really just about those things I’ve made use of, especially for Season Four. There’s a good amount to unpack here, and so it might be that I’ll decide to leave some parts of this subject to talk about in a few weeks.
A Brief History of Erotic Hypnosis
I’ve been doing this, Spoken by Elswyth, for two years, and if you went all the way to the bottom of the Patreon feed and listened to some of the first bits and pieces that I put out, my musical background was just this… a short, looping, spa-music sort of thing. I didn’t particularly like it. I found it a bit nasal and whiny. Like cicadas. But I didn’t want to use anything that might be distracting.
And… also, I made an assumption that it was what people expected. Now I’ve still not listened to even five whole minutes of sessions from other… “Content Creators” on the internet. I don’t really know what anyone else is doing, and I kinda don’t want to. Even when I did group hypnotherapy sessions, or even private sessions, other than training and you know, sometimes adding on those CEU’s and such, I usually found it best to just… stay in my own lane, right? So it’s not out of some misguided belief that I’m a naturally gifted expert at this hypno-Mistress thing, but because I have this great relationship with many of you, and I know you love my approach, right? It works for both of us, so why do anything that might hurt that?
Okay, back to background Music. And here’s a Frequently Asked Question that I want to Answer right here. Why do I always use Background Music? Well… habit. I always had music playing in my formal practice as a hypnotherapist. I always have music playing when I’m writing. I’ve had you listen to quite a few of the things that I listen to. And I’ve also listened to quite a few things that you listen to. I believe strongly that it’s a key to removing distractions… and not least because it fills the space between words, helping ensure that the listener (that’s you) doesn’t so distinctly hear a car passing by, or someone moving furniture in the next apartment.
In terms of recorded content and especially the kind of sessions that I like to create, background music is also a kind of glue. It holds everything else together. And yeah, it also hides some imperfections. I’m not standing in a professional vocal booth when I record. Now, if someone wants to gift to me the six-seven-whatever odd thousand pounds it costs to recreate one in your home, go ahead. I will make good use of it. But that’s not what I’m doing at this moment.
I also, I don’t have an engineer pushing the buttons, knowing when something wasn’t exactly right and asking for do-overs. But the glue thing… sometimes I’ll move from one thought to the next, deliberately shifting context. And I’m always aware of how, when I’m asking you to be in trance, asking you to be relaxed, be paying attention, that this can be jarring, and have the opposite effect. And I really believe that having the music there, it has a positive effect on your immersion and continued state of trance.
But I don’t like the spa music, right? And I also don’t like you catching distracting things in the music, so over time I’ve asked for music to be made that’s kinda hard to pin down for the casual listener. There are sometimes strange rhythms, and random melodies and these really tall harmonies that don’t go anywhere.
I’m not sure how much I should really draw attention to this, and I know I can’t talk about how the music is put together without making myself some notes from the people that made it. Maybe you should let me know if you want me to really pick apart the bespoke music that I use in most of my sessions?
But there’s a good amount of thought and effort put into getting the music right. Even the music that goes along with the podcast, well there’s I think four different versions of it. Because you know I also make use of it in different sessions I’ve released since the start of Season Four, and different moods call for different things. The podcast version is the most open and sparse. It’s the Elswyth Unplugged version. It doesn’t make use of the binaural beats, or special relaxing tones and frequencies. It really is background music in that regard.
Recently I’ve also been finding some stock music and sound effects that suit sessions like…ummm, oh… The Walking to Seduction. If you haven’t listened to that one, the Plant Shop one, make sure you go back and do so. And the same is said for Season Four’s Getting Longer. And in the Forest Bathing session you’ll hear gentle music and ambient forest sounds. I think the ambient sounds in particular are quite effective. I know that mostly the podcast is listened to through headphones right? For some privacy. So Forest Bathing, it has different ambient sounds playing from the left and the right, which does a good job of making it more immersive.
I Love to Play Tricks on Your Mind
There’s also a theme in Season Four, something I keep coming back to, which are these little snippets of vintage, broadcast radio, and tuning sounds, and static. The main Deepening Trigger makes use of that effect, because I want it to be really distinct, and at the beginning of every podcast episode I also use a similar sound to introduce the episode. So, here’s something that I really want to know… if you have a positive reaction to the Deepening Trigger (the one that says… This is an… A… E…) then do you find you get any kind of response to the sound effect at the start of each podcast episode? Even a mild response?
I’ll find your answer interesting, either way. I’m actually always interested in which of the little easter eggs and secrets in sessions have an effect on you. It is so, so fun to receive a message that says “Oh Mistress, oh Goddess… I listened to such-and-such session and it made me feel…” and then insert unexpected positive emotion that I deliberately wrote into the session. I love giving you good things. They’re the hypnotic equivalent of sweet notes in a packed lunch, right?
Okay, Oh dear… let’s see where we are for time. Well, I still want to get into different types of noise, binaurality, the different tones and overdubbing… I think I can touch on overdubbing a little, because it’s something I like using sparingly, and it takes a while to get right. And this will be fun for the editor, because I’m going to insist on some examples.
This might not be obvious, but there’s more than one way to achieve this, so… I might say “Pour yourself a glass.. of water”. And then through the magic of audio editing that can get duplicated and split up over the the Left and the Right.
But what I much prefer to do is say “Pour yourself.. a glass of water” twice or more, and so you hear the difference and the imperfections, the little changes in the pacing and stresses. This is a tool… it’s a tool for getting your attention, for telling a story, for helping you fixate on something really important. And most of the time you’ll only catch me doing this once or twice in a session… because I think if it’s not done carefully, it’s only going to be a distraction.
And there’s a session, and, oh… it ended up being called “Party of Perversion”… and this session uses probably more overdubbing techniques than any other I’ve ever released. But when I go look at the script in Google Drive it’s just called “New Sabriel Confusion Session” because that’s what it was all about.
And in that session I didn’t shy away from having two completely different things being spoken in the left and the right ear. To me that’s the natural extension of making use of the same words, served in two slightly different ways… and this was really fun to put together, and to pace out, because it allowed me to do things like change your perspective and blur lines with what sensations I’m asking you to experience
So right here I’m going to include a little piece of it, so you can hear this effect. I don’t think it’ll have the same effect isolated in this way, but it’s still gonna be a fun thing to listen to.
There… had you heard that before? Maybe you remember the moment, where those things are happening and who they’re happening to. The session also ends with some poetry, presented almost as a mystical prophecy, and that makes use of a very similar technique. I think it’s always good to leave my Sabriel wondering what he has gotten himself into.
I know I’m going to revisit this topic of techniques and music and sound, just because I want to tell you about some of those tools like binaural beats and I usually say this incorrectly, so let’s see if I get it… ummm, solfeggio tones. And just like those easter eggs I mentioned, I know they have an effect even when you are not being told explicitly that they’re being used on you. You know, easter eggs can be a little bit like word runes, nestled in somewhere.
But right now, I’m giving you your Permissive Circumstance, and oh, it’s an easy, easy one. Today you have my permission if you’re wearing headphones, and you can listen to any session, any session of mine that you like. It doesn’t need to be training with a trigger setting… it can be the Party of Perversion I was just talking about, or the “Horny” Forest Bathing session, that would work or something really explicit. I know you’ve likely got a favourite. You should enjoy yourself.
Bye for now.
