iPod “Zen” Alarm

Waking up in the morning is never a pleasant endeavor, and I’m rather picky about how I do it. I didn’t always use to have troubles dragging myself out of bed. Once upon a time, I had myself so well trained that I woke up consistently about a minute or two before my alarm would go off—in time to shut off the alarm before it made a sound.

But now, being a bit older and having a wife to sometimes forcibly pull me back into bed, I’ve developed some bad waking habits. I’ve decided to try to break some of those habits.

What I have in mind is a 4 point process:
1. Go to bed at roughly the same time every night of the week.
2. Wake up at exactly the same time every morning.
3. Forever abandon the snooze button.
4. Get out of bed immediately upon waking up.

Simple, no?

Well, the first and second points are relatively easy. That is, you can either do them or you can’t based on your schedule. As it so happens, I can. That isn’t to say I’ll be abandoning friends at midnight for fear of turning into a pumpkin, it’s just that the overwhelming majority of the time, I plan to go to bed at about the same time.

I intend to be a little bit less flexible on the second point. Experience dictates that you can almost always wake up at the same time—even if it means paying for the previous night’s revelry. You just need an alarm clock and a little willpower.

The snooze button is a little harder. Almost every alarm clock sold has one of the damned things. If your alarm clock has it, you will use it. I have never used the snooze button and not felt generally tired throughout the day. I’ve actually used the snooze button before and forgotten that I’d used it until I was scrambling to get to work.

If your alarm clock doesn’t have a snooze button, why bother to lay in bed? It seems that is just tempting fate,

Though I have disabled snooze buttons on alarm clocks before, I truly hate the sound that most alarms make. So, how about waking up to the news? That too is a bad idea. Since I tend to listen to NPR, I found myself waking up in a bad mood when waking up to the latest Iraq body count.

Music? No way. When you pick a song to wake up to, you think, “This is a great song. I’ll always wake up happy!” Nope. You’ll just start to hate your favorite songs.

I have a friend who has a zen alarm clock and swears by it. I love the concept, but the bell on it is a little high pitched for my taste. So, the other day I thought maybe I could find a pleasing tone to use as my own “zen” alarm. And I did.

I found a lovely high-resolution sound sample of a tibetan singing bowl being struck once. Pay dirt.

Using (okay, abusing) a nifty open source audio editor called Audacity, I repeated the tone along something approximating a decreasing fibonacci sequence. The result? A bad-ass zen alarm for my iPod.

So far, I’ve been been pleased with the results. I find the tone pleasing, yet forceful enough to make me want to wake up. When I hear the first tone, I’ve been trying to immediately get up and start stretching. This seems to help stave off sleepiness.

Feel free to download this audio sample. It’s in AAC format, but I could probably be enticed to cut an MP3 version. Feel free to request in the comments below if anyone wants such a thing.

Here’s the attribution info for the tibetan bell sound I used to make the alarm:

File:
Name: “bowl_struck.wav”
Url: http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=2166
Date of upload: 2005-05-18 09:03:54

Designer / Creator / Uploader:
Name: “suburban grilla”
Url: http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/usersViewSingle.php?id=3310

Description:
By “suburban grilla” : Tibetan singing bowl struck once with a wooden mallet

Download Zen Alarm.m4a

Comments (archived)

Devin, on Nov. 5th, 2005 wrote:
That’s awesome, Peter! Very well written as always, and very funny. You rock!

Levine, on Jan. 2nd, 2006 wrote:
Peter, you have such a precise understanding of waking up, and you may have found the ultimate solution to it. Thanks!

suburban grilla, on Feb. 9th, 2006 wrote:
I am very happy that you found such a creative use for my humble recording.

Peter, on Feb. 10th, 2006 wrote:
That’s excellent! Thanks for stopping by, and thanks for the excellent audio sample. As I said, this was exactly what I was looking for. I suppose this is what the Creative Commons license you chose is all about.

suburban grilla, on Feb. 10th, 2006 wrote:
Indeed, I find the philosophy behind Creative Commons most appealing. The sample has been downloaded in excess of 1000 times from Freesound and other sources, but, your Zen Alarm is the only use of it that I have been able to track down. Simply because you included the attribution data in your article. So thanks to you too for entering into the spirit in which the sample was shared.