Japan audio analysis lab creates buzz for music putting babies to sleep

TOKYO – A Japanese institute that analyses audio for courtroom evidence has found viral success with musical sounds it created to help put babies to sleep.

The General Incorporated Association Institute of Audio Communication Laboratory Chiba developed the music as part of a project to support parents struggling with crying babies. It began the initiative after encountering cases of child abuse linked to stress, depression and nervous breakdowns in its work for the courts.

The roughly 14-minute track, featuring a mix of music-box melodies and calming sounds like ocean waves, has been viewed more than 3.8 million times on X and drawn around 350,000 visitors to the laboratory’s website within two weeks of being offered.

The laboratory’s audio analysis has been used as court evidence covering a wide range of cases from murders and traffic accidents to school bullying and child abuse linked to parental stress and postnatal depression.

Mutsutoshi Muraoka, who runs the laboratory, had been wondering how to help parents when he was contacted by a TV station to create sounds to help babies sleep. “It was exactly what I had hoped to work on,” he recalled.

Muraoka revisited previous studies on sleep and sounds, experimenting with the sounds of various musical instruments and recording his own breathing sounds while sleeping to examine their effects.

Eventually, he found a combination of high-pitched music-box sounds that can be played on smartphones, and “pink noise”, which is said to resemble the sound of ocean waves and a mother’s breathing during sleep.

After Muraoka set out the parameters, such as tempo and pitch range, laboratory employee Shinsuke Shibutani composed the music in three days.

“I want to help parents or daycare (workers), who need even just 30 minutes to rest,” said Muraoka, though he added that not all babies would necessarily fall asleep listening to the music. KYODO NEWS