Who is Max Richter, and why is Jacki sleeping with him and not Mickey? That is probably what you are asking yourself right now. And I have an answer for you.
Max Richter is sleeping with both of us. At the same time.
Now you must really be wondering who Max Richter is. Well, he is my favorite composer. And at this moment, I might even call him my favorite musical artist. Yeah, I think he is.
At first, I fell in love with him because I fell in love with The Leftovers. That show is a meditation on grief with a strong core of humanity. The actors know the characters, the writers understand all the motivations, and the directors make literal art on the screen. And the music? The show would be less without it. It’s such an important piece.
Max Richter composed the score. After watching The Leftovers the second time, the soundtrack became a staple in my life. Some mornings I would wake up and say, “Okay, Google, play ‘The Leftovers 1 plus 2 plus 3’ on all speakers”, and I’d get the whole soundtrack: old pop songs, blues standards, world music, heavy metal bangers, classical, uh, classics, and, of course, Max Richter’s impeccable score.
Other days, I’d only ask for the score and turn the volume all the way up to let the richness of sound wash all over me. Oftentimes, I was on a float in the pool, reading. Honestly, this feeling is unmatched. Just being. Just floating. I do miss that part of Florida.
Eventually, the hold of Max Richter’s score let go of me, and I decided to explore his other offerings.
He’s been composing for movies and television since the early 2000s. Here are some other scores he’s composed that I adore:
- Waltz with Bashir
- An episode of Black Mirror
- White Boy Rick
- Mary Queen of Scots
- Ad Astra
- My Brilliant Friend
- Oscar-nominated THIS YEAR for the Hamnet score
Additionally, he has other albums that I have explored.
He’s probably most well known for “On the Nature of Daylight”, which shows up ALL the time at important scenes in movies and television. Here is the (incredible) music video:
Okay, I won’t babble too much about his other music, cause I’ll be doing one of these a month. I am spending a full year ‘sleeping’ with Max Richter, after all.
Oh, you still don’t know what that means. I just realized this.
So when I was researching my favorite composer, I found out he has an eight-and-a-half-hour piece meant to work with in conjunction with our natural sleep rhythms. It is titled, fittingly, “Sleep”. I immediately wanted to try it.
But I didn’t, because it felt embarrassing for some reason. Trite almost. A want, not a need, and why should I bother speaking up about a want? (That’s my upbringing taking over again, y’all, make it stop.) We listen to ocean sounds every night, and my partner is very routine-based. I didn’t want my lil night music to disrupt his sleep routine. I mean, we all know how important sleep is to me, after all.
Then, I threw a 3-night slumber party for some of my closest friends. I’d be sleeping solo, so I’d try it then. I was the last one to bed every night and the first (or second) awake every morning, so I didn’t make the full 8.5 hours once on that trip. But I loved it.
I didn’t listen to the album beforehand, intentionally, because I wanted to experience it as it was supposed to be experienced. I talked with the other gals at the slumber party about my experience and my dilemma with our nighttime sounds and not wanting to interrupt my partner’s sleep routine.
One of the gals suggested some headband headphones to sleep in, and I seriously considered them. I didn’t, though, because I am afraid of two things:
- hot head
- not staying on my head
One night at home, I simply asked. The conversation was jumbly, don’t get me wrong. My brain still does not feel comfortable advocating for itself. It’s so dumb, and it makes me actively angry, but I am much better at it than I used to be. The next night, we listened to “Sleep” in its entirety. Well, actually longer than its entirety because I accidentally had it on repeat.
That was mid-December. Now, it’s late January, and we’ve been falling asleep to this album every night. And y’all, my sleep has been so good.
I have 11 more months to talk about it, so I won’t get too deep on particular tracks. I’ll save that for when I know them better. However, I’ve already been on quite the journey with them.
OOO OOO OOOs
And the most interesting journey has been the third “section” (idk what else to call them. Movements, maybe?!). In my brain, I call this part the “OOO OOO OOOs,” and the official name is “Path 3 (7676),” and at first, I had to brace myself for it. I mean, after I’d heard it the first time.
Something in my brain told me that other folks would find this section annoying, so I had better hope that any and everyone around me was asleep before it started. HOW DUMB IS THIS?! This fear was not exclusively home-based. I felt it the second night of the sleepover when I remembered the OOO OOO OOOs happened. And I braced myself for someone to come ask me to shut it off. So I kept decreasing the volume. No one bothered me then, and not a single other peep has besmirched the OOO OOO OOOs so far.
So, at first, I kind of dreaded my OOO OOO OOOs, but now? They are my favorite section to fall asleep to. I hear the section before the OOO OOO OOOs, and a smile appears on my face, because I know I’m about to get tangled up in OOOs. And that’s how it feels to me. My brain picks a different OOO to follow each night, but by the middle of it, I can’t follow it anymore because it is all tangled up with the other OOOs. It’s magical, I cannot explain it in a way that does it justice. You’ll just have to experience it yourself.
Some (Already Resolved) Issues
On the first few nights I tried this at home, we used our Google Home speakers. The music was still great, but the spaces between tracks really ate into the flow of the sleepytime music. So, I screwed around with the settings in Spotify and Google Home to no avail.
Then Mickey saved the day by bringing me one of our JBL speakers. Since then, it’s been smoooooth, no gap playing. Except for the section right before the OOO OOO OOOs, there seems to be a built-in pause there. I am sure Max Richter has a reason for it. Maybe I will get the opportunity to ask him about it one day.
The other issue was that the first few nights, I had the album on repeat. Now, I don’t typically sleep a full 8.5 hours, but there is a little action happening at the beginning of the playlist, if you get my drift. So, sometimes the album would play completely through and start over, and my ass was still sleeping.
Now I just obsessively check the little loop icon on Spotify to make sure it’s not turned on, and everything’s been AOK.
Sleep Scores
Perfectly timed for this project that I did not plan but chose to document after the fact was an update to my Apple Watch that includes Sleep Scores. Each month, I will give you my highest and lowest scores, along with the average.
Yes, I’m doing math for this project.
- Highest sleep score: 97
- Lowest sleep score: 52
- Average sleep score: 91
Ok bye, I’ll be back next month. Maybe then I’ll talk about what this has done to my dreamlife.
