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There are several stages of sleep which people pass through in the course of a good restful night. In each stage our sleep gets deeper, our bodies gets more relaxed and our brainwave patterns slow down. The deepest and most rejuvenating levels of sleep are associated with Delta brainwave patterns.

Delta sleep is the most physically relaxed stage of sleep and is the time when the body recuperates and rebalances itself for the new day. Getting enough sleep, but more specifically enough Delta Sleep, is essential for healthy, productive living.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompson's breakthrough audio techniques, developed over 20 years of clinical research, are proven to increase levels of Delta brainwave activity. He has helped thousands of people to achieve regular, restful, revitalizing sleep.

How This Program Can Work For You Play Delta Sleep System on any ordinary stereo or through headphones. Pulses of sound embedded into an ambient musical soundtrack, combining rich orchestration and "3-dimensional" sounds of nature will coax your own brainwaves toward their natural pattern of deep Delta Sleep.

In the enclosed notes you will learn: About the natural cycles of sleep and how they effect you How to use Delta Sleep System to fall asleep, stay asleep and wake up rejuvenated Special relaxation techniques which you can use to enhance your experience

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Release Date: 2002-08-06, Audio CD, Inner Peace Music

One of the fundamental criticisms of New Age music is that it puts people to sleep. Here, Steven Halpern, one of the founding fathers of New Age, makes that his mission and, as you might expect, does an effective job of it. Drawing on catalog material from the early 1980s, Halpern builds an attractive collection of delicate, lighter-than-air sonic textures that nicely serves the intended purpose--to fill the silence with something prettier than white noise. Halpern does so by blending electric and acoustic piano, plus additional keyboards, to create soothing, improvisational, cloudlike musical abstractions that often convey the tranquil randomness of wind chimes in a soft breeze. The liner notes also promise your subconscious will be exposed to a series of subliminal, sleep-encouraging affirmations along the quiet, unstructured way. This may sound like so much frou-frou to the unconverted, but for anyone sincerely interested in a sleep aid, Halpern's disc is a certified snoozer, a New Age music box. Other New Age discs may accomplish the same purpose as Sleep Soundly, but few will do it as persuasively. --Terry Wood

Release Date: 2001-01-01, Audio CD, Sybersound Records

Steven Halpern has more than 60 recordings in circulation, including audio projects ostensibly designed to enhance memory, wealth, and weight loss. He even has his own trademarked slogan--the Halpern Effect(tm)! (Take that, Mozart.) Thus, it's easy to view Halpern's high-volume output since 1975 less as art and more like a commodity. Gifts of the Angels, a 68-minute compilation (sampling eight albums and adding two original pieces), offers a few nuggets that suggest Halpern's music at times can stand on its own merits, detached from all of its deep-bliss, New Age pretensions. "Celestial Prophecy," is a nicely detailed (which is not to say complex) excursion on solo piano that briefly stirs the senses, and the title track from Higher Ground is a delicate space-music standout. Meanwhile, the 1970s-flashback tonality of Halpern's electric piano (one piece, "Earthrise," can be traced to Halpern's debut release, Spectrum Suite) dates several of the tracks included here. Nevertheless, the disc's pace, which drifts deeper into the ether on each of the last five tracks, is nicely constructed for those aiming to nod off into a state of contented nothingness. --Terry Wood

Release Date: 1998-04-14, Audio CD, Uproar

If it hadn't been for keyboardist Steve Halpern, the New Age genre may never have been born. His 1975 release, Spectrum Suite, marked the debut of a music whose compositional structure was free and intended for relaxation. Halpern built an entire career around this concept and thanks to his serenely inspired tinkling, along with the genre it spawned, thousands of listeners have found a musical way to unwind and heal from the stresses of life. Nowhere is this more apparent than on Halpern's Serenity Suite, a 1999 release that marries the sounds of tweeting birds and mountain streams with a gentle piano and warm electric keyboards. It's like a soundtrack to a camping trip, or rather, it captures the quiet contentment you experience when camping. Select tracks include airy flute, harp, and violin, which flow effortlessly within Halpern's pleasant atmosphere like stream water over mossy rocks. This album isn't for those who crinkle their nose at New Age music, but it certainly is for those interested in achieving serenity. --Karen K. Hugg

Release Date: 1999-01-12, Audio CD, Inner Peace Music

Originally waxed for friends and families of a rural Canadian elementary/middle-school chorus, these mid-70s vanity recordings capture the joy, confusion, discovery and loneliness of childhood like few before. The production's serendipitous journey from thrift store to non-commercial radio to public release fully preserves the original lack of premeditation, and further highlights the distance these performances kept from any taint of commercial calculation. The sugarcoated cuteness one might reflexively expect from a children's music project is entirely absent. Rookie teacher Hans Fenger wedded elements of Carl Orff's pioneering music curriculum with contemporary hit songs, to forge an inventive, safe space for his young performers. The occasional rhythmic wobble or flubbed note is subsumed by the children's unbridled expressiveness and modulated by the Spectorian gymnasium acoustics. No one associated with