A Conversation With ASMR Artist Heather Feather

a tingling sensation in the viewer. It's called a s m R. I spoke with the popular a s MR artist, Heather Feather, who helped me understand what this is all about. As OUR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, and that doesn't really mean anything. It's just a fancy way of describing a sensation that some people get when they're exposed

to auditory or visual stimuli. And this kind of it's called triggers when you hear the or see these things, and people can get triggered by tons of different things, and the triggers are very subjective. So some people are triggered by hair brushing or a soft voice or a whisper, or writing with chalk on a chalkboard, or watching someone do a task in a very meticulous and focused way.

So what does that actually feel like? What is it like to experience a s MR Those really good chills you get when you get a haircut or someone traces your back with their finger, and a SMAR feels like that awesome feeling that that gives you. And it just happens when people hear something or see something in a

certain way. It's really cool. I've watched a lot of a s MR videos and I'm led to the conclusion that I no longer experienced this particular phenomenon, but I do have distinct memories of feeling something similar when I was a kid, particularly after listening to a certain piece of music. I recall one section from Paul Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice. It never failed to give me chills. But I didn't have a word for this sensation. It turns out I wasn't the only one struggling to put words

to the feeling. Heather explains what it was like when she found out the tingles she felt weren't necessarily something other people felt. I had SMR in my whole life, and when I was little, very very little, I used to call it shocks, and I used to tell my mom I had shocks, and she didn't know what that meant.

And I didn't know what that meant. When I got older, and I would go out with friends to a restaurant, let's say, and a waitress would have a really nice soft voice and say, hey, guys, what can I get you? I would say, my gosh, I love her voice. And my friends would go, oh, my gosh, you're so weird. And I realized that people didn't have it it was, but I wasn't ashamed of it. I just thought it was a quirk that I had. Like I like to eatch other cheese crewtons and dark chocolate. No one else

likes to do that. It is something I like, So I figured it was something weird about me. Finding these sounds or sites these triggers can be exhausting. You might encounter something that sets you off purely by accident. There wasn't really a place to go to initiate the sensation. And then came YouTube and a whole new world opened up for people like Heather, though people who experienced the

sensation weren't necessarily being catered to explicitly. In Heather's case, she found very different videos that set off her triggers. I used to search videos for these triggers, and a lot of the times they would be makeup tutorials, but they would also be fetish videos, because there's a fetish for everything, and there is a hair fetish and a nail fetish. So I would go onto these fetish videos and watch people tap their nails or brush their hair.

And I was like, yeah, this is great, but I didn't love going to these videos because they had other things in them that I wasn't into. And then Heather made a discovery that literally changed her life. I found a nurse role play by gentle Whispering and I clicked it and I was gobsmacked because everything this woman was doing was triggering me. And I was like, oh, this is great. So I read her infobox on YouTube and she mentioned a SMR and I googled it and I was in it in a room with one of my

friends and I yelled, this is me. And my friend was like, I don't understand why you're even saying like they did not. They did not understand at all. But I felt like I was like I found my people. It sounds dramatic, but it really was a euphoric moment. This odd but pleasant sensation might be caused by anything. For some people, it's a particular type of sound. For others, it's the sensation that a person is moving around you

in real space while talking to you. It could be the way a person moves their hands as they speak. One trigger that seems particularly effective involves a close connection

between the a s MR artist and the audience. Personal attention is a big trigger for a lot of people, myself included, And even though you're the person is not actually touching you or in front of you, it sort of feels like they are and that I don't know if it calls back to when you were a kid and you were getting attention from someone or not, or if it pulls on some nostalgic heartstring, but it really works for thousands and thousands of people, and even for

people who don't experience a s MR like me, these videos have their uses. It turns out I'm not the only person who likes to watch a s m R video in order to unwind. I get a lot of messages and I think a lot of other ASIMER content creators do as well. From people who don't have a sm R whatsoever, but they like to play the videos to help them relax. Some of them play it to help them work. They play it as background noise, and a lot of gamers play as MR videos while they game,

which I think is really interesting. For some reason, they say that it helps them focus on what they need to do. While I can't imagine wiping out the covenant in Halo or planning strategy in League of Legends while playing an a s m R video in the background, I do see how it helps players reach a zen like state. The videos tend towards the soothing, comforting spectrum. While some videos may get a little more surreal or abstract than others, they don't tend to be fast paced,

action pack narratives. There are actually lots of different styles of videos. In some an artists might simply experiment with different sound and visual triggers with no narrative structure linking them together. Other videos will focus on a specific trigger and go for a marathon session. Each type of video requires a different approach when I film. If I'm doing a sound assortment, I'll just gather the props that I

want to use and I'll sit in front of the camera. No, I'll just explore them and hang out with the viewer. But if I'm doing a role play, I'll think of the triggers that I want to incorporate, and then I build a story around it, and then I hunt for anything that I could enhance the story with. So I never just do the triggers that I want to incorporate. I'm always throwing in an extra voice someplace, or extra sound effects someplace and complicating my life. But I think

that it helps the viewer become more immersed. Immersions really really important to me. UM. It's also why I'm starting to venture into virtual reality I SMAR. This quest for immersion has opened up some interesting opportunities, such as pairing the A S m R approach with devices like the

Oculus Rift. It's another journey through tech for us. We're dabbling with a lot of new technology, UM, including spherical video sixty degree spherical video, and that's video that captures sixty degrees horizontally and vertically, and then putting it into a gaming engine like Unreal or Unity and trying to format it for use in a head mounted display like Oculus Rift or any of the other ones that might be coming out. My personal favorite a s MR videos are role plays. A role play is just what it

sounds like. The artist takes on a role with you, the audience becoming part of a scene. Role Plays come in all sorts of flavors. I think haircuts are very popular, and I think that's because a lot of people can enjoy them even if they don't have a SMR. Their doctor role plays are very popular, and that might sound weird because no one likes to go to the doctor. But the doctor role plays how a lot of different triggers in them. There's a lot of personal tension. There's

pointing to a chart, there's following a light. There's a lot of different things involved with them, and I think it makes them a versatile roleplay for people who have different triggers. It's one thing to imagine what a role play like this would be like and another thing to experience it. Heather is a generous artist and offered us

some examples. This one is from her video titled a s MR Binaral Medical role Play A Snake Oil Salesman for Relaxation, and which Heather is playing a charlatan who makes some grandiose claims not to mention a geeky reference before I begin you treatment. I want to open up your energy using a therapeutic course technique from a spiritual

mentor in Tagaba. So relax, okay, all you have to do he should stilly And while a simple role play might cover a visit to the barbershop or perhaps an eye exam, a few of them can get pretty complicated. Heather is known for pushing herself by incorporating multiple characters in a role play. She plays all of them, often appearing as two characters on screen simultaneously. It's not necessarily easy, and if you hit the camera it ruins everything and

you have to redo it and it's terrible. Here's a quick excerpt from a barbershop roleplay featuring Heather as both herself and her goofy goth alter ego sister, dubbed Dark Feather by her fans. Nice thing about this is there. It's a cold daily because I went shopping for some striped sweaters. I love striped sweaters. The best time to wear striped sweaters all the time. One was the collar turtleneck. That's the kind because when wearing that one special so

that's enough small talk. But how much work can an a SMR video really be? Well, it turns out, if you want to do it right, it can take a long time. For a sound slice, which is just usually audio, and it's a much shorter audio clip, that'll take a couple of hours, maybe five or six, maybe a little

bit more, depending on what I'm doing. If I'm doing on a sound assortment, that would take probably around ten hours, maybe depending how many takes I have to do, and then a role play at least twenty hours, at least twenty hours, but sometimes they'll take weeks or even months to complete. Putting in that time requires a lot of dedication, and artists like Heather will often publish more than one video per week. Any setback could require several hours of

work to set things right. So what sort of technology did Heather have when she decided to make our own videos? I was using a very old point and shoot camera that had a ton of white noise, and I was using seven cans of cat food to balance it on.

I didn't have a tripod and that was it, and I used UM I think I was using a super old software from Adobe, but it was like seven point oh for Premiere, it was very old software to edit with, and I got a lot of feedback from people saying that they liked the videos, but the white noise was too much for them. So then I started exploring other audio options. While technique is at least as important as technology when trying to trigger an A S m R response,

it certainly helps to have better gear. Here's what Heather uses to make videos today. Today, I'm using a three D O free Space Pro and a Zoom H four and as my recorder for that microphone, and I'm using the JVC a Ario HD camera um. I also sometimes, depending on the audio that I'm going for, we'll use an in ear binoral mic in addition to the three D O and sometimes I'll use the yetti that I'm talking to you on now. It just depends on the

field that I'm going for with the audio. Those binaral mics play a big part in current A S MR productions. The binarial microphone is meant to mimic the way sound enters our ears. Ideally, listening to a recording made on a binaral mic makes it seem like you are actually in the same space as the A S mr Artist, and the mic comes with other benefits to the artist

as well. It's opened up a lot of possibilities, especially with role playing in storytelling, because I can use this sound to create an atmosphere to immerse my viewer in, and it's it's really interesting. I can incorporate a ton

of different sounds. And I can also use the mic itself as a prop to make sounds because the microphone that I use as ears, and I can use the ears and manipulate them to create sounds and it really sounds like I'm touching your ears, or I can breathe into them and it'll sound like I'm breathing right into your ears. And it's really cool, and it's a really neat kind of way to touch someone that I'm never actually touching. The traditional binaral microphones don't look like your

average condenser or dynamic mike. They look well, they look like a mannequin head. You can even take the do it yourself approach. But neural mikes they typically used to have a dummy head that they would be placed in or built into, and that was too make it so that the sound sounded like it was traveling across you. Across your heads, called head shadowing. So if it would sound would go into one ear, you would also hear in your other ear a little bit, but it would

be diminished and different. And using a dummy head is really hard to do, especially if you are a novice like me and you're making your own out of starro foam and stuffing it with things, and and you can't just use a star foam head. You have to give it weight because the human head has weight and thickness

that sound moves past, so it travels through. So the microphone that I use doesn't have a dummy head, which is weird, and I think that people who have experienced with by neural microphones um sometimes question, well, hey, that can't be a real by neural microphone because it doesn't

have a head. But the way that the three do is made is there's discs in it that position the mics so that they're like your ears, and then the ears themselves helped create that shape and give it that head shadowing without actually having to have the head there. It's really neat. As for editing, Heather's upgraded that as well.

Now I'm using the Creative Cloud, the Adobe Creative Cloud and that has everything that has premiere pro and as after effects, so I incorporate both of those regularly into the videos, and there's humor is one of the qualities I find most appealing with a s MR videos. Since I don't personally experience this tingling sensation, I tend to focus more on the content of a video than the

individual sounds. And let's face it, a role play video in which you're playing an important but ultimately passive art can feel a little silly, but some as MR artists embrace that and make it part of their presentation. That became clear when I asked Heather which videos she was

most proud of. The ones that I'm most proud of are the ones that I've been most afraid to put out, like Candy Queen, which would probably not be a great introductory video, but um, I was very nervous about putting that out, and um the Sleep Police, the brain pause away after the battle, Uh, it's dangerous to go alone, the Video Game one. And I think the one that I'm most most proud of is the one that wasn't.

It's not my most popular video whatsoever. It doesn't have the most views, but it was a story that I wrote specifically for my channel and drew little pictures too and created sound effects for and that one. Um, it's very dear to my heart, and it's actually we're working on making it into a children's book now, which is really cool that parents might one day be reading something that came from an Asmar channel to their children to

help them sleep. Here's a quick listen to part of Heather's Sleep Police episode, in which he plays a helpful officer who assists you as you try to drift off into deep sleep. I've been doing this job for a long time, thousands of years, and sitting at a desk and filling at all those papers, huh, ten tho years of that will give you such a drank in the fact,

have you been having a rough time too? That short excerpt is another example of how Heather likes to incorporate Easter eggs and her videos by mentioning or quoting the stuff she loves. If you listen to her videos carefully, you'll hear references to Disney films, science fiction, fantasy, song lyrics, and more. I don't think if any people get to interact with people and and just share things that they love all the time, and a summer videos let me

do that. So I hide some lyrics that I like or shows that I loved when I was a kid, or like now in my videos, and when people catch those Easter eggs, it's kind of like, ah, I see you moment. You know, I get you, and I get to share that with people, and it's very important to me and it's very special to me. This brings us to another interesting fact about the a s MR movement. It's a real community. Artists collaborate with one another and

interact with their fans. Fans spend time watching videos and making recommendations and requests. It's a community that's been growing steadily and yet is really close knit, even though there are thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of people in it now who are consumers and content creators. Everyone's very mostly everyone's very friendly and understanding and sympathetic with

each other. And I think it's because every single person has felt like they were the only one who had a sm R at one point, and then you find this community who's making this stuff to make you feel that way, and it's kind of it's just an awesome feeling, engaging, in a creative activity can be really rewarding, but it also requires a lot of effort on the part of the artist. So I asked Heather where she finds the inspiration to make her videos. At this point, there is

very little that doesn't inspire me. I'm inspired by a box, it can be agreekly bag. I'm inspired by other as artists all the time because they're always producing creative content and trying new things. Um, I'm inspired by television shows and commercial I'm inspired by commercials that make me mad. Um. I was um my snake my snake oil salesman roleplay that I did. I was inspired by eyelashed commercials, my scare commercials because I didn't like that they use policies

and to see people in their commercials all the time. So, Um, Candy Queen came from just looking at candy and thinking I wanted to use candy in a video, and then I made a whole story around candy. Ask for which artists she finds inspiring. It might have been easier for her to name the ones who don't. It would certainly be a shorter list. Heather's not just a content creator, She's an avid consumer. If you want to check out the work of other people in a s m R.

She's got some suggestions for you. They're all different and they all have something unique to offer. UM. Some people that I regularly go to it would be just a whispering guy a SMR requests Kiwi whispers are Daniela. I'm trying to keep it even with men and women. Uh A massage as Mr Gentle whispering, a mall visual sounds, calming escape I could. I think I'm subscribed to over four hundred a sm artists and that's for I didn't just subscribe to them to subscribe. I subscribe to them

each for their own reason. And there's people of all ages from all over the world making these videos. If you like accents, you can find someone with an accent you like. UM, if you're more comfortable with someone older. There are lots of older people making videos and young people making videos, and it's really diverse and versatile, and it's I think that's part of what makes some of the sm R community kind of beautiful, because there's a whole bunch of people who are so different trying to

do the same thing. And a s MR artists work relies heavily on creating interesting sounds, which prompted me to ask other if that meant she explored the world of sound and unusual ways. Does she test pretty much everything she comes into contact with to find out what kinds of sounds that might make That is my life now? That not even joking. Everywhere I go, I if i'm especially even a store, I'm picking up everything and holding

it next to my ear. And a lot of times people will say, hey, I think I saw you, and they didn't see me. And but if you do see a girl that looks like me holding something next to her ear and tapping it in a store, that's probably me. It mortifies my family when we're out in public, especially

my sister. She's seven years younger than me. I like to go shopping with her, um, and we've been in stories before when I picked stuff up and she'll just walk away from me, or yell at me or say something like wait till I'm out of the aisle before you do that, because I don't want to be seen

with you. Um. One time, I was looking for teapots for an upcoming role play that I'm doing, and I wanted when musicle looking teapots, so I had her helping me and she was yelling across aisles is this whimsical enough for you? And it was. It's just so funny because she doesn't have it and she doesn't really understand it, but she tries to. And then when she tries to, she gets embarrassed by me and ends up leaving or yelling at me. And which of Heather's video should you

watch first? If they were coming for the first time, I would suggest the cranial r of examination because that has a ton of different triggers in it, or any of the medical role plays, or just some sound assortments that they can the top ten triggers. I think that one is a really good one for people to have an introduction with. Let's say you're an a S M R addict, You've subscribed to dozens of artists, and you have a killer idea for the next tingle inducing video.

What should you do next? I think it's really important to not invest a lot of money upfront into equipment. I would say to use what you have and get a feel for how difficult making videos can be. And if you find that you like it and you like the process and you enjoy that kind of tedious nature that comes with adjusting volume levels very meticulously. Then go into looking at other kinds of equipment. But for your own enjoyment, I would say to do what makes you happy.

Don't worry about catering to requests in the beginning, or or trying to please everyone, because you can't. So do what makes you happy and enjoy it, because then you'll find people who enjoy what you do, and you'll have the audience that you want instead of kind of bending to everybody and trying to please everyone, and you'll burn out so fast. A SMR videos continue to grow in popularity and complexity. If you haven't checked one out, I

recommend giving him a trin. To the uninitiated, they probably seem weird, perhaps even off putting, and the scientific community has little to say about the phenomena. It's a subjective experience. It's difficult and maybe even impossible to quantify, but that won't stop artists like Heather Feather from chasing the feeling and producing videos. You would like to learn more about

Heather's work, Her YouTube channel is called Heather Feather. You can follow her on Twitter at the handle Heath Beev a s m R h E A t h f e A t h A s m R and keep an eye out for her work with pixel Whipped. I can't thank Heather enough for a generosity at a time,

and that wraps up this episode of tech Stuff. Remember to send us feedback at tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumbler, where we use the handle tex stuff H s W. Let me know if you like this new format that I'm trying out, and feel free to suggest future topics, guests, and interview subjects. We'll talk to you again really soon for more on this in thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com m