Spindles is a hand-crafted music and sound app designed to support rest, meditation, focus, and emotional calm. It brings together vintage analog synthesizers, acoustic instruments, and natural soundscapes — each element thoughtfully composed with both artistic intention and functional purpose.

Unlike AI-generated music platforms, every track in Spindles was composed by a human musician with decades of professional experience. The result is music that feels alive, textured, and emotionally resonant — not sterile or formulaic.

Spindles serves four core functions:

• Sleep — guiding listeners from wakefulness into deep, restful sleep

• Focus — supporting concentration, with particular benefit for those managing ADHD/ADD

• Meditation — creating spacious, reflective sonic environments

• Calm — reducing anxiety and helping regulate the nervous system

For Health Benefit Providers:

Spindles is a science-informed, professionally composed audio resource with particular value for today's shared and open-plan work environments. Ambient office noise — conversations, keyboards, HVAC, notifications — is one of the leading drivers of lost productivity and cognitive fatigue. Spindles addresses this directly: its curated soundscapes and structured music function as acoustic masks, reducing the intrusion of unpredictable background noise while sustaining the steady, low-dopamine stimulation that supports deep focus. For employees with ADHD or heightened sensory sensitivity, this effect is especially meaningful. Beyond the workday, Spindles supports the full employee wellness arc — stress and anxiety reduction, sleep quality, and recovery — making it a natural complement to existing wellness programs, EAP offerings, and mental health benefit packages. It is grounded in peer-reviewed research while honoring long-standing therapeutic traditions. See Section 3 for the full scientific framework.

When you first open Spindles, you'll be asked to sign in — via Apple ID, Google ID, email/password, or anonymously. This creates a user account that lets you build playlists and save favorites, and it starts your 14-day full-access trial. No payment information is required upfront.

After 14 days, you'll be presented with subscription options. Spindles offers all standard subscription tiers, plus discounted access for:

• Nurses and healthcare workers

• Military members and veterans

• Students

• Artists and musicians

If you fall into one of these categories — or are simply in a tight financial spot — email us for a discount code via the App Store. Making Spindles accessible is a priority.

Note: Your Spindles user account and your App Store subscription are separate things. The user account stores your personal data (playlists, favorites, preferences); the subscription manages your payment through Apple's App Store.

Spindles operates at the intersection of evidence-based research and time-honored therapeutic practice. Here is how those two worlds inform the app's design:

Natural Soundscapes

The science here is well-established. Natural soundscapes — rain, forests, water, wind — have documented benefits for stress reduction, attentional restoration, and sleep quality. Spindles features original field recordings captured with a 360-degree microphone setup in Chicago and on the composer's travels, providing a fully immersive environment when listening with headphones.

Functional Music & ADHD

Research consistently shows that moderate-tempo, lyric-free music with a steady rhythmic structure can help regulate dopamine levels, supporting focus and attention — particularly for individuals with ADHD/ADD. Spindles' focus tracks are designed with simple, evolving structures: enough variety to prevent boredom, enough rhythm to sustain attention.

Relevant research:

• Sarkamo et al. (2008) — music and cognitive performance

• Patston & Tippett (2011) — background music and attention

• Verywell Mind (2023) — music and ADHD focus

Noise & Low-Dopamine Environments

Modern environments overwhelm the auditory system with unpredictable stimulation, which elevates stress and dysregulates mood. Low-dopamine soundscapes — predictable, steady, non-intrusive — help the nervous system downshift. Spindles' noise elements are crafted using modular synthesis, giving them an organic, performative quality distinct from generic white noise generators.

Binaural Beats & Frequency

Binaural beats involve playing two slightly different tones in each ear, producing a perceived pulse that may help synchronize brainwave activity to a target frequency. The science here is less definitive than for soundscapes, though sustained tonal sounds have long been used across cultures — Himalayan singing bowls, Gregorian chant, Buddhist toning — for focus and relaxation. Spindles incorporates binaural content creatively and transparently, without overstating its clinical claims.

For Health Benefit Providers:

Spindles makes no therapeutic claims beyond what current research supports. Its approach is transparent: established benefits are applied directly; newer techniques (binaural beats, frequency-specific music) are used as creative tools, clearly labeled. This positions Spindles as a responsible wellness resource suitable for employee benefit programs, patient support materials, and wellness coaching contexts.

Sleep Stages is Spindles' flagship overnight listening feature. It is designed around a simple but powerful insight: most people fall asleep best with melodic music, but sleep most deeply with minimal ambient sound.

Sleep Stages lets you build a fully customized overnight audio journey across two phases:

• Playlist 1 — Drift Phase: A selection of melodic or piano tracks to ease you into sleep. Plays through once.

• Playlist 2 — Deep Sleep Phase: Your preferred ambient soundscapes, nature recordings, or noise colors. Loops continuously through the night.

You can use Spindles presets for both playlists, or build your own from the full library.

Wake Transition (built into Sleep Stages)

Sleep Stages includes an optional Wake Transition: a scheduled track or playlist that begins playing at a time you set, acting as a gentle, music-based morning alarm. Choose from bright or soft presets, or select any track in the library. Note: the Wake Transition is designed as a gentle complement to your morning, not a mission-critical alarm — iOS background app behavior can occasionally affect precise timing.

Controls

• Rewind button — restarts Playlist 1 from the beginning.

• Pause/Play — Sleep Stages remains active in the background; tap a track from outside the mode to disengage it.

Many Spindles tracks are built from two distinct layers:

• Music Layer — the composed musical element (piano, synthesizer, orchestral).

• Soundscape Layer — a secondary ambient layer: nature sounds, noise, or binaural beats.

Each layer has its own volume control, giving you precise control over the balance. For example, on a track like Deep Flakes, you can push the falling snow sounds to the foreground, or fade them entirely to hear only the music.

The soundscape slider is visible in the mini-player at the bottom of the screen. Tapping the mini-player opens the full player with a larger, fine-grained control.

6. Playback Timer

The Playback Timer lets you set a specific duration for playback — after which Spindles fades out gradually and stops. This is ideal if you prefer to fall asleep to music without it playing all night.

To use it: tap the timer icon in the full-page player, select a duration, and the countdown begins. A small countdown window appears in the lower right corner of the screen, turning pink during the final 2-minute fade.

Item descriptionThe Playback Timer lets you set a specific duration for playback — after which Spindles fades out gradually and stops. This is ideal if you prefer to fall asleep to music without it playing all night.

To use it: tap the timer icon in the full-page player, select a duration, and the countdown begins. A small countdown window appears in the lower right corner of the screen, turning pink during the final 2-minute fade.

times when you're on a plane or in a location with unreliable connectivity, tracks can be downloaded directly to your device.

To download: tap the cloud/down-arrow icon on any track in the Main Player or Track Row view. Downloaded tracks display a blue disk icon with a checkmark. Tap the checkmark again to remove the download.

All downloaded tracks are accessible and manageable from the Settings page under Manage Downloads. Note: some features (keyword filtering, certain album artwork) may require an internet connection even when listening offline.

Tab 1 — Home

Newly added tracks appear in the top row, followed by curated rows for each of the four core functions: sleep, meditation, focus, and calm. Tap any track's artwork to open the mini-player; tap the mini-player to open the full player with all controls.

Tab 2 — Albums & Collections

Browse the full library organized by function, sonic type (soundscapes, noisescapes, binaural beats), and special projects — including original piano compositions and the Cicada Symphony orchestral cycle.

Tab 3 — Dynamic Keyword Search

Search by keyword across both function (sleep, focus, calm, meditation) and musical attributes. As you select keywords, the track list updates in real time to show matches. A powerful way to find exactly the right sonic environment for a specific need.

Tab 4 — Favorites & Playlists

Tracks you've favorited appear at the top as a special playlist. Below that are any custom playlists you've created. Playlists can be edited, reordered, or deleted at any time.

Tab 5 — Settings

Manage your account, subscription status, downloaded tracks, display mode (light/dark/system), and access this FAQ. Subscription cancellation is handled through the App Store.

Spindles contains nearly 4 hours of newly composed, function-specific music, plus field recordings from Chicago and around the world. The library spans:

• Analog and modular synthesis — warm, evolving, organic textures

• Solo piano — performed on a Schimmel K195 Konzert Grand

• Full orchestral works — including a 7-act orchestral cycle composed to mark the rare co-emergence of two Midwest cicada broods

• Natural soundscapes — recorded in 360 degrees for full headphone immersion

Every track carries multiple keywords describing both its function and its musical character, making it easy to explore beyond the obvious categories. A sleep track might also be perfect for deep work; a meditation piece might suit a slow morning run.

Spindles was created by Bryan Rheude, a Chicago-based composer who works under the name Dudadius. Bryan is a veteran, Emmy-nominated composer whose work has appeared in Super Bowl commercials, PBS documentaries, and campaigns for Fortune 500 companies.

Spindles grew out of a personal interest in the intersection of music, neuroscience, and well-being — informed by years of studying sleep science, meditation, and sound therapy. Building the app itself was a deliberate creative challenge: learning iOS development in order to bring a very specific aesthetic and functional vision to life, rather than compromise it.

In Japanese philosophy, Ikigai refers to the place where what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for all converge. Spindles is Bryan's Ikigai.

There's a tension in choosing music as both a passion and a profession. Spindles was built to resolve that tension — to create something that not only delights but also makes a small, genuine difference in people's lives.

The guiding principle is simple: if music can help individuals find calm, rest, and focus, those individuals can pass that steadiness on to the people around them. Peace, in this sense, is contagious.

The name itself carries meaning on multiple levels. Sleep spindles — bursts of high-frequency brain activity during Stage 2 sleep — play a key role in memory consolidation and sensory filtering. A spindle is also a component of a bicycle wheel, a nod to cycling as a lifelong passion of the creator. And spinning, in the oldest sense, is the act of making something from raw fiber — which is exactly what composing music feels like.