Gateway tapes without voice: Free Flow tracks and other ways to practise with just sound

Are there Gateway tapes without voice?

There are no official Gateway tapes without voice. The Gateway Experience, the home audio course from the Monroe Institute, is a set of exercises guided by a voice, layered over the Hemi-Sync sound: Robert Monroe in Waves I to IV and another narrator in Waves V to VIII. The institute’s own listings name the voice even on the Free Flow tracks, the exercises with the most open time.

People search for Gateway tapes without voice for three common reasons:

• The voice feels dated. The recordings are decades old, and the style shows it.
• It pulls you out. A voice can keep your mind busy just when you want it to go quiet.
• You already know the steps. After weeks of practice, hearing the same instructions can feel like too much.

If you want Monroe’s sound with no words at all, the institute sells a separate line. Its Metamusic titles “contain music and Hemi-Sync without words”. That music is not part of the Gateway course and does not teach its exercises.

What are the Free Flow tracks?

The Free Flow tracks are Gateway exercises that give you open time to use what you have learned, instead of teaching something new. They are the closest the course comes to practising with just sound. The Monroe Institute’s overview names three:

Track	Where it sits	What it is for, per the Monroe Institute
Focus 10 Free Flow	Last exercise of Wave I	Experiment with all tools learned in Wave I
Free Flow 12	Wave IV, Adventure	A background for personal exploration
Free Flow Journey in Focus 21	Wave VI, Odyssey	New territory for your own exploration

Free Flow 12 is 35 minutes long. Its description asks you to set an intention before you begin, so you do not drift into sleep or a dream, and to experiment with any of the methods you have learned. So the voice is still there, but you do more of the work. If you have not done the earlier exercises, a Free Flow track will make little sense; the order matters, which is why our guide to Focus 10 starts at the beginning.

Is the voice or the sound the important part?

The voice teaches the steps, and the sound supports them; no study has tested which matters more. In Wave I, the voice asks you to focus on each part of your body and then let it go completely. That is a classic relaxation technique, and you can do it with or without a tone underneath.

The sound is binaural beats: a slightly different tone in each ear, which your brain hears as a slow pulse. Hemi-Sync layers several of them with noise, as our article on Hemi-Sync explains. The research on that kind of sound is mixed. A 2023 systematic review of 14 EEG studies found that 5 supported the idea that brainwaves follow the beat, 8 did not and 1 was mixed. A 2018 meta-analysis of 22 studies found a medium effect on memory, attention, anxiety and pain, and said the effect depended on the beat’s frequency, how long people listened and when.

So if you drop the voice, you do not lose the course’s “active ingredient”. You lose the reminders. Once you no longer need them, practising with just sound is a reasonable next step.

Can you reach Focus 10 without guidance?

Yes, once you have learned the steps, you can reach a Focus 10 style state on your own. Focus 10 is the course’s label for “mind awake, body asleep”: the body deeply relaxed, the mind still alert. It is a label, not a state science can measure, but the experience is the same edge of sleep that yoga nidra and body scans aim for.

A simple routine without a voice:

1. Lie down somewhere quiet, at a time you are not exhausted.
2. Release your body in order, from your feet to your head, the way the exercises taught you.
3. Slow your breathing, with each breath out longer than the breath in.
4. Keep one point of attention, such as the sound itself.
5. Give it 15 to 30 minutes, then come back slowly.

A slow beat in the theta range, 4 to 8 Hz, suits this, because theta waves are the rhythm of drowsiness. Binaural beats need stereo headphones; on a speaker the two tones mix in the air and the beat disappears.

How can you practise with just sound in Shimmr?

Shimmr gives you three ways to practise without a voice. Shimmr began with the Gateway tapes: its Journeys are a modern take on that kind of guided session, made by an independent developer who has used the tapes. Shimmr is not affiliated with the Monroe Institute, does not contain the tapes and does not reproduce Hemi-Sync signals or Focus levels.

• Journeys with the voice off. In the mixer, Voice Guidance has the levels Soft, Balanced and Clear, and Off for a session with just the sound. Learn the method with the voice, then turn it down as you need it less.
• Shifts, which have no voice. Tense → At Ease glides from Beta to Theta over 15 minutes, then holds.
• Theta and Alpha sessions, or Sound Canvas. Play a steady binaural session, or drag a tone in Sound Canvas to change its beat live as you settle.

Keep the volume low and never listen while driving. If you have epilepsy, talk to your doctor before using rhythmic sound. For a closer look at how Shimmr compares with the course, see our page on an alternative to the Gateway tapes.