A Conversation With ASMR Artist Heather Feather

What is ASMR and why is it so popular on YouTube? Artist Heather Feather joins the show to talk about ASMR and her recording techniques.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from Hastro
dot com. Welcome to tex Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland.
Today I wanted to explore a special kind of YouTube experience.

(00:27):
It's something that's been growing steadily in popularity for a
couple of years now. In fact, you could call it
a legitimate phenomenon. It's a genre that defies easy description,
though all of them have a shared goal to create

(00:47):
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

(01:10):
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

(01:34):
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

(01:55):
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

(02:18):
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,

(02:39):
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

(03:01):
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

(03:24):
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.

(03:47):
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.

(04:09):
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

(04:31):
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

(04:52):
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

(05:14):
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

(05:37):
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

(05:59):
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,

(06:20):
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.

(06:43):
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

(07:04):
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

(07:25):
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

(07:49):
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

(08:15):
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,

(08:38):
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

(09:00):
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

(09:22):
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

(09:46):
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.

(10:08):
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

(10:32):
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

(10:52):
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,

(11:16):
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

(11:41):
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?

(12:02):
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,

(12:25):
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

(12:49):
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

(13:10):
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

(13:32):
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

(13:53):
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

(14:15):
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

(14:36):
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

(15:00):
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

(15:20):
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

(15:42):
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

(16:04):
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

(16:27):
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

(16:48):
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

(17:08):
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

(17:28):
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

(17:54):
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,

(18:17):
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

(18:38):
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

(19:00):
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

(19:23):
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

(19:43):
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

(20:04):
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,

(20:26):
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

(20:47):
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

(21:07):
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

(21:28):
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

(21:49):
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?

(22:11):
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.

(22:31):
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

(22:52):
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,

(23:12):
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

(23:33):
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.

(23:57):
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

(24:19):
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

(24:40):
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

(25:02):
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

(25:22):
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,

(25:43):
where we use the handle tex stuff H s W.
Let me know if you like this new format that
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