Listening Differently
- Troy Lowndes
- Sep 23
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 22
For much of my life I moved through the world without recognising the depth of my own inner potential. Not broken… not lost… just unaware. And in that unawareness … of self … I collected stories, friendships, detours, and struggles that I now understand as raw material. These experiences are not wasted years, but groundwork… the soil from which something new has emerged.
Awareness came later than I expected. And when it did, it did not bring regret. Instead it carried renewal, a sense of being charged with energy I didn’t know I had. I began to see that the shadow I once lived in… the half-light of not fully knowing myself… is where many others also dwell. People who feel their mind doesn’t quite fit the grid the world lays out for them. People who sense patterns without language to describe them.
This recognition became a purpose: to help light those sparks for others. To create tools that listen differently, tools that don’t judge or diagnose but reflect and reveal. The idea is simple: feelings are data worth listening to. And if we can decode resonance… warmth, certainty, intensity, coherence… we can begin to understand ourselves in fuller, more generous ways.
ToneThread and its constellation of projects are my way of exploring this. Each one is an experiment in resonance. The Spectral Binary Analyser translates text into tonal fields. BiasFilter looks beneath the surface of headlines to reveal intent and spin. Spectral Deck takes the nostalgia of a tape recorder and transforms it into a playground for exploring hidden meaning in lyrics. BarkThread listens to the voices of our dogs and reflects their emotional states back to us. TuneMind and TuneThread offer ways to feel music as much as hear it.
These aren’t just apps. They are sketches of a larger vision… a studio of resonance. They come from my own lived journey, but also from countless conversations with others who are on similar paths. Their frustrations, their breakthroughs, their longing to make sense of themselves… these are embedded in every experiment.
The work stretches into well-being, reflection, companionship. A reimagined ADHD self-assessment (ASRS v6) that speaks in textures instead of ticks. A planner that adapts in real-time when life shifts. AI companions that converse with warmth and self-awareness. Even explorations in cross-species communication… attempts to ask, what would it mean to really listen beyond the human?
Together, these projects form an ecosystem that honours the tones beneath our words, the resonance beneath our lives. They invite us to imagine technology not as a cold instrument, but as a mirror that can reflect us more truthfully.
Listening differently is not about fixing anyone. It is about noticing what is already present… often unrecognised. Awareness is not a destination… it is a tone you learn to carry. And when you carry it, you give others permission to hear themselves more clearly.
This is the work. Not to build perfect systems, but to open doorways. To show that resonance is real, measurable, and transformative. To create space where people can tune in… and finally, perhaps for the first time, listen differently.
Checkout my blog to learn more:
By popular demand here's a copy of our reimagined DSM... We've labelled it version 6 in the hope that something like this would be introduced to replace the "outdated terminology" in the current version which is widely known as being out of touch modern with public sentiment.
Comments