Ambient Music - I'm right a piece(may become a small book) about it. Any source suggestions?

[incubus]

And the ungodly use of autotune, sade-ee.

[slipstick]

People want to call lots of things lots of things. Everything called techno isn't, but there's no law saying that you can't mislabel things. Even though I'm not a super Eno fan in terms of his music, I think that it's fair to accept his definition as it defines something of a purpose.

For me, when music begins to grab your attention is the point at which it ceases to be ambient, and the point at which you aren't really interested in trying to listen to it is the point at which it ceases to be music. So ambient music lies in between environmental sound and anything chill with a hook.

I rather like that definition in that if music really jumps out at you it can't easily be called ambient.

But Brian Eno's idea was of music which could EITHER sit in the background evoking moods OR if listened to with attention would repay that attention, the difference being in your mood at the time rather than the music itself. And as many artists have since proven, achieving that duality is the difficult trick to pull off. Eno certainly doesn't always manage it.

Not that it really matters. These days there are so many genres and subgenres of everything that Ambient has become just a term which means that, when someone mentions some music I don't know, I'm slightly more likely to enjoy it if it has that label attached than if it was called Hardcore Rap or Death Metal for example.

Steve

[ghettosynth]

People want to call lots of things lots of things. Everything called techno isn't, but there's no law saying that you can't mislabel things. Even though I'm not a super Eno fan in terms of his music, I think that it's fair to accept his definition as it defines something of a purpose.

For me, when music begins to grab your attention is the point at which it ceases to be ambient, and the point at which you aren't really interested in trying to listen to it is the point at which it ceases to be music. So ambient music lies in between environmental sound and anything chill with a hook.

I rather like that definition in that if music really jumps out at you it can't easily be called ambient.

But Brian Eno's idea was of music which could EITHER sit in the background evoking moods OR if listened to with attention would repay that attention, the difference being in your mood at the time rather than the music itself. And as many artists have since proven, achieving that duality is the difficult trick to pull off. Eno certainly doesn't always manage it.

Not that it really matters. These days there are so many genres and subgenres of everything that Ambient has become just a term which means that, when someone mentions some music I don't know, I'm slightly more likely to enjoy it if it has that label attached than if it was called Hardcore Rap or Death Metal for example.

Steve

Sure, I'm sort of paraphrasing Eno though. I don't mean that you can't actively listen to ambient, rather that you can choose not to but if it's not letting that happen, then it's probably not ambient.

From the other perspective, when it doesn't grab your attention even if you want it to, then that's sort of where music ends and environmental sound begins.

It's what I strive for, although I'm sure that I'm not always successful.

[AmbireSeiche]

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I'm working on a piece about my love of and impression of ambient music.
Any music source suggestions ? What are your impressions?

If you're looking for a bit of history and theory, for source suggestions I'd start with Satie and dabble in Cage

http://www.ubu.com/sound/satie.html (http://www.ubu.com/sound/satie.html)

http://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/cg ... lofferings (http://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=musicalofferings)

http://www.eno-web.co.uk/interviews/musicn85.html (http://www.eno-web.co.uk/interviews/musicn85.html)

[AmbireSeiche]

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As a less obvious choice I'd recommend some of Moby's ambient music too, he's been releasing it since his early days as bonus discs to his albums, Underwater and Little Idiot for example. Or his more recent Long Ambients.

http://moby.com/la1/ (http://moby.com/la1/)

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/ ... p-20160525 (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/hear-mobys-new-serene-album-long-ambients1-calm-sleep-20160525)

http://www.openculture.com/2016/06/moby ... sleep.html (http://www.openculture.com/2016/06/moby-lets-you-download-4-hours-of-ambient-music-to-help-you-sleep.html)

[seismic1]

Some people say "if it has a beat, it's not ambient". But after listening to some of the 12k stuff, I can't agree.
Just to add, Maitreya is awesome, if anybody needs a fix?...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YnbZQt ... 18B9A0CB79

I saw Simon play an excellent set at the Ambient Music Conference 2014 in Haltia. I have a couple of his albums on vinyl and CD

[Winstontaneous]

So here we go. Here's Eno talking about some very, IMO, trivial process elements with respect to his music and the interviewer wants everyone to know that he thinks that Eno is a "scientist", in fact, a "quantum scientist", whatever the f**k that is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqHKX4BDJ1Q

For anyone with a math or a computer science background who comes to music, this is an obvious approach to making music and what Eno is doing here is laughably simple. The point being, I can see why there's not much interest in this when people talk about ambient.

I give credit to Eno for working in this way when it wasn't generally accepted, and you could even say that he was groundbreaking in making that so, however, that doesn't make his processes any more interesting today.

I think that in many cases the alternative ambient genres are doing much more interesting stuff than either the academics or the "stars" are doing. Had Eno not been Roxy Music, I don't think that we would know who he is at all. I do believe that someone else would have developed ideas for ambient music, however.

There we go, that should ruffle some feathers, we're going to have a conversation now, amiright?

Eno is the first to say that if he hadn't run into his art school chum Andy McKay (Roxy sax/oboeist) on the tube that day in the early '70s, he'd be an art teacher. Eno basically took the methods of the experimental composers of the era, and (re)introduced the notion of taste/discernment, with a focus on music as a sensual and social experience.

To the OP - be sure to check out Mark Prendergast's "Ambient Century - From Mahler to Moby".

[incubus]

I am just about to lie down and put some cucumbers on my eyes (it works people) and listen to some lovely ambient music*

*Though some times I listen to Korn or SOAD too

[experimental.crow]

Some people say "if it has a beat, it's not ambient". But after listening to some of the 12k stuff, I can't agree.
Just to add, Maitreya is awesome, if anybody needs a fix?...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YnbZQt ... 18B9A0CB79

I saw Simon play an excellent set at the Ambient Music Conference 2014 in Haltia. I have a couple of his albums on vinyl and CD

a viewpoint i hold ...

[ghettosynth]

So here we go. Here's Eno talking about some very, IMO, trivial process elements with respect to his music and the interviewer wants everyone to know that he thinks that Eno is a "scientist", in fact, a "quantum scientist", whatever the f**k that is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqHKX4BDJ1Q

For anyone with a math or a computer science background who comes to music, this is an obvious approach to making music and what Eno is doing here is laughably simple. The point being, I can see why there's not much interest in this when people talk about ambient.

I give credit to Eno for working in this way when it wasn't generally accepted, and you could even say that he was groundbreaking in making that so, however, that doesn't make his processes any more interesting today.

I think that in many cases the alternative ambient genres are doing much more interesting stuff than either the academics or the "stars" are doing. Had Eno not been Roxy Music, I don't think that we would know who he is at all. I do believe that someone else would have developed ideas for ambient music, however.

There we go, that should ruffle some feathers, we're going to have a conversation now, amiright?

Eno is the first to say that if he hadn't run into his art school chum Andy McKay (Roxy sax/oboeist) on the tube that day in the early '70s, he'd be an art teacher. Eno basically took the methods of the experimental composers of the era, and (re)introduced the notion of taste/discernment, with a focus on music as a sensual and social experience.

To the OP - be sure to check out Mark Prendergast's "Ambient Century - From Mahler to Moby".

Thanks for the link, that looks interesting.

[SODDI]

There was some interest in the avant-garde by British rock community - Spooky Tooth's collaboration with IRCAM's tape music maven Pierre Henry on "Ceremony", Pink Floyd's tape manipulation on the studio disc of Ummagumma. Joe Meek's very odd bit of electronica for the intro to "Telstar". Lennon's "Revolution 9".

From 1956, Vladimir Ussachevsky's "Music for Tape Recorder". Fripp and Eno were certainly influenced by this guy's methods - Fripp even renamed Ussachevsky's tape loop process "Frippertronics".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E47Zk8riCO4

[cron]

I was listening to this 1972 track by Laurie Spiegel earlier and thinking it would have been a better example than RiverRun which I posted earlier. It bizarrely turned up in The Hunger Games soundtrack of all places. It's really heartening seeing positive comments about the track on Youtube from Hunger Games fans who may not have turned their attention to this kind of music otherwise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02DvJvPppI0

One intriguing theme throughout this thread is that the ambient genre seems to be defined functionally rather than sonically. I.e. "is it ambient if the listener pays attention to it?" I can't think of any other genre bar corporate muzak (if we can call that a genre) where this is the case. I read an interview with Matmos where they talked about scoring a porno soundtrack early in their career and one of the instructions from the director was "don't be too interesting".

About 12 years ago I was making a lot of music that I called "twitch ambient" where I tried to manipulate the listener's attention as part of the composition. Letting a drone or otherwise fairly static section go on just long enough for the listener to lose attention, then introducing a quick flurry of activity or some other abrupt change to recapture it - rinse and repeat.

[incubus]

Now that I don't care for. Much like the movie