sharke
 
...
MIDI notes involved, sorry 

That's GROSSLY unfair to the early synthesizer folks, including Tangerine Dream, in the days that MIDI was not even being used or understood. You are too integrated into the chemistry and science of it all to appreciate the art of it, is my thought ... 
 
Trust me ... you will understand what I'm saying one day, and I am not just putting ideas into your head ... music is music for a reason ... and you have it defined to the notes you can see on a DAW ... not its life. 
 
How would you like to be one of those notes and be ... ignored, because no one is interested in knowing you/your notes? All, because the ideas and visions of music are now so computerized and dictated by a machine, that we can not even close our eyes to listen to it ... we simply think that if we let go of the "internal dialogue" that we die ... 
 
Ohhh well ... whatever ... how sad to feel so empty inside. AND, not even have any idea what ticks another person's dream and vision without it sounding like something you already know and hate!

Moshkito

sharke
 
...
MIDI notes involved, sorry 

That's GROSSLY unfair to the early synthesizer folks, including Tangerine Dream, in the days that MIDI was not even being used or understood. You are too integrated into the chemistry and science of it all to appreciate the art of it, is my thought ... 
 
Trust me ... you will understand what I'm saying one day, and I am not just putting ideas into your head ... music is music for a reason ... and you have it defined to the notes you can see on a DAW ... not its life. 
 
How would you like to be one of those notes and be ... ignored, because no one is interested in knowing you/your notes? All, because the ideas and visions of music are now so computerized and dictated by a machine, that we can not even close our eyes to listen to it ... we simply think that if we let go of the "internal dialogue" that we die ... 
 
Ohhh well ... whatever ... how sad to feel so empty inside. AND, not even have any idea what ticks another person's dream and vision without it sounding like something you already know and hate!

 

sharke
Last night my loser neighbor felt like playing video games loudly at 2am, so to offset the sound of tanks and explosions coming through the wall I put on a Spotify playlist called "Ambient Sleeping Pill" and actually had a fantastic night's sleep. It's the kind of New Age crap that seems to be one long wishy washy chord, sustained for the full duration of the track, probably soaked in reverb, with a few notes changing imperceptibly here and there and the odd barely noticeable change in texture. I mean as music there's nothing whatsoever to sink your teeth into, but as a soothing background noise it's quite relaxing. 
 
Just wondering how one goes about making music like this. Is there any method to it at all short of drawing out some 10 minute long notes in the piano roll? I keep trying to picture the person working on the track. Were they stopping and listening to it over and over to map out its progress, or do they literally just draw some MIDI notes, listen to it all the way through to check for anything obviously out of place, export it and call it a day? Seems like you could bang a few of these out a day, put them in a playlist on Spotify and rake in a few dollars from people like me playing them on repeat for 7 hours at a time. 

The answer is in sentence 2 of paragraph 1. Just saying'.....

He's gone. Thanks Scook.

did I hear someone say "ambient?"

slartabartfast
 
Try doing that with your tuba.

This guy creates pretty nice "ambient" music from his trombone:-
 
https://soundcloud.com/quiethorn
 
 

I hear plain old midi notes can be very ambient when played without any synths attached.

FWIW, I can fall asleep listening to Meshuggah...

Moshkito
 
Oh, btw, BS was better!

I'd have said "different." I mean, yeah, some of the early stuff that BS put out still puts a shiver up my spine but, for certain moods, I still quite like Meshuggah and, I'll be honest, I really didn't think I would... Not as if you can sing along to their stuff...

Hiya James
 
Was it this you are referring to:-
 
https://ambientsleepingpill.com/
 
 

sharke
... 
I made a remark about a very particular type of music that I had listened to, and none of it bore the slightest resemblance to any of the artists you mention - Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk et al. There is nothing remotely "Kraftwerk" about the ambient sleep-aid music in the playlist that I'd listened to on Spotify.
...

 
Some of the stuff you mention has been around for a long time ... and in the "new age" days (the 90's) ... some of the stuff in there was not exactly that bad ... it just wasn't very original was my only point. I liked how some folks took 20 seconds of Popol Vuh and turned it into some sort of music for anyone to have sex with, or to dream about angels, just because it had some synthesized voices of women in it!
 

sharke
Oh really? And what qualifies you to say that? Almost all of my current musical endeavors these days involves the flipping of buttons, the turning of knobs, and I've been listening to synthesized music almost my entire life. 
...

The comment is being mis-interpreted by you altogether, and I accept that my description was simplistic at best. Saying that the early krautrock was just like about turning of a knob, really meant that the sound effect was stretched out for 5 minutes or more, and a piece of music made out of it. In fact, this is one of the complaints about HAWKWIND by many folks, in that the effect lasts 5 minutes, and the jams are on in between it all ... and I kinda think that since we know (TODAY) what the effect is, that we sitting here and me taking your guitar playing and stretching that effect for 5 minutes, you would get bored after 15 seconds,
 
There is nothing mean about saying that ... it should be a laugh from you, at the least ... and fun goofing around with it ... but today, these effects are not thought of as a feeling while you did something, like they were back when we first heard it ... same thing that when many of us first heard synthesizers it was first associated with outer space ... because it was so unknown and foreign.
 
A lot of music came out of that feeling ... and that is my point.
 
As for "sleeping music" ... to me, that is not sleeping music at all ... the stuff you are mentioning, and in fact I find it boring ... and boring does not make me sleepy ... makes me want to throw it under the train wheels! Better yet, throw some coffee at the equipment that made it ... something ludicrous and funny!
 
I have no interest in doing what you say I am doing ... and a lot of it is just an idea ... that you don't like because I am not a "musician" and a "member" of your club ... I don't want to be a member of anything!