Question about "ambient" music

jamesg1213
There's a guy at the Songs forum 'Synkotron' who does some nice stuff like that. This track is darker in feel but has a bit of a description of how he did it.
 
https://soundcloud.com/synkrotron/conflagration

Moshkito
Hi,
 
I'm not sure there is a "method", although it was pretty obvious in the New Age'y days that they were simply on repeat mode and not really working small details to keep the music alive other than just some sonambolist crap, which so many "stores" sold as healthy music, and like you, I agree that some of it should not even qualify as music.
 
Going back to 1970's one of the first for me, was Fripp and Eno (No Pussyfooting), and it is difficult to all of a sudden say ... some repetition is bad, but in this case, it was just so far out and crazy, that one wondered, what they were really thinking.
 
As time went by, Eno developed into something else and his stuff is always "pretty" and "attractive" in a very different way ... and one CD simply said that there were several threads and they were mathematically intertwined and started at different times, and I am not sure I could tell one from the other. And he used this live on several art shows as well, probably where he figured it out ... it's out of sync, and it works.
 
The German version was more melodic, and "knob-wise" as I call it. To me, even though it is rock music, the early Cluster/Kraftwerk(pre-Autobahn)/Neu/Harmonia were a pre-cursor of "New Age" stuff with guitars on it ... didn't bother me, but it did bother folks at the New Age stores here in Portland ... that guitar is noise!
 
My favorite lies with Klaus Schulze and then Ash Ra Tempel ... whose work is above and beyond the "ideals" of "New Age". Klaus, took the art of the repetition to an art form and then layered it 100 times, and it became nutz and crazy from a figuring it out point of view, but it sure was pretty and exciting. "New Age of Earth" (1974) is, by far one of the early and best "New Age" albums, but will not be listened to by most folks, because it is so different and it also features a meandering guitar, the style that Manuel Gottsching favors.
 
I tend to blow out neighbors with my high powered AMT Heil speakers ... I move them next to their wall and blow out the loudest crap I can find ... the one you know they hate since they can only listen to this and that. Once, in Santa Barbara, I closed a party, because there were too many people there, and they were not invited. So I changed the music to Amon Duul 2 and drove them out in 20 minutes! I'm waiting to blow out my neighbor Latino ... I have a few Spanish rock bands ready to go, and it will sludge their ears and their rap-mariachi mix so fast, that I think they will shut up for a week or two!

sharke
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?

mumpcake

UbiquitousBubba
Top 40: More boring that Ambient and more irritating than an accordion/bagpipe/vuvuzela Power Trio.

You may be right.  However, I think the vuvuzela/wobble bass/808 power trio is just a bit more annoying.

UbiquitousBubba
I was going to comment on Ambient music and how it's the only genre intended to be so dull and pointless that your brain would rather pretend it doesn't exist than go on listening. I was going to do that. Then I thought of this.
 
Top 40: More boring that Ambient and more irritating than an accordion/bagpipe/vuvuzela Power Trio.
 
Sorry, Ambient music. You're not quite dull enough. Keep not trying, though. Oh, and congratulations on the Underachiever's trophy. 

JohanSebatianGremlin

sharke
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. 

I've done some ambient stuff in my day. To try to answer what you're asking, I'll simply reframe your question a bit with a somewhat different hypothetical.  


So the speed metal stuff. I'm just wondering how one goes about making music like this. Do you just set all the distortion knobs to max, pick a key, and then play as many notes as you can as quickly as you can with no regard for melody or groove or feel what so ever? 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. 
 
Ok I know that seems like I'm just knocking speed metal. But I'm not. I'm making a point. The answer in both cases is pretty much the same. In all cases actually, no matter what genre you're talking about it.
 
No matter what genre, if you don't much care for it and don't really listen to it all that much, it will sound more or less like a random string of notes with no rhyme or reason as to how anyone could have come up with such a thing nor any idea how they could remember it long enough to play it the same way twice in a row. This applies even if you happen to hear something in that genre that you kind of like assuming you've heard it only once.

To understand how it is that someone could create a style of music you don't normally listen to, you have to live in it for a while. Immerse yourself in it and spend lots of quality time really listening to it. Then and only then will you begin discover the real nuances that both define the genre and separate the high quality examples of the genre from the low quality examples. This applies whether we're talking about speed metal, reggae, bebop, skiffle or yes, even ambient. 

So to actually answer your question, yes there's a method to making it. No you don't just 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? At least they don't if they care about what they're doing and want it to be a quality example of the genre.
 
Ambient is about texture and the art of subtle development. Its supposed to be a kind of sonic wallpaper that serves as a background for other things. Its not supposed to demand your full attention the way most other types of music do. But at the same time, you don't want to just hold an envelope sweep pad for 16 bars and repeat it for 6 minutes with no development at all because even as background wallpaper, that much repetition with no development becomes distracting. 

In a way, its no different that lots of other genres in that its pretty easy to fake and do something that 'sounds like it' but much more difficult to do something that actually is a quality example of the art. 

sharke
 
...
Trouble is if it's too interesting or thoughtful then your mind latches onto it and you can't get to sleep. I really think the whole point of this "Ambient sleeping pill" music is to make something that's as innocuous and boring as possible. 

Jeff Evans
With ambient music it also depends on how you listen to it as well. For example with Eno Ambient 4 if you parked yourself between your near field monitors and turned it up then yes you will hear all the interest and the detail much more.
 
But as Eno suggests too if say you are falling asleep and you have that music playing from a speaker set across the other side of the room and you set the volume lower then it all just meshes together and permeates across the room toward you and it becomes a more distant thing. All the detail rolls into a combined sound.
 
Hers is link to a folder on my Google drive with three Ambient tracks in it:
 
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B_2Jb7O_b5BkWjBkcjItYUhYYTg?usp=sharing
 
Note they are in different keys and they are actually very different from each other but they all have the same thing in  common and that is they are a relaxing ambient track.
 
I have put the wave files in there as well because they do sound better than compressed tracks. There are many things going on and lots of tracks and various things here. Some electronic and others organic. The best ambient music is not all synth based but involves real acoustic sounds too. Rhythms take it out of the realm of being truely ambient. So I say no to rhythms of any form and if you do they need to be very brief. It is all about drone and texture etc...Fleeting melodies as well. I have been composing ambient music since 1983. (34 years folks!)
 
Eno Textures is hard to find and there are a couple of rhythmical tracks on that album but they are not meant to be really ambient in my opinion either more a rhythmical idea.

Fog
depends on what you mean, e.g. tracks that run 45 minutes (pink fluffy clouds) or things like EVA.. where it's an album and the tracks roll into each other..
 
FSOL are people that come to mind locally, papa nu guniea etc. 
 
pads / drones and subtle sounds, and things that are harsh you can bring in slowly. you can drown things in reverb / delay / echo etc.
 
my fav ambient tune is from an old c64 game . have a listen ... only 3 channels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RwZED4CLkU
 
a few friends make psy trance or the goa stuff.. again "chilled out"