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. 

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!

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

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

Nice, but really ... I prefer the Klaus Schulze "Contemporary Works" series ... some of those things should have been released in regular CD ... not in a private form, but it must have been clear to him that he did not want to be associated with the "new age" folks.
 
Put on "Cocoon" and the piece after it, off the Tube ... they are something else!

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

That's probably too interesting for what I am talking about, let me just see if I can find a YouTube version of one of the tracks in this playlist so you can see exactly how boring the music I'm referring to is: 
 
Ah yes, here we are:
 

 
I can't pretend I haven't used sounds like that in a track, but usually only in an intro, and usually with some nice chord changes. This kind of music, you can plonk the playhead down at random places in the track and it will basically sound the same every time. 

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!

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. 

sharke
 
I really think the whole point of this "Ambient sleeping pill" music is to make something that's as innocuous and boring as possible. 

And to also mask sounds that draw attention.

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 wouldn't mind knowing either.  I try to do some groove-oriented ambient stuff but find myself getting hypnotized after repeating the loop a couple of times.

I couldn't listen to that for more than 1 min.......I suppose it's good for an intro to a song (short intro). I'd get bored to death (or fall asleep in the first 2 min) in trying to write something like that.
 
BTW, I only need to put my head on the pillow and in lest than 4 min, I'm out.

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.