Most ambient music is uninspired and boring. The problem is that people, musicians think it’s easy to make. A lot of times it reminds me of fusion jazz, where you have rare gems and lot of junk, guys noodling around.
Yes! This was absolutely spot on! Ambient music is not wallpaper... yes, it can create a vibe, but for those who want to get pulled into a whole universe of structured sound, it can deliver that too. The most satisfying experience is to compose for them... because we are one of them too.
Distortion is good for ambient. Once you layer up, EQ, compress frequency bands in places then apply your panning and verb you get this greater sense of space.
I don't disagree, but I want to push back on something that I felt was implied by your video, which is the idea that music (and here specifically ambient music) has to be beautiful or somewhat pull in the listener. It's certainly true that this is how most people view music. But it is not the sole possibility of music. My view on this is that music has to be _interesting_, it has to say something. Sometimes it is challenging, sometimes it is unpleasant, sometimes it can be boring (in an interesting way). When the listener is challenged, they feel something, whether it's an emotion, a strain, a sensation, and that is certainly a valuable thing. I personally find a lot of otherwise well produced "melodic ambient" music to be uninteresting, just because it does not challenge the listening experience in any way. Sometimes, I want to be the one who pulls the music, instead of the music pulling me. Obviously there, it is a matter of taste, as usual.
Personally, one of my greatest inspirations for ambient music is Kenji Yamamoto's Metroid Soundtracks. They combine a fantastic balance of purpose and environmental ambience.
What I often dislike about ambient music is what I like about your music. Many ambient artists create repetitive music with little melodic or harmonic interest. So whatever sonic quality their music has, it's lost on a boring drone that begins nowhere and lead to nowhere. Your music, on the other hand, is melodically and harmonically interesting. And sonically your music checks all the boxes. So it takes me on a journey
@@commodoor6549 There is no right or wrong, no ending, improvise!One note drones with a moog can spiral in beauty if you know your machine,a chord on a moog and a recorder has endless possibilities.
@@MyBichSustained I stated my preference, and you suggested my opinion was wrong. Now you're saying there is no right or wrong. So which is my opinion, right or wrong?
Trent Reznor is a textural sound design and layering master!. I have been watching "how to " reconstructions of his process, and I especially like how he recontextualizes found sound/movie samples, and or resamples and manipulates his own material, and uses all of these subtle layers like a cook uses seasonings, where you dont hear the thing, as much as you hear what it did, and the piece would not be the same at all without it.
@@craigsurette3438 Can you point me to some of those "how to" reconstructions? I was a NIN fan in the early days, but don't know much about the stuff you mentioned, and it sounds really cool.
@@j3ffn4v4rr0 There was an article with an interview with Tremt Reznor in an early 90s Keyboard magazine, where he talked about his process. A lot of it involved running things through lots of guitar pedals, especially early Zoom guitar multieffects, and resampling them, especially through an early audio editing program called Turbosynth. Sample layers would get processed and reprocessed again and again He also described watching A LOT of old movies on VCR, and staying up late at night, just hunting for random found sounds in those movies, and stealing them to mangle and recontextualize them using those same methods I just came across a video that went through where a bunch of the found sound samples in The Downward Spiral came from. Since UA-cam is often dumb about allowing shared links, i will put it in the next message below , and hopefully it will stay
I love that you bring up Eno! I have the schematic of Eno's studio he put inside the album cover of Discrete Music blown up as a poster on my wall, and have emulated it, as best as I can in my DAW. If you are interested in Ambient work and analog gear, that little bit of art and the blurbs involving his process are super inspirational and informative. All of those early albums were done with "just"a primitive monosynth an EQ, an ancient "tape echo" and a DIY tape based looper he built out of scrap bits he had. Later, he added a reverb. That is it.Everything else, is just Eno and his genius working with that simple set up He is right, in how the simplicity and limitations of your set up, force you to think creatively , and more so to think with your ears instead of your studio engineering technical chops.
Wow, that sounds great. Could you please tell me how exactly did you make the emulation in your DAW? I'm interested in how you interpreted the Discrete Music schematic (because I'm still trying to wrap my head around it...).
@@FotisandStuff I use Reaper as my DAW, so you will have to translate how I do this to whatever DAW you use. I only use free or stock plug ins, because I am poor AF Basically I am emulating a technique from oldschool 60s early electronic music, popularized by Brian Eno, and often called "Frippertronics" as it was popularized also by guitarist Robert Fripp I create an instrument track with an analog modeling VST of my choice I then put a stock EQ on the same channel, to be Eno's graphic EQ, and a Tape Echo simulator, like Quilcom's 4DS or Bionic Supadelay, or TAL Dub or ArcDev's DubBox. You want a characterful delay here ideally, which matches/works with your synth tones. The EQ acts like another set of "sculpting" filters on the synth created synth sound, to shape it to what you want, and the delay is there to create initial space and ambience, and to blur the sound texturally I then create an Aux Send track with another REAAAAAAALLLY LONG delay, to send the synth track to This should be at least 6 seconds long or so, to act as a virtual tape loop, i use 4DS again for this, with a large amount of feedback . This then becomes your tape loop . Every bit of sound you make with the synth goes through the Aux to the long delay/tapeloop track and gets recorded there, and if the delay model is good enough and you set it up with enough wow and flutter , it will warble and degrade and get darker and weirder over time, like a real tape loop. Sometimes ill put another EQ after the tape loop to act as tone controls . I have gotten interested in using and abusing tape sims like CHOW to reaaaaly accentuate this degrading, and or put it on my Master channel, to emulate that this whole process was done on tape, but my computer is 15 years old and has 8gigs of RAM, so it's an"expensive" vst to run CPU wise. I will often also create another send track, with an enormous all wet reverb, like Valhalla Supermassive, or Orilriver .Eno would use a Shimmer reverb here I will then put some reverby goodness, on everything, or just run my synth sounds through the all wet reverb with no dry signal to blur things into oblivion, before sending them onto the virtual tape loop. Sometimes, in Eno fashion, I will enable feedback between the tapeloop delay channel and the reverb as well,and add a tiny bit but that gets a little hairy to control I will lastly either create another few tracks to play over the textures i create with this technique, to work out a song structure or I will, like Eno, record the results, and then use those results as raw materials for even more further processing via similar techniques until i get what i want, and then work with layers of that super processed audio to make a track I hope this helps! If you have any more questions , feel free to ask.
@@FotisandStuff Also, Like I said, Eno is just doing "Frippertronics" ie Live Looping with the gear he had at the time. If you look up tutorials on using your DAW as a live looper, the techniques will be similar. The main difference is that much of Eno's tonal quality comes from the way that tapeloop feedback audio, especially with his DIY system gets darker and "blurrier" and hisses and saturates and warbles and otherwise degrades over time The use of dedicated tape emulations like CHOW to add those tape colorations can go a long way towards emulating this, even with more vanilla plug ins
As someone who made a living editing audio tape with a razor blade back in the day; (I was cutting freaking Paul Harvey!) I have to say this business of introducing wow and flutter and speed deviance in the ranges that defined tape deck malfunction is a thoroughly modern appropriation of malfunction artifacts as a creative effect. It can be a very cool creative tool yes. Outside specific special effects projects, NOBODY who used tape professionally ever used maladjusted or malfunctioning gear - at least not any longer than a few seconds. We had a full time engineer on duty at all times with a full stock of replacement parts who would have the thing fixed back to factory spec in the time it took for a coffee break of a duration that would get you the hairy eyeball from behind The Desk in The Office. The analog/tape thing is cool. But it’s a modern reimagining. There was no time when tape sounded wobbly and woobly, at least not until less it was your Realistic Concertmate(tm) 8-track recorder deck that you had run into the ground with neglect ona a shelf in your garage where you worked on cars with exhaust issues on weekends lol. The analog/tape/woww-y stuff is cool, but it comes from today not yesterday.
That’s what I was going to say. Even if the recording itself was pristine, I know for a fact all my cassettes and VHS growing up were cheap bootlegs or used from the thrift stores and they were absolutely warbly and lofi, even if not to the exaggerated effect level we see in plugins today.
@@nanocyde_artistI'm an "old man". While I own a reel to reel tape recorder/player, it doesn't work, and I bought it with the intention of gutting it so I can put a bluetooth receiver in it, along with mp3 player. We're not all stuck in the past, despite our age and the vocal oldies who moan that things were better back then.
Sometimes I wish I could stick to one genre. With my flute playing I just played Free Improv and Jazz for years. But I grew up on Charles Ives, /Karlheinz Stockhausen, Fripp and Eno, Tangerine Dream and Morton Subotnik all at once. I love thick muddy textures with a lot going on, pulling you in multiple ways at once. I do rather enjoy much of your music. It's right to bring all your tools to the table. I enjoy your stories. Music is stories, ultimately. Even instrumental music. Love it all.
I don't think anyone sticks to one genre really, even the staunchest defenders of their genre. It's all about conversation and inspiration, and genres are perpetually evolving anyway. They can be handy labels, but really, love what you love when it comes to music.
I can count the truly inspired and inspiring ambient creators on two hands for the very reasons you cover: so few seem to have grasped the additional layers of consideration and intentional, not generative, left turns that raise their sonic escapades above the totally forgettable. For those few gems who do, I’m eternally thankful
@@novakattilaooof, umm...the evergreens recently seem to be Aphex's chill stuff, Vince Clarke's recent solo album, Burzum's ambient gubbins scattered across his albums and Alex Crispin's double Resubmergency (standing in for some Vangelis soundtracks I guess).
after 5 years of producing I finally find out that ambient is one of the best genre to work with. thx for the tips, I find it so helpfull as a beginner of ambient
It's so interesting how there's so much choice in gear, both software and hardware, but our inspiration so often comes from artists from the past who made incredible music with what we would see as incredible limitations.
I went down the gear whabitt hole 25 years ago. Now I'm down the same hole, but with plugins, since they are much cheaper. However, creating the actual music, regardless of style always remains elusive for many years. And when it finally clicks, all the gear and software qualms are forgotten and they become awash amongst waves of pure joy and bliss.
i am stunned, it exactly the same route i followed to ambient music, same history. From playing organ in my younger years, always fascinated by the ambient passages of Yes/Genesis, stumbled into ambient music with Brian Eno/Hammock , went to concerts of Olafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm, recently got into hardware with the Cosmos/Big sky and ableton next to using Cubase. I joined your channel straight away susprised by the resembling story. Thank you for sharing yours.
Couldn't agree more with the point about limitations being a good thing. DAWs and midi have created endless sonic possibilities, but it is very easy for me to end up with a messy, unfocused track because I naturally want everything that sounds good to have a place, but then in the end it doesn't sound good _all together_. I've really try to limit myself, not using VSTs or software instruments unless I think it is absolutely necessary and have an idea in my head for why one would work, rather than just messing around. My favorite tracks I've ever made have essentially been my single analog synth, my Yamaha piano, and sounds I have recorded out in the world. I've found that limitations like this also help me find a cohesive voice across all my music, so that I could really listen to it altogether, rather than completely disparate tracks that sound like they are by different people
you talk about putting your classical background together with ambient music, Ambient 2: the plateaux of mirror comes to mind which is a collaboration of Brian Eno and Harold Budd. A lot of Budds beautiful piano over Enos soundscape pads
The whole hands-on idea is central to my venture, and your exposé was a breath of fresh air in the way it put into words an ongoing quest which made me feel my music was, at times, "unfashionable". And although Eno and Fripp have been mentors in the early years, Frahm was a serendipitous discorery five years ago which launched me anew. Keep bringing in those interesting articles, many thanks!
I always find that the best ambient music uses less layers more effectively. If you think about the actual word ‘ambient,’ ambience is something that exists within a space. And if you aren’t leaving space for ‘ambience,’ it’s not going to be as effective, as a piece of ambient music. With less layers, you really have to focus on each texture. And tbh the actual engineering is very important, as the quality and texture of the sound itself comes to the fore as an aspect of the music itself. Because ambient is ‘sonic’ music. Once you stop leaning so hard on traditional melodic and harmonic structure, the sonics become more important. Not every texture has to be subtle or slight, especially if space is left in the composition. But i hear a lot of overcrowded ‘ambient’ music.
Even though Brian Eno is ambient's father, it's grandfather is certainly Erik Satie, who called it "furniture music"...because it could sit in the room like a piece of beautiful furniture, in the background and attended to when necessary, yet always adding to the atmosphere...interesting, but ignorable! In his time, this was a brand new idea, and there's a funny story about the time he composed the intermission music for another's performance. The audience rose to mingle and stretch their legs at the break, but when they heard Satie's music start they misunderstood and began sheepishly returning to their seats, so he ran around yelling desperately at people to ignore the music and continue their mingling.
I feel like ambient creation is a liberating process as the rules of composition do not always apply. As I have explored through various means, media, techniques and approaches it can very easily turn to chaos, but is the process of learning. Ambient can be thematic, dark, noir, light, melodic, industrial, atmospheric… ultimately it is what you explore. I have learned through my creations to accept the outcome for each piece as they are because they take up their space in time and learn from them. Great video. Up until you mentioned them I have never really considered YES for their ambient aspect. I will be going back into my YES collection. 😊
Thank you for all of your inspirational work. I like to make experimental music that sometimes dips into the ambient realm. I’ve done a few experiments where I had very very little going on. But the few parts that were there were very gripping. I love the idea of haunting beauty. I feel like being able to make unsettling sounds can be another way to boost creativity. A lot of the music I make sounds like you are floating in a different dimension.
For myself: I only have a few pieces of selected but awesome hardware. One of the reasons is that it gives me a handful of ways to approach a new track. Sometimes I prefer having my pc off for the first quarter mile, or just wanna enjoy the workflow even if it takes slightly longer. None the less I need to agree to the message of your video. Cheers!
After decades of work, I must agree. This is honestly the best way. Fewer tools that you know better. The selection part of that becomes crucial. It may take a few years to figure out exactly which tools work for your own creative process. There are no ‘correct’ answers like "everyone should use an Iridium" or whatever (though lots of people will claim their favorites are the ‘best’). It’s all down to cases, and everyone needs to do the work. Which pisses off lots of people. Unfortunately there are no shortcuts.
Yes! Legendary indeed. Brilliant analysis. Ambient producers should challenge themselves and disable their reverb plugins for a week see what happens. Gonna try it myself.
It's always so cool to find a video reflecting my exact experiences and internal dialog about a topic that isn't usually covered through this lens. I was literally saying YES when you started talking about overcrowding layers vs a singular '3D' sound, bringing both the limits and easily achievable complexity of hardware over into the DAW, and finding a balance between ambience and traditional 'musical' elements. Great vid :)
I'm also a big Yes fan and interestingly their music took me the exact opposite direction: making it the most complicated possible. Probably only a decade later did I learn to appreciate the minimalism that ambient music provides. It was so refreshing to experience music a completely different way.
How YES get that landscape or texture sound on the beginning of "Close to the Edge" led me to think, how on earth they get that possible. Thanks for the video, man.
Now that I've gotten into production, after DJing after so many years... I will say DJing/mixing ambient is also incredibly hard. It's not as easy as moving channel faders and messing with the 4-band EQ. Forget about mixing in key, it's just all over the place. Hence, you may start searching for a starting looping on the incoming track, adding effects to the incoming track and different effects to the outgoing. Making sure everything sounds in place. Sometimes adding compression. Luckily I have a 6-channel mixer that I can add a bridging track (3rd track) that adds drone. Usually, when I mix ambient I use 4 external effect processors (consisting of any of the following: Eventide H90, Eventide H9Max, Boss GT-1000 Core, Strymon Volante Magnetic Echo, Strymon Night Sky, Strymon Big Sky, and a Microcosm). Lastly, I can easily incorporate synthesizers in my DJ setting. The Tasty Ships GR-1 and Waldorf Iridium are perfect for this. My views on ambient have changed as well. It' far more difficult than most people realize.
In my own ambient journey, an important lesson I am learning and will, I'm sure, continue to learn, is how delicate the balance is between too much and too little - and it varies very much depending on each piece. This is true for things beyond just # of voices, or amount of bass, etc - it can be too much or too little control over probabilistic patches, too much or too little variety/randomness, etc. It all can be totally different on each piece. It's also interesting, connecting with your video, that I have found that I enjoy ambient music much more when it utilizes more simple voices, or traditional instruments/samples (ie: piano, cello, etc.) alongside more simple synth voices. Then the interest comes in their interaction rather than in patches that have all the fanciest of gadgets thrown at them to see what sticks. For me, your example of the piano and clock divided synth was so beautiful because it was a conversation between that piano and a really simple sine-like sound. The layering of simple sounds leads to really unique, compelling, and - if done tastefully - ambient pieces. It's one of those things where the concept is simple, and even the end product seems simple, but it has so many layers working intricately together.
Eno was also drawing on pen and paper thinking of non traditional systems for assembly, form, and structure (visual and symbolic). It's fun. That piece on the black hardware sounds really beautiful.
My personal approach to ambient has always been to make “electronic” music without electronic instruments… that has always been my favorite limitation. I started out doing it with a 4-track recorder. Doing it on tape certainly gave me a direction I wouldn’t have had if DAWs had been available in the 90s. But 4 tracks is a pretty harsh limitation for ambient music. One of TASCAM’s 8-track units would have very much appreciated back then. Now that DAWs (and the required hardware) are ubiquitous, my approach is still largely informed by my younger days playing with tape. I still do reverse reverb the same way. I still bounce tracks, when it makes sense. In regards to the title of your video, though… how to make ambient music that doesn’t bore people… I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that personally, not that I have an answer. But it is a problem. It’s easy for ambient music to become a navel gaze which is only interesting to the person making the music. I often tell people that there are more people who make ambient music than there are who listen to it.
well , youd be amazed how much ambient music is under those headphones people shield themselves using public transport… pandemic forced us guitarist under headphones, suddendly ambient guitarist is a job title. the issue is that both the ambient musician as well as the listener are invisible. sharing a time seperated navel gazing space. no ford mustangs with windows down blaring an ambient playlist across the streets… lets go to a club to xtremeley zone out to ambient music… berlin galleries, there youll find some. did a gig myselfs, headphones only. did a little street gig by the river in the evening, offering headphones to interested persons. this was nice. still looking for a cheap multichannel bluetoot transmitter… then ambient musicians will storm the sub headphone busking …
@@dasczwo the visitors got optional headphones? Wow! That's a crazy and great idea. I'll say, though... one year while I was in university, I was delivering pizza over the summer break, at night until after the bars closed. And there was a late night radio show in Canada called Brave New Waves... midnight to 4am, or something crazy like that.... it played a big part in my introduction to ambient music... now my radio wasn't blaring, but I was driving a 78 Mustang held together with shoe laces while listening to ambient music with my windows wide open... that was a good summer.
I used to really like "Yes" in High School. It was Positive Energy Rock. I liked their vocal harmonizing. Huge fan of Roundabout. And I was an R&B and Jazz guy at my core in Chicago. But would listen to some good Classic Rock and a few other Rock genres from time to time.
I absolutely love your channel and your music. I discovered ambient quite 'late' as well. My musical journey began in the 90s with basic keyboard skills, and all I wanted to do was to create techno/electro tracks. Over the years, my music evolved multiple times, and people often told me it sounded like a soundtrack for a movie. I didn't quite understand it and dismissed it as something I didn't want to pursue, but it seemed to come naturally. Now, my perspective on ambient music has completely changed. You can merge it with all kinds of other styles, and the only 'rule' I've set for myself is that the beat should aid in delivering the general mood rather than being the main focus, as it often is in a lot of dance music (which I also enjoy). Without beats, you have much more space for other elements, and you can turn everything on its head. everything is possible ;-)
Great video. One practical takeaway for me was when you mentioned the band pass idea, for placing a sound in a mix. It’s not like i have never heard of doing that, but something clicked for my brain just then - I think I often fall in love with a particular sound or texture across the whole spectrum, and you have to let go of a piece of what you love about it in order to have it serve the greater whole. I like how you do that and I need to get better at this too! I know that’s a ridiculous journey I just went on there, but I guess my point is that your videos are gold mines and that was the nugget I found.
I just got here and subscribed. Jon Hopkins’ ambient tunes are my fav and I hope you already know him. Music for Psychedelic Therapy specifically. Thanks for making videos I’m thankful to be here. @6:40 - LOVE that progression and tone, I’m going to look up some originals you’ve put out. And if you haven’t put them out, as a listener I’d loved to hear them.
Inspirational. Thank you. I was contracted to produce a lot of ambient but got burnt out. Creating for someone else is definitely an oxymoron. I’m now driving my production not from briefs but from my own inspirations from sounds in the natural world. Aristotle: “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. “
You're the only person that reliably inspires me to dig out my axiom 49 and start messing around with arturia again. Nobody else can do this. They've tried, lol. Just brilliant work, Jameson. Thank you for this.
While Eno always seems to get all the credit for being the first “modern” ambient composer, i think that credit more rightfully belongs to Wendy Carlos with her 1972 double album - Sonic Seasonings…even as it is credited as the first “new age” release, 6 years before Eno’s “ambient” label, it still holds up and has many ambient vibes…give it a listen, field recordings and Moog Modular!
Ambient Music Pro Tip: Download the FREE Valhalla Reverb plugin into your DAW. Plug in a Strat to a heavy reverb track and pick a few single notes. See ya tomorrow, as you’ll drift off into the ether.
To be honest when i make that sort of music it is to create a relaxing and posetive thing, i dont see it as my main musical intrest though, i usually keep alot of my other songs to myself but these ambient things can help a bit with a calm vibe, so its sort of my way of trying to give something optemistic back without demanding something in return and doing what i can ( even if there were no intrest then at least i tryed)
I'm choosing to take this video personally 😜 But yes i struggle the most with layering sounds, I'm very bad at it. The first time i heard Hammock i was blown away by how everything sounded so good together.
If you are not familiar with "Serial Experiments Lain, Bootleg album" or soundtrack of EVE online, you're missing out on wonderful examples of amazing ambient music that's not boring at all or the basic drone random modular synth stuff. Songs have structure, themes even... and they're still ambient. Especially Serial Experiments Lain has wonderful soundtrack for very atmospheric ambient music.
Your videos inspired me to start making ambient music too! I agree that you don't necessarily need hardware. I use Ableton and Pigments, combining Pigments with Ableton synths like Analog, Drift, Operator, and Wavetable. All controlled by a 61-key controller. With the effects in Ableton Suite and some great free effects, my setup is more than enough for my creative projects. Having a great time with it! Thank you for sharing.
Have you considered the option that boredom is not induced by external factors, like: ambient music being produced this or that way, but instead boredom is a state of mind representing your inner condition? That could explain why things that are exiting to some are boring to others, and also why one might feel different about a tune at times. Don´t know if this is true, but to me it´s worth thinking about it.
As a genre, it is sort of one foot in the art world and another foot in new age philosophy and tantric meditation, making it a genre which is somewhat not music in some sense, but rather, a mood enhancer or meditational aid. I think it is an interesting device for creating a specific visual landscape that describes texture and emotion as well as place and a sense of drama as well as a disconnected sense of the surreal and threatening. Basically a film score. Like Eno's Prophecy Theme from Dune. It really feels like being in a sandstorm from all the white noise. The themes of magisterial elemental forces. Edit: On second listen, Prophecy theme is pretty simple - just one note at a time. It's no Music For Airports in terms of sophistication and maturity.
Perhaps what Eno means by music that can partly be ignored stems from a realization that, just as in visual information gathering, it is necessary for the brain to create a hierarchy of the incoming information, influenced by our experience and preferences in order to rationalize the experience. So called "Relaxation" to music is not possible when the ear is drawn to outstanding articles of interest and this is mis interpreted by composers of ambient music as just the kind of drowned swampy soup of sound you vividly describe. The Steve Howe quote from the gates of delirium is the recurring "hook" of that track, a rarity in Yes music but the album as a whole is, from the listener point of view, on a scale that it is necessary to "ignore" elements in the texture thus generating the rich rewards of discovery through repeated listening. From a composer perspective, and group composition has a different dynamic, those boys, as you say, each a great virtuoso, took great pride in their contribution, as would the fastidious and ever tinkering Anton Brückner, wanting every tiny droplet to be appreciated. I think that the difference between active listening and passive hearing is not as bi-polar as one might think and that in focussing on one thread of a sound we necessarily de sensitise towards others. Some music is designed for a linear experience such as simple pop songs, a Howlin' Wolf blues, Prog rock or Jazz where contributors fit together their own improvised lines does not. Those with a training in counterpoint will see that an exquisitely balanced JS Bach fugue will present all it's parts with one or possibly several lines of dominance, the light and shade or perhaps sunlight and shadow of the Brandenburg Concerti cannot IMHO be experienced in their full beauty by the first time listener. For me, some music is so full of complexity that there is just no way to focus, nowhere to look that isn't stuff with attention grabbing elements. Boulez and Ferneyhough for example. Generally, if I want music, I want to listen not just hear it. A Phillip Glass piano work with its minimal modulations could just burble away in the background but once I had learned to appreciate those drifting changes I have to listen out for them.
Funny how you brought up limitations by gear and for an example there was Digitakt. For me naturally Digitakt always comes to my mind when this subject is brought up as my workflow almost exclusively revolves around Digitakt. For me that is a perfect mix of limitations and possibilities for doing minimal techno. More importantly I get music done when it is a way for me to relax by sitting on a couch with my Digitakt. Byproduct of me clearing my head after busy daily routines there is decent sounding tracks which I can perform live in local small venues.
I first heard "Says" by Nils Frahm off of a recommendation from Steven Wilson. I was hooked instantly. And shortly after, I discovered Olafur Arnalds. "Only The Winds" is a masterpiece.
What do you think of the sound of Max Cooper or Lapalux who do more "complicated" idm type ambient music? Just curious i've been gravitating towards more ambient music that I felt like it didnt 'fit in' so I never finished learning its a whole breed of new music I didnt even know about.
Hey, nice to hear you’re (or were?) a prog fan, especially of Yes. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised, given your music history. 😜 Anyway, great vid, and I appreciate hearing your perspective about ambient music and how to best approach writing it.
Great you stopped making reviews and focus on the creative process. We can learn a lot when we are listening. Give the wonderful music of DAVID SYLVIAN a chance - in particular the Gone To Earth album. Plus the records he made with Robert Fripp (esp. Flux) and Sakamoto. Beautiful ambient inspired music with an own approach.
Please people, if you're not familiar with Gas aka Wolfgang Voigt, please give his records a listen. One of the best ambient artists that ever walked the earth.
As Eno was brought up: any thoughts about making a deck of _Oblique Strategies_ -like cards? Also 32 year old here haha. No it’s not a skill issue, I’d call problems of this kind an experience/landscape issue. And then it’s obvious that it’s partially outside our control: we can just try to see more things in the world but we can’t force something revelatory to happen to us pronto. So people should be graceful to others and themselves and not just slap labels. There are no guarantees in this world, sometimes we need just to ride and be patient and observant. So thank you for sharing this-broad strokes and little useful details, and for the music! ✨ I’m aiming to do ambient-ish stuff, some of your advice is already known to me but it’s always good to get it reiterated in different contexts to settle better inside the brain. (My personal issue currently and for a couple of years is not doing anything except for small sound design trips in a couple of synths and things like that that don’t immediately constitute to composition of real tracks or even small sketches.)
Yes, this is one of the pitfalls in ambient music. And most people are very quick at hand with 'man, that's boring af'. But that's ok, because you write music for people, who kind of understand it, anyways. From the compositional side, there have always been musicians with super interesting chord progressions, sound layers and top arrangements. And a lot with quite the opposite. And those also managed to find their audience. So, in the end, it comes back to Eno's thesis about ambient music and to your own standards, you want your music to have for yourself. Combine things that already have been there maybe in a new way (because finding something unique and completely new is almost impossible) and you're good to go. And don't forget to have fun.
Oh here's that composition eBook. It's free. bit.ly/FREEcompositionguide
Eno’s As ignorable as interesting… isn’t that harking back to Satie’s furniture music?
Ambient music reflects nature. Some people ignore it, others see it for its real beauty.
Most ambient music is uninspired and boring. The problem is that people, musicians think it’s easy to make. A lot of times it reminds me of fusion jazz, where you have rare gems and lot of junk, guys noodling around.
is for thinkers
No, it doesn't. There's industrial ambient too.
@unduloid its a metaphor smartass
And it’s best appreciated when high on shrooms
The more I learn about ambient music, the more I realize how much there is to it that I don't know.
Brian Eno and Harold Budd. Their album The Pearl is a masterpiece.
One of my all-time favorite albums...sometimes I just randomly think about it. Same with Evening Star, that he did with Robert Fripp.
Yes!!! Brian Eno is the king of ambient!!!
@@frankyoualot brah did you watch the video lol
@@frankyoualot he did. He had some high praises for Brian Eno.
@@brendzone lol, must have missed it as i was so distracted by narrator's experience
Yes! This was absolutely spot on! Ambient music is not wallpaper... yes, it can create a vibe, but for those who want to get pulled into a whole universe of structured sound, it can deliver that too. The most satisfying experience is to compose for them... because we are one of them too.
Bingo
Distortion is good for ambient. Once you layer up, EQ, compress frequency bands in places then apply your panning and verb you get this greater sense of space.
I don't disagree, but I want to push back on something that I felt was implied by your video, which is the idea that music (and here specifically ambient music) has to be beautiful or somewhat pull in the listener. It's certainly true that this is how most people view music. But it is not the sole possibility of music. My view on this is that music has to be _interesting_, it has to say something. Sometimes it is challenging, sometimes it is unpleasant, sometimes it can be boring (in an interesting way). When the listener is challenged, they feel something, whether it's an emotion, a strain, a sensation, and that is certainly a valuable thing. I personally find a lot of otherwise well produced "melodic ambient" music to be uninteresting, just because it does not challenge the listening experience in any way. Sometimes, I want to be the one who pulls the music, instead of the music pulling me. Obviously there, it is a matter of taste, as usual.
Personally, one of my greatest inspirations for ambient music is Kenji Yamamoto's Metroid Soundtracks. They combine a fantastic balance of purpose and environmental ambience.
What I often dislike about ambient music is what I like about your music. Many ambient artists create repetitive music with little melodic or harmonic interest. So whatever sonic quality their music has, it's lost on a boring drone that begins nowhere and lead to nowhere. Your music, on the other hand, is melodically and harmonically interesting. And sonically your music checks all the boxes. So it takes me on a journey
Thanks so much!
Ambient is meant to get lost and travel within!
@@MyBichSustained In terms of music, I'm not sure what that means.
@@commodoor6549 There is no right or wrong, no ending, improvise!One note drones with a moog can spiral in beauty if you know your machine,a chord on a moog and a recorder has endless possibilities.
@@MyBichSustained I stated my preference, and you suggested my opinion was wrong. Now you're saying there is no right or wrong. So which is my opinion, right or wrong?
Im a big fan of how Trent Reznor does ambient, soundtracks and how he is able to have a lot of layers and effects but the songs do not get washed out.
Same here
NIN + Trent = ❤
Trent Reznor is a textural sound design and layering master!. I have been watching "how to " reconstructions of his process, and I especially like how he recontextualizes found sound/movie samples, and or resamples and manipulates his own material, and uses all of these subtle layers like a cook uses seasonings, where you dont hear the thing, as much as you hear what it did, and the piece would not be the same at all without it.
@@craigsurette3438 Can you point me to some of those "how to" reconstructions? I was a NIN fan in the early days, but don't know much about the stuff you mentioned, and it sounds really cool.
@@j3ffn4v4rr0 There was an article with an interview with Tremt Reznor in an early 90s Keyboard magazine, where he talked about his process. A lot of it involved running things through lots of guitar pedals, especially early Zoom guitar multieffects, and resampling them, especially through an early audio editing program called Turbosynth. Sample layers would get processed and reprocessed again and again
He also described watching A LOT of old movies on VCR, and staying up late at night, just hunting for random found sounds in those movies, and stealing them to mangle and recontextualize them using those same methods
I just came across a video that went through where a bunch of the found sound samples in The Downward Spiral came from. Since UA-cam is often dumb about allowing shared links, i will put it in the next message below , and hopefully it will stay
I love that you bring up Eno!
I have the schematic of Eno's studio he put inside the album cover of Discrete Music blown up as a poster on my wall, and have emulated it, as best as I can in my DAW. If you are interested in Ambient work and analog gear, that little bit of art and the blurbs involving his process are super inspirational and informative. All of those early albums were done with "just"a primitive monosynth an EQ, an ancient "tape echo" and a DIY tape based looper he built out of scrap bits he had. Later, he added a reverb. That is it.Everything else, is just Eno and his genius working with that simple set up
He is right, in how the simplicity and limitations of your set up, force you to think creatively , and more so to think with your ears instead of your studio engineering technical chops.
Wow, that sounds great. Could you please tell me how exactly did you make the emulation in your DAW? I'm interested in how you interpreted the Discrete Music schematic (because I'm still trying to wrap my head around it...).
@@FotisandStuff I use Reaper as my DAW, so you will have to translate how I do this to whatever DAW you use.
I only use free or stock plug ins, because I am poor AF
Basically I am emulating a technique from oldschool 60s early electronic music, popularized by Brian Eno, and often called "Frippertronics" as it was popularized also by guitarist Robert Fripp
I create an instrument track with an analog modeling VST of my choice I then put a stock EQ on the same channel, to be Eno's graphic EQ, and a Tape Echo simulator, like Quilcom's 4DS or Bionic Supadelay, or TAL Dub or ArcDev's DubBox. You want a characterful delay here ideally, which matches/works with your synth tones. The EQ acts like another set of "sculpting" filters on the synth created synth sound, to shape it to what you want, and the delay is there to create initial space and ambience, and to blur the sound texturally
I then create an Aux Send track with another REAAAAAAALLLY LONG delay, to send the synth track to This should be at least 6 seconds long or so, to act as a virtual tape loop, i use 4DS again for this, with a large amount of feedback . This then becomes your tape loop . Every bit of sound you make with the synth goes through the Aux to the long delay/tapeloop track and gets recorded there, and if the delay model is good enough and you set it up with enough wow and flutter , it will warble and degrade and get darker and weirder over time, like a real tape loop. Sometimes ill put another EQ after the tape loop to act as tone controls . I have gotten interested in using and abusing tape sims like CHOW to reaaaaly accentuate this degrading, and or put it on my Master channel, to emulate that this whole process was done on tape, but my computer is 15 years old and has 8gigs of RAM, so it's an"expensive" vst to run CPU wise.
I will often also create another send track, with an enormous all wet reverb, like Valhalla Supermassive, or Orilriver .Eno would use a Shimmer reverb here I will then put some reverby goodness, on everything, or just run my synth sounds through the all wet reverb with no dry signal to blur things into oblivion, before sending them onto the virtual tape loop.
Sometimes, in Eno fashion, I will enable feedback between the tapeloop delay channel and the reverb as well,and add a tiny bit but that gets a little hairy to control
I will lastly either create another few tracks to play over the textures i create with this technique, to work out a song structure or I will, like Eno, record the results, and then use those results as raw materials for even more further processing via similar techniques until i get what i want, and then work with layers of that super processed audio to make a track
I hope this helps! If you have any more questions , feel free to ask.
@@FotisandStuff Also, Like I said, Eno is just doing "Frippertronics" ie Live Looping with the gear he had at the time. If you look up tutorials on using your DAW as a live looper, the techniques will be similar. The main difference is that much of Eno's tonal quality comes from the way that tapeloop feedback audio, especially with his DIY system gets darker and "blurrier" and hisses and saturates and warbles and otherwise degrades over time The use of dedicated tape emulations like CHOW to add those tape colorations can go a long way towards emulating this, even with more vanilla plug ins
@@craigsurette3438 thank you SO MUCH for this detailed description. And yes, fellow Reaper user here :D
As someone who made a living editing audio tape with a razor blade back in the day; (I was cutting freaking Paul Harvey!) I have to say this business of introducing wow and flutter and speed deviance in the ranges that defined tape deck malfunction is a thoroughly modern appropriation of malfunction artifacts as a creative effect. It can be a very cool creative tool yes. Outside specific special effects projects, NOBODY who used tape professionally ever used maladjusted or malfunctioning gear - at least not any longer than a few seconds. We had a full time engineer on duty at all times with a full stock of replacement parts who would have the thing fixed back to factory spec in the time it took for a coffee break of a duration that would get you the hairy eyeball from behind The Desk in The Office.
The analog/tape thing is cool. But it’s a modern reimagining. There was no time when tape sounded wobbly and woobly, at least not until less it was your Realistic Concertmate(tm) 8-track recorder deck that you had run into the ground with neglect ona a shelf in your garage where you worked on cars with exhaust issues on weekends lol. The analog/tape/woww-y stuff is cool, but it comes from today not yesterday.
Yes, but I think it’s less emulating anything that was done in the studio and more the sound we got from listening to old casette tapes and vhs movies
The future is now, old man. Tape belongs to us.
That’s what I was going to say. Even if the recording itself was pristine, I know for a fact all my cassettes and VHS growing up were cheap bootlegs or used from the thrift stores and they were absolutely warbly and lofi, even if not to the exaggerated effect level we see in plugins today.
@@nanocyde_artistI'm an "old man".
While I own a reel to reel tape recorder/player, it doesn't work, and I bought it with the intention of gutting it so I can put a bluetooth receiver in it, along with mp3 player.
We're not all stuck in the past, despite our age and the vocal oldies who moan that things were better back then.
@@mattsadventureswithart5764 thank you very cursed
Sometimes I wish I could stick to one genre. With my flute playing I just played Free Improv and Jazz for years. But I grew up on Charles Ives, /Karlheinz Stockhausen, Fripp and Eno, Tangerine Dream and Morton Subotnik all at once. I love thick muddy textures with a lot going on, pulling you in multiple ways at once. I do rather enjoy much of your music. It's right to bring all your tools to the table. I enjoy your stories. Music is stories, ultimately. Even instrumental music. Love it all.
I don't think anyone sticks to one genre really, even the staunchest defenders of their genre. It's all about conversation and inspiration, and genres are perpetually evolving anyway. They can be handy labels, but really, love what you love when it comes to music.
recently been growing into throwing every trick at/into my tracks; it's not quantity vs quality -- you bring the quantity and let the quality happen
I can count the truly inspired and inspiring ambient creators on two hands for the very reasons you cover: so few seem to have grasped the additional layers of consideration and intentional, not generative, left turns that raise their sonic escapades above the totally forgettable. For those few gems who do, I’m eternally thankful
Who do you recommend?
@@novakattilaooof, umm...the evergreens recently seem to be Aphex's chill stuff, Vince Clarke's recent solo album, Burzum's ambient gubbins scattered across his albums and Alex Crispin's double Resubmergency (standing in for some Vangelis soundtracks I guess).
@@novakattila Although probably not typically thought of as an "ambient" composer, I'd suggest Arvo Part's "Fratres".
after 5 years of producing I finally find out that ambient is one of the best genre to work with.
thx for the tips, I find it so helpfull as a beginner of ambient
It's so interesting how there's so much choice in gear, both software and hardware, but our inspiration so often comes from artists from the past who made incredible music with what we would see as incredible limitations.
One of the most deceptively simple, and beautiful tracks I've heard recently was Rainy Nights by Azaleh.
I went down the gear whabitt hole 25 years ago. Now I'm down the same hole, but with plugins, since they are much cheaper. However, creating the actual music, regardless of style always remains elusive for many years. And when it finally clicks, all the gear and software qualms are forgotten and they become awash amongst waves of pure joy and bliss.
i am stunned, it exactly the same route i followed to ambient music, same history. From playing organ in my younger years, always fascinated by the ambient passages of Yes/Genesis, stumbled into ambient music with Brian Eno/Hammock , went to concerts of Olafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm, recently got into hardware with the Cosmos/Big sky and ableton next to using Cubase. I joined your channel straight away susprised by the resembling story. Thank you for sharing yours.
Couldn't agree more with the point about limitations being a good thing.
DAWs and midi have created endless sonic possibilities, but it is very easy for me to end up with a messy, unfocused track because I naturally want everything that sounds good to have a place, but then in the end it doesn't sound good _all together_. I've really try to limit myself, not using VSTs or software instruments unless I think it is absolutely necessary and have an idea in my head for why one would work, rather than just messing around. My favorite tracks I've ever made have essentially been my single analog synth, my Yamaha piano, and sounds I have recorded out in the world. I've found that limitations like this also help me find a cohesive voice across all my music, so that I could really listen to it altogether, rather than completely disparate tracks that sound like they are by different people
Glad to see you are still making videos. Love your vids
you talk about putting your classical background together with ambient music, Ambient 2: the plateaux of mirror comes to mind which is a collaboration of Brian Eno and Harold Budd. A lot of Budds beautiful piano over Enos soundscape pads
The whole hands-on idea is central to my venture, and your exposé was a breath of fresh air in the way it put into words an ongoing quest which made me feel my music was, at times, "unfashionable". And although Eno and Fripp have been mentors in the early years, Frahm was a serendipitous discorery five years ago which launched me anew. Keep bringing in those interesting articles, many thanks!
That analog sound that you did first its the one 🔈🔉🔊🙌💯🔗📍💡
I always find that the best ambient music uses less layers more effectively. If you think about the actual word ‘ambient,’ ambience is something that exists within a space. And if you aren’t leaving space for ‘ambience,’ it’s not going to be as effective, as a piece of ambient music. With less layers, you really have to focus on each texture. And tbh the actual engineering is very important, as the quality and texture of the sound itself comes to the fore as an aspect of the music itself. Because ambient is ‘sonic’ music. Once you stop leaning so hard on traditional melodic and harmonic structure, the sonics become more important.
Not every texture has to be subtle or slight, especially if space is left in the composition. But i hear a lot of overcrowded ‘ambient’ music.
Solar Fields is by far my favorite artist in this genre
Even though Brian Eno is ambient's father, it's grandfather is certainly Erik Satie, who called it "furniture music"...because it could sit in the room like a piece of beautiful furniture, in the background and attended to when necessary, yet always adding to the atmosphere...interesting, but ignorable! In his time, this was a brand new idea, and there's a funny story about the time he composed the intermission music for another's performance. The audience rose to mingle and stretch their legs at the break, but when they heard Satie's music start they misunderstood and began sheepishly returning to their seats, so he ran around yelling desperately at people to ignore the music and continue their mingling.
Fascinating topic. I also picked up a couple of handy tips from your general discussion so thank you for those.
I feel like ambient creation is a liberating process as the rules of composition do not always apply. As I have explored through various means, media, techniques and approaches it can very easily turn to chaos, but is the process of learning. Ambient can be thematic, dark, noir, light, melodic, industrial, atmospheric… ultimately it is what you explore. I have learned through my creations to accept the outcome for each piece as they are because they take up their space in time and learn from them.
Great video. Up until you mentioned them I have never really considered YES for their ambient aspect. I will be going back into my YES collection. 😊
Thank you for all of your inspirational work. I like to make experimental music that sometimes dips into the ambient realm. I’ve done a few experiments where I had very very little going on. But the few parts that were there were very gripping. I love the idea of haunting beauty. I feel like being able to make unsettling sounds can be another way to boost creativity. A lot of the music I make sounds like you are floating in a different dimension.
For myself: I only have a few pieces of selected but awesome hardware. One of the reasons is that it gives me a handful of ways to approach a new track. Sometimes I prefer having my pc off for the first quarter mile, or just wanna enjoy the workflow even if it takes slightly longer. None the less I need to agree to the message of your video. Cheers!
After decades of work, I must agree. This is honestly the best way. Fewer tools that you know better. The selection part of that becomes crucial. It may take a few years to figure out exactly which tools work for your own creative process. There are no ‘correct’ answers like "everyone should use an Iridium" or whatever (though lots of people will claim their favorites are the ‘best’). It’s all down to cases, and everyone needs to do the work. Which pisses off lots of people. Unfortunately there are no shortcuts.
Yes! Legendary indeed. Brilliant analysis. Ambient producers should challenge themselves and disable their reverb plugins for a week see what happens. Gonna try it myself.
It's always so cool to find a video reflecting my exact experiences and internal dialog about a topic that isn't usually covered through this lens. I was literally saying YES when you started talking about overcrowding layers vs a singular '3D' sound, bringing both the limits and easily achievable complexity of hardware over into the DAW, and finding a balance between ambience and traditional 'musical' elements. Great vid :)
I'm also a big Yes fan and interestingly their music took me the exact opposite direction: making it the most complicated possible. Probably only a decade later did I learn to appreciate the minimalism that ambient music provides. It was so refreshing to experience music a completely different way.
Ambient frees the mind by unlocking focus
How YES get that landscape or texture sound on the beginning of "Close to the Edge" led me to think, how on earth they get that possible. Thanks for the video, man.
SEEDS has so many wonderfully inspiring abilities.
I love the fact that the intro is describing something I did yesterday lol. Almost exactly too
I've said it before....but you're a gem. I really appreciate how much of yourself you give here. Thank you JNJ.
Great thinking, great delivery, great value!🙏
Now that I've gotten into production, after DJing after so many years... I will say DJing/mixing ambient is also incredibly hard. It's not as easy as moving channel faders and messing with the 4-band EQ. Forget about mixing in key, it's just all over the place. Hence, you may start searching for a starting looping on the incoming track, adding effects to the incoming track and different effects to the outgoing. Making sure everything sounds in place. Sometimes adding compression. Luckily I have a 6-channel mixer that I can add a bridging track (3rd track) that adds drone. Usually, when I mix ambient I use 4 external effect processors (consisting of any of the following: Eventide H90, Eventide H9Max, Boss GT-1000 Core, Strymon Volante Magnetic Echo, Strymon Night Sky, Strymon Big Sky, and a Microcosm). Lastly, I can easily incorporate synthesizers in my DJ setting. The Tasty Ships GR-1 and Waldorf Iridium are perfect for this.
My views on ambient have changed as well. It' far more difficult than most people realize.
I am totally with you! Let's work on the approach. I come from a jazz background and classical upbringing.
In my own ambient journey, an important lesson I am learning and will, I'm sure, continue to learn, is how delicate the balance is between too much and too little - and it varies very much depending on each piece. This is true for things beyond just # of voices, or amount of bass, etc - it can be too much or too little control over probabilistic patches, too much or too little variety/randomness, etc. It all can be totally different on each piece.
It's also interesting, connecting with your video, that I have found that I enjoy ambient music much more when it utilizes more simple voices, or traditional instruments/samples (ie: piano, cello, etc.) alongside more simple synth voices. Then the interest comes in their interaction rather than in patches that have all the fanciest of gadgets thrown at them to see what sticks. For me, your example of the piano and clock divided synth was so beautiful because it was a conversation between that piano and a really simple sine-like sound. The layering of simple sounds leads to really unique, compelling, and - if done tastefully - ambient pieces. It's one of those things where the concept is simple, and even the end product seems simple, but it has so many layers working intricately together.
I love the way you put that, Brice. The conversational element in any musical style is really important I think.
Eno was also drawing on pen and paper thinking of non traditional systems for assembly, form, and structure (visual and symbolic). It's fun. That piece on the black hardware sounds really beautiful.
My personal approach to ambient has always been to make “electronic” music without electronic instruments… that has always been my favorite limitation.
I started out doing it with a 4-track recorder. Doing it on tape certainly gave me a direction I wouldn’t have had if DAWs had been available in the 90s. But 4 tracks is a pretty harsh limitation for ambient music. One of TASCAM’s 8-track units would have very much appreciated back then.
Now that DAWs (and the required hardware) are ubiquitous, my approach is still largely informed by my younger days playing with tape. I still do reverse reverb the same way. I still bounce tracks, when it makes sense.
In regards to the title of your video, though… how to make ambient music that doesn’t bore people… I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that personally, not that I have an answer. But it is a problem. It’s easy for ambient music to become a navel gaze which is only interesting to the person making the music. I often tell people that there are more people who make ambient music than there are who listen to it.
well , youd be amazed how much ambient music is under those headphones people shield themselves using public transport… pandemic forced us guitarist under headphones, suddendly ambient guitarist is a job title. the issue is that both the ambient musician as well as the listener are invisible. sharing a time seperated navel gazing space. no ford mustangs with windows down blaring an ambient playlist across the streets… lets go to a club to xtremeley zone out to ambient music… berlin galleries, there youll find some. did a gig myselfs, headphones only. did a little street gig by the river in the evening, offering headphones to interested persons. this was nice. still looking for a cheap multichannel bluetoot transmitter… then ambient musicians will storm the sub headphone busking …
@@dasczwo the visitors got optional headphones? Wow! That's a crazy and great idea.
I'll say, though... one year while I was in university, I was delivering pizza over the summer break, at night until after the bars closed. And there was a late night radio show in Canada called Brave New Waves... midnight to 4am, or something crazy like that.... it played a big part in my introduction to ambient music... now my radio wasn't blaring, but I was driving a 78 Mustang held together with shoe laces while listening to ambient music with my windows wide open... that was a good summer.
I used to really like "Yes" in High School. It was Positive Energy Rock. I liked their vocal harmonizing. Huge fan of Roundabout. And I was an R&B and Jazz guy at my core in Chicago. But would listen to some good Classic Rock and a few other Rock genres from time to time.
I absolutely love your channel and your music. I discovered ambient quite 'late' as well. My musical journey began in the 90s with basic keyboard skills, and all I wanted to do was to create techno/electro tracks. Over the years, my music evolved multiple times, and people often told me it sounded like a soundtrack for a movie. I didn't quite understand it and dismissed it as something I didn't want to pursue, but it seemed to come naturally. Now, my perspective on ambient music has completely changed. You can merge it with all kinds of other styles, and the only 'rule' I've set for myself is that the beat should aid in delivering the general mood rather than being the main focus, as it often is in a lot of dance music (which I also enjoy). Without beats, you have much more space for other elements, and you can turn everything on its head. everything is possible ;-)
Great video. One practical takeaway for me was when you mentioned the band pass idea, for placing a sound in a mix. It’s not like i have never heard of doing that, but something clicked for my brain just then - I think I often fall in love with a particular sound or texture across the whole spectrum, and you have to let go of a piece of what you love about it in order to have it serve the greater whole. I like how you do that and I need to get better at this too! I know that’s a ridiculous journey I just went on there, but I guess my point is that your videos are gold mines and that was the nugget I found.
I just got here and subscribed. Jon Hopkins’ ambient tunes are my fav and I hope you already know him. Music for Psychedelic Therapy specifically. Thanks for making videos I’m thankful to be here.
@6:40 - LOVE that progression and tone, I’m going to look up some originals you’ve put out. And if you haven’t put them out, as a listener I’d loved to hear them.
ambient speaks without words 🌒
Inspirational. Thank you. I was contracted to produce a lot of ambient but got burnt out. Creating for someone else is definitely an oxymoron.
I’m now driving my production not from briefs but from my own inspirations from sounds in the natural world. Aristotle:
“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. “
thanks for the advice. you always help me getting inspired to sit behind my gear and compose.
The names you called out are all my favorites and now you are too
Really appreciated this video as I'm venturing into creating more minimal ambient dub techno inspired tracks. Cheers!
I'm subscribed to about 100 music channels, and yours is hands-down one of the most interesting and insightful. Keep on doing what you're doing
Thank you!
Thank you. I really needed this insight and inspiration today!
Excellent analysis. I'll definitely be using your insights as I work on my next project. Subscribed.
You're the only person that reliably inspires me to dig out my axiom 49 and start messing around with arturia again. Nobody else can do this. They've tried, lol. Just brilliant work, Jameson. Thank you for this.
From 7:50 on is a master class in music!!! 😀
Dream Theater also has some great ethereal ambience tucked away in some of their songs
This sounds great! I'm just learning, so this was super helpful.
So many true words, thanks for that, I felt I really needed that.
While Eno always seems to get all the credit for being the first “modern” ambient composer, i think that credit more rightfully belongs to Wendy Carlos with her 1972 double album - Sonic Seasonings…even as it is credited as the first “new age” release, 6 years before Eno’s “ambient” label, it still holds up and has many ambient vibes…give it a listen, field recordings and Moog Modular!
thanks dr freeman
Amazing video, thank you for your thoughts.
Ambient Music Pro Tip: Download the FREE Valhalla Reverb plugin into your DAW. Plug in a Strat to a heavy reverb track and pick a few single notes. See ya tomorrow, as you’ll drift off into the ether.
Bro...I'm just getting back into music now and bought a launch key 49..and got FL Studio. Newbie getting hands on....feels good. Best of luck to you.
To be honest when i make that sort of music it is to create a relaxing and posetive thing, i dont see it as my main musical intrest though, i usually keep alot of my other songs to myself but these ambient things can help a bit with a calm vibe, so its sort of my way of trying to give something optemistic back without demanding something in return and doing what i can ( even if there were no intrest then at least i tryed)
Great video, thank you. I’m not into ambient, but these principles are universal.
I'm choosing to take this video personally 😜
But yes i struggle the most with layering sounds, I'm very bad at it. The first time i heard Hammock i was blown away by how everything sounded so good together.
I'd love a video on music theory as it relates to ambient music
very useful and inspiring as always
Also a huge Yes fan interested in ambient synth stuff! Great video!
this is such a great video thankyou !
If you are not familiar with "Serial Experiments Lain, Bootleg album" or soundtrack of EVE online, you're missing out on wonderful examples of amazing ambient music that's not boring at all or the basic drone random modular synth stuff. Songs have structure, themes even... and they're still ambient. Especially Serial Experiments Lain has wonderful soundtrack for very atmospheric ambient music.
Your videos inspired me to start making ambient music too! I agree that you don't necessarily need hardware. I use Ableton and Pigments, combining Pigments with Ableton synths like Analog, Drift, Operator, and Wavetable. All controlled by a 61-key controller. With the effects in Ableton Suite and some great free effects, my setup is more than enough for my creative projects. Having a great time with it! Thank you for sharing.
Pigments is great!
Have you considered the option that boredom is not induced by external factors, like: ambient music being produced this or that way, but instead boredom is a state of mind representing your inner condition? That could explain why things that are exiting to some are boring to others, and also why one might feel different about a tune at times. Don´t know if this is true, but to me it´s worth thinking about it.
I thought about something similar.
I really dig you channel pal, well done!
As a genre, it is sort of one foot in the art world and another foot in new age philosophy and tantric meditation, making it a genre which is somewhat not music in some sense, but rather, a mood enhancer or meditational aid. I think it is an interesting device for creating a specific visual landscape that describes texture and emotion as well as place and a sense of drama as well as a disconnected sense of the surreal and threatening. Basically a film score. Like Eno's Prophecy Theme from Dune. It really feels like being in a sandstorm from all the white noise. The themes of magisterial elemental forces.
Edit: On second listen, Prophecy theme is pretty simple - just one note at a time. It's no Music For Airports in terms of sophistication and maturity.
Thanks man, some bloody useful tips and information
Great content, thank you!
Perhaps what Eno means by music that can partly be ignored stems from a realization that, just as in visual information gathering, it is necessary for the brain to create a hierarchy of the incoming information, influenced by our experience and preferences in order to rationalize the experience. So called "Relaxation" to music is not possible when the ear is drawn to outstanding articles of interest and this is mis interpreted by composers of ambient music as just the kind of drowned swampy soup of sound you vividly describe.
The Steve Howe quote from the gates of delirium is the recurring "hook" of that track, a rarity in Yes music but the album as a whole is, from the listener point of view, on a scale that it is necessary to "ignore" elements in the texture thus generating the rich rewards of discovery through repeated listening. From a composer perspective, and group composition has a different dynamic, those boys, as you say, each a great virtuoso, took great pride in their contribution, as would the fastidious and ever tinkering Anton Brückner, wanting every tiny droplet to be appreciated.
I think that the difference between active listening and passive hearing is not as bi-polar as one might think and that in focussing on one thread of a sound we necessarily de sensitise towards others. Some music is designed for a linear experience such as simple pop songs, a Howlin' Wolf blues, Prog rock or Jazz where contributors fit together their own improvised lines does not. Those with a training in counterpoint will see that an exquisitely balanced JS Bach fugue will present all it's parts with one or possibly several lines of dominance, the light and shade or perhaps sunlight and shadow of the Brandenburg Concerti cannot IMHO be experienced in their full beauty by the first time listener.
For me, some music is so full of complexity that there is just no way to focus, nowhere to look that isn't stuff with attention grabbing elements. Boulez and Ferneyhough for example.
Generally, if I want music, I want to listen not just hear it. A Phillip Glass piano work with its minimal modulations could just burble away in the background but once I had learned to appreciate those drifting changes I have to listen out for them.
Very inspiring, Jameson!
Very interesting. I started with a lot of reverb as well and with time the reverb got less.
Funny how you brought up limitations by gear and for an example there was Digitakt. For me naturally Digitakt always comes to my mind when this subject is brought up as my workflow almost exclusively revolves around Digitakt. For me that is a perfect mix of limitations and possibilities for doing minimal techno. More importantly I get music done when it is a way for me to relax by sitting on a couch with my Digitakt. Byproduct of me clearing my head after busy daily routines there is decent sounding tracks which I can perform live in local small venues.
reminds me so much of hyperlight drifter
Ooh at 6.23 it really sounds like the intro to Tears for Fears 'The tipping point '.Great video on ambient music.Thank you.
Love hearing the digitakt magic
I first heard "Says" by Nils Frahm off of a recommendation from Steven Wilson. I was hooked instantly. And shortly after, I discovered Olafur Arnalds. "Only The Winds" is a masterpiece.
genuinely amazing video
What do you think of the sound of Max Cooper or Lapalux who do more "complicated" idm type ambient music? Just curious i've been gravitating towards more ambient music that I felt like it didnt 'fit in' so I never finished learning its a whole breed of new music I didnt even know about.
Hey, nice to hear you’re (or were?) a prog fan, especially of Yes. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised, given your music history. 😜
Anyway, great vid, and I appreciate hearing your perspective about ambient music and how to best approach writing it.
Great you stopped making reviews and focus on the creative process.
We can learn a lot when we are listening.
Give the wonderful music of DAVID SYLVIAN a chance - in particular the Gone To Earth album. Plus the records he made with Robert Fripp (esp. Flux) and Sakamoto. Beautiful ambient inspired music with an own approach.
6:30 that is really nice.
1:28 hey that's Stu Mckenzie!
No - That's Jon Anderson of YES...
Please people, if you're not familiar with Gas aka Wolfgang Voigt, please give his records a listen. One of the best ambient artists that ever walked the earth.
As Eno was brought up: any thoughts about making a deck of _Oblique Strategies_ -like cards?
Also 32 year old here haha. No it’s not a skill issue, I’d call problems of this kind an experience/landscape issue. And then it’s obvious that it’s partially outside our control: we can just try to see more things in the world but we can’t force something revelatory to happen to us pronto. So people should be graceful to others and themselves and not just slap labels. There are no guarantees in this world, sometimes we need just to ride and be patient and observant.
So thank you for sharing this-broad strokes and little useful details, and for the music! ✨ I’m aiming to do ambient-ish stuff, some of your advice is already known to me but it’s always good to get it reiterated in different contexts to settle better inside the brain.
(My personal issue currently and for a couple of years is not doing anything except for small sound design trips in a couple of synths and things like that that don’t immediately constitute to composition of real tracks or even small sketches.)
Wow !
Great video ❤
Always appreciate your knowledge, man and your wisdom.
Thanks man!
this mf really has a passion for this and you can hear it so clearly its amazing
Yes, this is one of the pitfalls in ambient music. And most people are very quick at hand with 'man, that's boring af'. But that's ok, because you write music for people, who kind of understand it, anyways. From the compositional side, there have always been musicians with super interesting chord progressions, sound layers and top arrangements. And a lot with quite the opposite. And those also managed to find their audience. So, in the end, it comes back to Eno's thesis about ambient music and to your own standards, you want your music to have for yourself. Combine things that already have been there maybe in a new way (because finding something unique and completely new is almost impossible) and you're good to go. And don't forget to have fun.