This is a really well-written article and the experience on the website is great.
It looks that the audio files are downloadable from the source file.
So I downloaded 3 mp3 files from the website, drag-drop them into the glicol web ide (https://glicol.org/tour#samples), and write the following music code:
// you need to drag eno_mfa_choir_01.mp3 here \/ and the same for the rest
Eno's most celebrated musical experiments were not exclusively confined to ambient music. He was also involved in a project which asked the question: what would it sound like if you created an orchestra which used standard, established musical instruments, playing well-known classical standard themes, but one that was composed of a combination of both fully competent musicians and totally inexperienced and utterly incompetent first-timers? Eno's answer was that you would produce extraordinary musical experiences for the listener which amounted to a unique combination of choice and chance. For me and many others, his translated into some of the funniest musical experiences I have ever known. Please listen to The Portsmouth Sinfonia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpJ6anurfuw
I think you missed the most vital part of the PS: nobody was allowed to play "their instrument", if they had one. So violinists were not allowed to play violin, bass players could not play bass, etc.
I went to see him speak at a music festival in the summer. He spoke about one of his recent projects - the 10,000 year clock:
https://www.solidsmack.com/design/what-jeff-bezos-and-brian-...
The idea is that modern living has been divided into smaller and smaller sub-divisions as processors get faster, media competes for attention and attention spans get shorter. The 10,000 clock was an artistic endeavour to engineer and design for a much broader time span - and every day the peal of bells is unique to that day only.
I found the way he thinks about extending the bounds of creativity in new ways quite inspiring.
If you aren't particularly musical, like myself, but love the concept of playing with loops, ambient sounds, etc. give the fully open-source https://www.bespokesynth.com/ a try, it has a brilliant pro tier option as well ;).
A simple MIDI source keyboard can help you find the notes that sound pleasing, then you can code them in. Python support, etc. etc.
Wow, this brings back memories! My roommate in college was really into Brian Eno, and I recall many a night when we'd go to sleep to this. HN is pretty great sometimes.
My roommate had "Discrete Music" and an automated turntable, and would leave the first side on repeat for hours. I could probably hum the whole thing from memory.
his mention of the disintegration loops is the first time i’ve thought about them in like 15 years probably but i used to listen to them a lot before bed. can’t wait to listen again and see what memories come up.
Something like Eno's tape loops, in 1949 Daphe Oram was doing similar research with optical "tape" loops on some early synths she built. What's fascinating is how no one had any paths to follow, they were just throwing things at the wall to see what worked.
One of Brian Enos mentees is now an upcoming Producer/DJ. Check out Fred again https://youtu.be/c0-hvjV2A5Y one of the best boiler room sets ever in my opinion.
Fred Again makes great dance music, reminds me of how I felt when I was much younger and discovering great dance music. "Upcoming" is understating it though - he is pretty huge right now.
The details still escape me as I feel like I read the words but didn't get the meaning, which is by no means a knock on the write-up, I'm just a complete fool when it comes to musical technology and recording.
However, it is a delightfully formatted experience and I spent several minutes playing with the randomize buttons on the site. Don't think any of the resulting mixes sounded bad, but Eno's original is, of course, unmatched. Would be interesting to see something similar for more traditional genres, where a song is picked apart and you can then randomize its bits and see if anything beautiful comes out.
There used to be quite a thing for randomised conpositions in the Baroque era and later, called Musikalisches Würfelspiel.
There was also a thing around tape cut-ups in the 1950s, with William Burroughs being very into this stuff, with David Bowie later picking some of this stuff up. It was more about deconstructing expectations than creating something beautiful, but some of the material is very interesting.
Incidentally, Bowie would even do this with lyrics. He would write up lyrics or some phrases, then cut up words or combinations of words, and move them around. That’s why (I always thought), he lyrics gave off a common theme with really interesting and novel turns of phrase.
Music is about tempo and sync. In fact, nowadays you can throw anything into a modern DAW software and it will instantly sync everything for you.
Eno instead put randomness/chaos at play by using tape loops of different length, so they will never (or very hardly) repeat at the same interval again, or, in his own words:
What I mean is they all repeat in cycles that are called incommensurable — they are not likely to come back into sync again.
Think of a series of little music boxes with each a different tune and length, you start playing one a time in random order, and the whole epiphany is that you expect chaos and dissonance but instead you still got an organic and nice harmony. And that's the basics of generative music, in the most simple words I can find.
That's an exceptionally limited definition, and misses out so much music from around the world and throughout time.
It's also not even particularly reflective of how human musicians playing even "dance" music (which you'd think would be most exemplary of this definition) actual perform.
Eno's interest in what used to be called "process music" was very much of the era (some of the minimalists had similar interests), and they were much less about avoid avoiding particular characteristics of music as reinventing the compositional process.
Also, if the set of loops really are ill-suited for each other, you will get chaos and dissonace. A good part of the art of generative music (a phrase that has taken over from the 60s/70s "process music") comes from carefully selecting things that, despite their somewhat random relationships, nevertheless sound good (however you define that) when combined using some algorithm/mechanism. That's a non-trivial thing to do.
For another interesting musical experiment, listen to "Poème symphonique", a "composition" that basically sets up 100 metronomes, winds them up, sets them to random (I believe) speeds, and lets them play and wind down. It starts chaotic, until they eventually run out and form interesting rhythmical patterns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAYGJmYKrI4
Didn't know about that! But Steve Reich also did many experiments with musical repetitions; his compositions are supposed to be played live (not rely on machines) but they can also be set up in a DAW. "Piano Phase" is pretty easy to implement for example.
Contrary to the quote by Eno in the article, Reich's loops are be "commensurable" -- after a certain point they repeat exactly. It seems that's what interests him: some kind of mathematical predictability.
Reich's earliest experiments with what he terms "phasing" were done on (tape) machines. It was only after a few successful tape pieces that he began to wonder if humans could actual perform music composed around the same principle (they could!)
> Eno instead put randomness/chaos at play by using tape loops of different length, so they will never (or very hardly) repeat at the same interval again, or, in his own words
It's a least common multiple problem, right. The same idea is used with polymeters when things are on the grid instead of arbitrary lengths of tape loops.
It’s very esoteric and even ponderous imho, but that’s just speaking of his personal albums. When he comes in with other artists like Bowie and Roxy Music, he’s an incredible collaborator and gives so much depth to the music.
It's a quite different experience to a Web page, but if you want to play with messing about with music without becoming a musician as such, https://sonic-pi.net/ is absolutely fantastic as you can manipulate samples and sounds using a Ruby-like language. For example, this sort of fiddling: https://youtu.be/DdtcMf9YI7s?t=508
In 1979, I saw Robert Fripp play frippertronics at the Washington Ethical Society. The looping Revoxes were there in all there glory. It was a sight to behold and hear. Parts of the performance show up on one of his albums
Very enjoyable information and resources! Loved it! Thanks for posting.
I collaborated on recent years on a track that we think of as being 'ambient'. The video for it went on my YouTube recently, first time providing my own sounds with visuals! Proud of that milestone! Here's a link:
Eno is definitely one of my absolute heroes and such an inspiration! Ambient 4 'On Land', by Eno in my opinion is an absolute masterpiece, that really does sound like natural environments while still being musical, I listen to it a lot.
I used similar techniques to make an ambient album in a couple of days. Rather than tape loops, it's just looping different length samples in Ableton Live. Here's a quick explainer video I uploaded to YouTube.
Nyt article on 15 best ambient works from Eno [0]. See also artists released under the Obscure Records music label that Eno created [1]. Not like Airports, but my favorite album is Another Green World. Every track is a little intricate gem.
Wow thank you. This is a great gift you have passed to me. I so thoroughly enjoyed his ambient works that I've burned them into my memory proteins inside my head. To the point of maybe not enjoying them so much any more.
I had a great use for 1/1 in my career at a hospital helpdesk. As part of our small jack-of-all-trades group, we were responsible for the paging system, which was being upgraded.
Our integration vendor had to test and set the volume of all the speakers and put on classical music. We realized that classical music wasn't probably the best choice in a hospital (figure that it can get very... dramatic) and the rest of the crew was figuring out what to put on overhead to carry onwards.
I grabbed my iPad, hooked it into the paging amplifier, hit play on a certain song...
... and the paging system dutifully played 3 chimes indicating an emergency page, and 1/1 boomed across the hospital. A very healing-space-esque theme, very fitting.
This reminds me of "Zaireeka" by the Flaming Lips, an album that was sold as four separate CDs and you would have to cobble together every boombox, stereo, and Walkman in your house to try and play them all at the same time. So, you would hit the "play" button on disc #1, frantically try to match your timing with disc #2, inevitably be a few seconds late on disc #3, etc. The end result was that the music never sounded the same twice, especially once you started experimenting with mixing and matching a few of the discs together instead of all four at once.
Even if you start the discs at the same time, they won't finish at the same time. The timing skew on CD players was such that you'd actually accrue a few seconds of error over the course of the songs. I think I remember reading that this even surprised the Flaming Lips.
I tried to create a website that would play this. Basically an ad hoc surround sound. The theory was that people would load it on 4 different devices, and one play button would start them simultaneously through websocket messages. Unfortunately I learned that the timing of the html5 audio element varies too much between browsers and devices.
This brings back fond memories of a house party we threw in college where we got a bunch of gear and put speakers all throughout the house. So CD 1 might be playing through a speaker in the basement and BR1, CD2 playing in living room and BR1, etc. Made for a really cool effect where different rooms had very different feels, and certain places in the house where you could get the full mix.
I've listened to the "combined" version on Spotify and it just doesn't have the same effect. I can distinctly remember having a "WOW" moment the very first time I tried to play all of the CDs together and certain tracks synced up together. I couldn't recreate it a second time though -- each attempt was a bit different.
Pretty much. Not surprisingly, Wikipedia does a much better job explaining it than I did [1].
Zaireeka is the eighth studio album by American rock band The Flaming Lips,
released on October 28, 1997 by Warner Bros. Records. The album consists of
four CDs designed so that when played simultaneously on four separate audio
systems, they would produce a harmonic or juxtaposed sound; the discs could
also be played in different combinations, omitting one, two or three discs.
Each of its eight songs consists of four stereo tracks, one from each CD.
The article mentions Eno did the cover designs. I've always assumed he took the cover images from real maps, but I've never found any mention of what they may be. It would be interesting to find them if that were actually the case.
I recently read the 33 1/3 text on Another Green World. This is a good addendum to that. Also, if you haven't heard Bang on a Can's version of MfA, it's worth a listen.
In the early 90s I was flying through O'Hare and had to go through the famous neon-festooned Sky's the Limit installation. Very cool, but then I noticed they were playing "Music for Airports" at an airport and figured I had come full circle.
Doesn't look like anyone posted this also excellent article showing how to create one of the songs from this record in the browser (though I do believe it's linked out to in OPs link): https://teropa.info/blog/2016/07/28/javascript-systems-music
This should cover a bunch of different Ambient styles, but all of the artists are absolutely fantastic and worth digging into. I'm definitely leaving out a fuckload more, but there are a ton of great suggestions in the other responses, too. Happy listening! :D
Biosphere
Ryuichi Sakamoto
Loscil
A Strangely Isolated Place (record label & mix series)
Silent Season (record label)
Kelly Moran
Rafael Anton Irisarri
Harold Budd
Steve Roach
Terre Thaemlitz
Gel-Sol
Koss
Nils Frahm
FAX Records
Pete Namlook
Hiroshi Yoshimura
Benoit Pioulard
Carlos Nino
Woob (particularly woob1194)
ASC
Autumn of Communion
Wanderwelle
Celer
Christina Vantzou
Julianna Barwick
Mary Lattimore
Grouper
Suzanne Ciani
MPU101
Deru
Lusine (Language Barrier in particular, his only full-Ambient album)
Nice list. I would second Ryuichi Sakamoto, Loscil, Julianna Barwick, Mary Lattimore, and Grouper for sure and there are lots of other good ones on there.
I'd add Windy & Carl, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Yui Odonera (lots from the Serein label actually), Max Richter, and most of all Stars of the Lid.
The Disintegration Loops is lovely and I found it very thought-provoking. The concept of hearing the medium being destroyed, in this sort of breathing / heartbeat / day and night cycle, is a very powerful way to think about mortality.
One of the tracks still sounds like you're hearing someone drowning over the course of 17 minutes and it's terrifying. It's the first track here, though I believe they are named / ordered incorrectly. Just comparing 2 minutes in vs 15 minutes.. it still creeps me out.
It's every Sunday early morning Pacific time but you can listen to recent shows in their streaming archive. The whole show is modern ambient and similar music, it's absolutely fantastic and a great way to hear new artists in the genre.
edit: lol someone already posted it. This should give you an idea of how good this show is if multiple people are suggesting it. I've never heard any other show/podcast/or anything as comprehensive about new ambient music as this one.
It's fantastic. I also really enjoy the blues show the immediately follows it, Preachin' the Blues. Bit of a contrast but the curation on both shows is stellar.
I'd look into stuff like Harold Budd, William Basinski, or Jon Hassell (who in turn influenced Eno; you can hear some similarities but also radical differences because Hassell played processed trumpet and had a much more dense sound palette. Albums like "Fascinoma" or "The Surgeon of the Night Sky Restores Dead Things By he Power of Sound" for starters, but they did one album together in the early 80s called "Possible Musics" worth a listen)
There is a label called Past Inside the Present that does a lot of landscape/soundscape/dreamscape recordings. They are on bandcamp and https://www.pastinsidethepresent.com/ (I am not affiliated, I just have a fair number of their recordings). Check out Zake (I think he is the owner too) and also 36.
I'll throw in the 'Ghosts' series by Nine Inch Nails. These land somewhere between Eno and Aphex Twin and were basically a precursor to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's soundtrack work (some of which may also be worth a listen).
I absolutely love "Music for REAL Airports" by The Black Dog.
An obvious poke at the original, it features a darker, moody and slightly unsettling ambience, with some minimal percussive elements in a couple of tracks. It's meant to remind you of the real experience of being in an airport, which isn't exactly a pleasant experience :)
The band The Glitch Mob maintain an ambient playlist on spotify that I listen to constantly while working. They update it really regularly (4 day since last song added right now).
Music for Programming[0] is a nice site with mixes of music, most of it ambient, intended to provide focus while programming. Each mix has a setlist so you can follow along and perhaps find some new artists to explore.
Steve Reich did a number of pieces that are loopy and programatic in the 1960's and 70's, but with analog instruments. Kind of like Javanese Gamelan but more western style.
Music for 18 Musicians
The Desert Music
Drumming
I think it is debatable if they are "ambient", since some get quite loud, but they are meditative.
If you like Robin Guthrie, you may like the ambient music of Harold Budd, one of his collaborators. One of the their cool joint projects is the instrumental score for the film Mysterious Skin from 2004.
I didn't find him from the mentions yet so I'll add Gas. Start with Zauberberg, Königsforst and Pop, and if you like them get completely lost with the rest of his productions.
Learning to write a basic cannon at the moment, and this seems really similar, but with tape loops, instead of offset or syncopated melodies, in his ambient style the melodies are mostly rests. Are they they same, or is a cannon necessarily different?
I discovered this album probably 15 years ago, and since then it’s been one of my consistent go-to albums for when I need to focus on some work. Music with lyrics is too distracting for my brain, so I need instrumentals. This is a great one.
Not quite ambient, and (I presume) not aleatory, but Sleep by Max Richter has a kind of ambient feel - like Music for 18 Musicians it evolves slowly but intentionally, and draws me along with it.
Once (2001) gave Brian Eno a demo CD at an interview. He cautioned "I can't promise anything". I don't know if he ever heard it, but it was a cool moment anyway.
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I've seen some videos where Brian Eno is tweaking JavaScript code in Apple Logic DAW's scripting tool. But elsewhere I've seen Eno say, "With friends like Danny Hillis, there may not be much point in my learning to code in this lifetime."
It looks that the audio files are downloadable from the source file.
So I downloaded 3 mp3 files from the website, drag-drop them into the glicol web ide (https://glicol.org/tour#samples), and write the following music code:
// you need to drag eno_mfa_choir_01.mp3 here \/ and the same for the rest
~t1: speed 0.3 >> seq 60 >> sp \eno_mfa_choir_01 >> lpf 500 1.0 >> mul ~mod1
~mod1: sin 0.1 >> add 1 >> mul 0.1
~t2: speed 0.5 >> seq 72 >> sp \eno_mfa_choir_02 >> lpf 600 1.0 >> mul ~mod2
~mod2: sin 0.2 >> delayms 100 >> add 1 >> mul 0.3 >> mul ~mod3
~t3: speed 0.5 >> seq 67 >> sp \eno_mfa_choir_03 >> lpf 3000 1.0 >> mul ~mod3
~mod3: sin 0.3 >> add 1 >> mul 0.2
o: mix ~t.. >> plate 0.1
// by changing the numbers you get lots of variations.
// hope this helps you understand better how this form of music is made