ambient music

jeskola · Post by **jeskola** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 4:43 pm

I was wondering if any you guys do ambient music - like no beats what so ever, ive been trying latley and finding it really hard as percussion usually drives my tunes - any tips on this? i mean is it anymore thatn layers of evolving pads?

fsk · Post by **fsk** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 4:52 pm

I think ambient is a bit of a broad genre, try some field recording and combine that with your own composition, thats usually very interesting, like a soundtrack to life.

I've done similar stuff for my foundation films.

jeskola · Post by **jeskola** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 4:55 pm

fsk wrote:I think ambient is a bit of a broad genre, try some field recording and combine that with your own composition, thats usually very interesting, like a soundtrack to life.

I've done similar stuff for my foundation films.

i guess it is quite broad!
couldnt see any tunes on your site juts a mix...

erm i guess stuff like some of brian eno & van gelis
seems very complex in its subtltly

slow riot · Post by **slow riot** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 5:01 pm

i made a few ambient pieces. They were both made from long loops with off beat timings so as the pieces progressed they created different textures and sounds from the different juxtapostions they made along they way. One was a fairly organic feral thing made of fucked up vocal samples with a skeleton of vibraphone sample through a resonator & filter delay holding it together. THe other was supposed to be a recreation of that happy/tired/fucked up feeling you get after spending a night raving, when you still have some beats floating around in your head.

I guess the main thing I think is to use a nice pre-natal bpm (mmm, womb), and to set things up to loop at odd times and to use random follow actions so everything kind of evolves on it's own accord.

ocp · Post by **ocp** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 5:10 pm

Check these out:

http://www.archive.org/download/trip_in ... t_bulb.mp3

http://www.archive.org/download/sleepin ... ng_aid.mp3

http://www.archive.org/download/mi062_k ... to_ocp.mp3

They were all composed taking different approaches.
In the end, it is all up to you.
Get busy, experiment, and if you like it, then it's good!

djfm · Post by **djfm** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 5:12 pm

you could bongos and stuff in there that would give it a bit of a backbone

tomperson · Post by **tomperson** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 6:22 pm

I find myself in a similar position to jeskola - the rythm part almost inexorably comes in. A possible approach is to avoid a "beat" (i.e. drum part) and to try to replace it with "pulse" (the way the music goes back and forth, giving a sense of rythm, but without resorting to percussion parts). You could add pulse to your music by having a pad sample looping in the background, using compressors to pump with it, etc - I guess you get the idea.

I'm with fsk, adding field recording to your music is a really interesting technique, adding depth and telling parallel stories. The concept of layers, it really appeals to me.

Nice topic, btw.

apfEID · Post by **apfEID** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 7:47 pm

here's an ambient track improvised with live 4, 2 years ago.

http://ruccas.org/pub/Anthony%20Saunder ... 4remix.mp3

it's basic construction involved assembling a wide variety of loops that are all tightly related, but vary in texture and pitch, in ways that layer well, then while playing adding them together cautiously and slowly, allowing the track to evolve, build and subside gracefully.

there's a little bit of resonator in there too.

ocp · Post by **ocp** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 8:03 pm

For those of you in London:

Free entrance!

jackmazzotti · Post by **jackmazzotti** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 8:14 pm

Thee label for this is http://www.hypnos.com/

patrick o'hearn is also one of the true masters of this

tylenol · Post by **tylenol** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 8:28 pm

tomperson wrote:A possible approach is to avoid a "beat" (i.e. drum part) and to try to replace it with "pulse" (the way the music goes back and forth, giving a sense of rythm, but without resorting to percussion parts). You could add pulse to your music by having a pad sample looping in the background, using compressors to pump with it, etc - I guess you get the idea.

I've found that operator's envelope looping can be really nice for creating rhythmic pulses. Here's a short ambient track I made (in the live 6 beta) that uses this kind of sound (esp. the last 20 seconds or so -- it is much more subtle the rest of the song). Actually this track was really just me playing around with the new waveshaper a bit, but grew from there

polyslax · Post by **polyslax** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 12:52 am

Don't really know a great deal about genres as they exist these days, but I've got a few tracks I would consider ambient or borderline ambient:

Distances

Kick The Gong Around

Essence Of

Letting Go

msticman · Post by **msticman** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 3:25 am

im working on an track with an ambient feel. im using some percussion,not for rythm, just for sounds. and they are really heavy with effects. almost so they dont sound like percussion at all. ie, ive got a few bongo hits, with some heavy compression, filter and eq. sounds more like a heavy whoosh of air than anything. as far as a pulse or rythm, im using different envelopes to give it that. volume , panning, etc. but not changing on any particular beats, just the way im phrasing it.

sans soleil · Post by **sans soleil** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 3:56 am

yup...

http://www.vagueterrain.net/content/arc ... oleil.html
http://www.stasisfield.com/releases/year05/sf-5003.html

Cone · Post by **Cone** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 4:47 am

jeskola wrote:I was wondering if any you guys do ambient music - like no beats what so ever, ive been trying latley and finding it really hard as percussion usually drives my tunes - any tips on this? i mean is it anymore thatn layers of evolving pads?

I find that there is a beat, but it doesn't even have to be audible. I'm originally a drummer, I'm driven by beat as much as anyone, but a subliminal beat is often better than flat-out banging.

ambient music

ambient music

Re: ambient music