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How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports (2019)

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Re: How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports (2019)

#71

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 sounde…

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.

Re: How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports (2019)

#72

Anyone have some other ambient works similar to Eno's? Preferably something more landscapey like music for airports or Apollo. Some of my favorites include Stars of the Lid, Eluvium, Robin Guthrie (So Many Short Years Ago), Brian McBride (Overture for other halfs), and Helios.

Listen to this radio show on KEXP: https://www.kexp.org/shows/pacific-notions/

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.

Re: How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports (2019)

#73

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 sounde…

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.

Re: How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports (2019)

#74

Anyone have some other ambient works similar to Eno's? Preferably something more landscapey like music for airports or Apollo. Some of my favorites include Stars of the Lid, Eluvium, Robin Guthrie (So Many Short Years Ago), Brian McBride (Overture for other halfs), and Helios.

Listen to this radio show on KEXP: https://www.kexp.org/shows/pacific-notions/ 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 pe…

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.

Re: How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports (2019)

#75

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 sounde…

The intention was for you to have friends with CD players, and all of you hit play at the same time.

Re: How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports (2019)

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. What's this language? The audio comes with some distortions though. Perhaps limiting the volume and adding a filter can fix it?

Tidal Cycles! https://tidalcycles.org/ As layer8 mentioned, it is technically Haskell but more specifically a DSL and environment for live coding music. Pretty fun to play around with!

ah it's not quite Tidal, though I have played with that too. This is csound-expression in Haskell.

https://hackage.haskell.org/package/csound-expression

Re: How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports (2019)

#78

Anyone have some other ambient works similar to Eno's? Preferably something more landscapey like music for airports or Apollo. Some of my favorites include Stars of the Lid, Eluvium, Robin Guthrie (So Many Short Years Ago), Brian McBride (Overture for other halfs), and Helios.

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).

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1sJKFhnCYglVaDXtA2y7Ao?si=...

Re: How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports (2019)

#79

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 cours…

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 c…

> 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.

Re: How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports (2019)

#80
post #41

Anyone have some other ambient works similar to Eno's? Preferably something more landscapey like music for airports or Apollo. Some of my favorites include Stars of the Lid, Eluvium, Robin Guthrie (So Many Short Years Ago), Brian McBride (Overture for other halfs), and Helios.

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…

Great suggestions, to which I would add Marty Hicks.
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