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How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports (2019)
- msluyter 4y agoWow, 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.
- dtgriscom 4y agoMy 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.
- tl_donson 4y agohis 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.
- chaosprint 4y agoThis 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 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
- WilTimSon 4y agoThe 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.
- petercooper 4y agoIt'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/ 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 https://youtu.be/DdtcMf9YI7s?t=508
- chalst 4y agoThere 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. For the first, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musikalisches_W%C3%BCrfelspiel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musikalisches_W%C3%BCrfelspi...
- dclowd9901 4y agoIncidentally, 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.
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- danwills 4y agoVery 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: https://youtu.be/WNAzrOBqpsY https://youtu.be/WNAzrOBqpsY 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.
- tebbers 4y agoI spent my adolescent years listening to Eno and this album in particular while studying, so this means a lot to me. Thanks for sharing.
- candiddevmike 4y agoAnyone 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.
- pimeys 4y agoI 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.
- adriancooney 4y agoThanks for the recommendations. Some of my fav ambient(ish) albums that might fit in that list: - William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops - Jon Hopkins - Music For Psychedelic Therapy - Erland Cooper - Music for Growing Flowers
- pixelrevision 4y agoStars of the lid and Steve Roach have a lot of comparable stuff.
- have_faith 4y agoBurial (his ambient tracks like State Forest, Forgive), Huerco, Biosphere
- eej71 4y agoYou may enjoy Patrick O'Hearn - particularly something like Still Standing from the Slow Time album.
- swayvil 4y agoTycho. Eno's experimental ambient collab with Fripp is maybe a bit heavy. Some of M83 Lots of Boards of Canada might fit Explore Am Boy and Teen Daze Clocolan maybe Lorn Sarin Sunday try Freescha, but it's kinda depressing
- justincormack 4y ago
- formvoltron 4y agoI was just listening to this last night. So good for getting work done. Too bad he didn't make more.
- pfarrell 4y agoNyt 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. 0: https://web.archive.org/web/20220222224201/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/29/arts/music/brian-eno-ambient-songs.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220222224201/https://www.nytim... 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscure_Records https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscure_Records
- formvoltron 4y agoWow 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. It'll be very good to hear some new tracks.
- nemo44x 4y agoThere’s a few Ambient records. I know this because I have the vinyl records. Did they not release these digitally?
- DMell 4y agoThis and Untitled by Sigur Rós[0] are my go-to work albums. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(_)_(album) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(_)_(album)
- rocky_raccoon 4y agoThis 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.
- rchaud 4y agoI take it every CD contained the same tracks, but each played a recording of a single instrument?
- rocky_raccoon 4y agoPretty 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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaireeka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaireeka
- thomasfl 4y agoThis would be impossible to play on Spotify, without several Spotify accounts. It might explain why these tracks has been mixed together on Spotify.
- rocky_raccoon 4y agoI'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.
- motohagiography 4y agoLearning 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?
- skhm 4y agoThis was a really pleasant read. Inspired me to spend a few minutes hacking together some out-of-phase pianos (https://twitter.com/harryaskham/status/1580174416889069570 https://twitter.com/harryaskham/status/1580174416889069570).
- chaosprint 4y agoInteresting. What's this language? The audio comes with some distortions though. Perhaps limiting the volume and adding a filter can fix it?
- layer8 4y agoThe language is probably Haskell.
- Kiro 4y agoNothing to fix. The distortion sounds good.
- austinprete 4y agoTidal Cycles! https://tidalcycles.org/ 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!
- skhm 4y agoah 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 https://hackage.haskell.org/package/csound-expression
- parkersweb 4y agoI 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- 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.
- dingaling 4y agoIt's a great idea, but after investing all the effort in developing it why build just one and locate it in.. West Texas? Imagine one in every capital of the World.
- davidhariri 4y agoWhat luck! I have just recently been listening to all of Eno's Ambient albums. Thank you!
- MrBuddyCasino 4y agoLets not forget "Music For Real Airports" [0], matches the mood of the modern air traveller by being a lot more depressing. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icnjrONRCdQ&list=PLCpWLhn2tfRKVCL35m9BeUVhBy440R61W https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icnjrONRCdQ&list=PLCpWLhn2tf...
- bejd 4y agoI 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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f38SHzR0HKE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f38SHzR0HKE
- xipho 4y agoIf 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/ 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.
- chrisdhoover 4y agoIn 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
- tosser0001 4y agoThe 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.
- larrywright 4y agoI 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.
- sbf501 4y agoIf you like electronic music, check out "Sisters with Transistors", a documentary about women in electronic music going back to the 1920's. https://sisterswithtransistors.com/the-pioneers https://sisterswithtransistors.com/the-pioneers 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.
- randrus 4y agoNot 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.
- itintheory 4y ago> Sleep is an eight-and-a-half hour concept album based around the neuroscience of sleep by composer Max Richter. Now that's a long album. Maybe good for sleeping to?
- davidhariri 4y agoI really like working to this kind of music. Is there anything out there in the internet that generates infinite Eno-style ambient music?
- UmYeahNo 4y agohttps://www.flowful.app/ https://www.flowful.app/ Can't promise Eno quality, but flowful claims something similar Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32149989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32149989
- uppyPuppy 4y agohttps://play.generative.fm/browse https://play.generative.fm/browse :D
- ruycer 4y agoEndel https://endel.io/ https://endel.io/ is also a good alternative for generative music.
- uf00lme 4y agoThis is my goto music for helping getting calm and to sleep after bed time stories.
- retrocryptid 4y agoIn 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. https://www.codaworx.com/projects/skys-the-limit-united-airlines/ https://www.codaworx.com/projects/skys-the-limit-united-airl...
- retrocryptid 4y agoI 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. https://www.amazon.com/Brian-Enos-Another-Green-World/dp/0826427863 https://www.amazon.com/Brian-Enos-Another-Green-World/dp/082... https://www.amazon.com/Music-Airports-Brian-Eno/dp/B0000069CI/ref=sr_1_1 https://www.amazon.com/Music-Airports-Brian-Eno/dp/B0000069C...
- zzzbra 4y agoDoesn'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 https://teropa.info/blog/2016/07/28/javascript-systems-music
- keepquestioning 4y agoDumb question. Does Brian Eno how to code? Does Kanye? Do any pop artists know how to code, or do they outsource ideas to people who do?
- Optimal_Persona 4y agoI'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."
- cylinder714 4y agoRivers Cuomo, Weezer frontman, is doing work in Python: https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/25/rock-star-programmer-rivers-cuomo-finds-meaning-in-coding https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/25/rock-star-programmer-river... Model Karlie Kloss has been spearheading an effort to expose girls to programming, and has worked in Python as well, if memory serves. https://www.kodewithklossy.com/ https://www.kodewithklossy.com/ "Our free (yep, free!) two-week summer program for young women and non-binary individuals ages 13 – 18 will teach you to build real-life apps whether you’ve never written a line of code or you’re a full-fledged hacker. The scholarship is for anyone who's passionate and interested in learning a new superpower. Don’t be shy, APPLY!"
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- aniijbod 4y agoEno'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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpJ6anurfuw
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y agoI 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.
- kotaKat 4y agoI 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.
- slickrick216 4y agoOne of Brian Enos mentees is now an upcoming Producer/DJ. Check out Fred again https://youtu.be/c0-hvjV2A5Y https://youtu.be/c0-hvjV2A5Y one of the best boiler room sets ever in my opinion.
- locusofself 4y agoFred 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.
- tysehr37 4y agoIncredible how Brian Eno was able to pioneer this style of music
- Ensydr 4y agoI wonder if there is something similar for elevator music?
- predictsoft 4y agoOnce (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.
- decibe1 4y agoLove this album. Got into the habit of listening to it while waiting in the Sea-tac terminal for early morning flights.