| Ambient music | |
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.jpeg) Sounds ofnatural habitats are common inYouTube uploads of ambient music, with theirthumbnails typically having images oflandscapes and/orspace, to attract listeners. | |
| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | 1960s–1970s, United Kingdom, Jamaica (dub music)[2] and Japan[3][4] |
| Derivative forms | |
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| Fusion genres | |
| Other topics | |
Ambient music is agenre of music that emphasizestone and atmosphere over traditionalmusical structure orrhythm. Often "peaceful" sounding and lackingcomposition, beat, and/or structuredmelody,[5] ambient music uses textural layers of sound that can reward both passive and active listening,[6] and encourage a sense of calm or contemplation.[7][8] The genre evokes an "atmospheric", "visual",[9] or "unobtrusive" quality.[10]Naturesoundscapes may be included, and some works usesustained orrepeated notes, as indrone music. Bearing elements associated withnew-age music,instruments such as thepiano,strings andflute may be emulated through asynthesizer.[11][12]
The genre originated in the 1960s and 1970s, when new musical instruments were being introduced to a wider market, such as the synthesizer.[13] It was presaged byErik Satie'sfurniture music and styles such asmusique concrète,minimal music, Jamaicandub music and Germanelectronic music, but was prominently named and popularized by British musicianBrian Eno in 1978 with his albumAmbient 1: Music for Airports; Eno opined that ambient music "must be as ignorable as it is interesting", however, in early years, there were artists that were pioneers in this genre, likeTangerine Dream,Klaus Schulze,Wendy Carlos,Kraftwerk, etc.[14] It saw a revival towards the late 1980s with the prominence of house andtechno music, growing acult following by the 1990s.[15]
Ambient music has not achieved large commercial success. Nevertheless, it has attained a certain degree of acclaim throughout the years, especially in theInternet age. Due to its relatively open style, ambient music often takes influences from many other genres, ranging fromclassical,avant-garde music,experimental music,folk,jazz, andworld music, amongst others.[16][17]
As an early 20th-century French composer,Erik Satie used suchDadaist-inspired explorations to create an early form of ambient/background music that he labeled "furniture music" (Musique d'ameublement). This he described as being the sort of music that could be played during a dinner to create a background atmosphere for that activity, rather than serving as the focus of attention.[18]
In his own words, Satie sought to create "a music...which will be part of the noises of the environment, will take them into consideration. I think of it as melodious, softening the noises of the knives and forks at dinner, not dominating them, not imposing itself. It would fill up those heavy silences that sometime fall between friends dining together. It would spare them the trouble of paying attention to their own banal remarks. And at the same time it would neutralize thestreet noises which so indiscreetly enter into the play of conversation. To make such music would be to respond to a need."[19][20]
In 1948, French composer & engineer, Pierre Schaeffer coined the termmusique concrète. This experimental style of music used recordings of natural sounds that were then modified, manipulated or effected to create a composition.[21] Shaeffer's techniques of usingtape loops and splicing are considered to be the precursor to modern daysampling.
In 1952,John Cage released his famous three-movement composition[22]4'33 which is a performance of complete silence for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. The piece is intended to capture the ambient sounds of the venue/location of the performance and have that be the music played.[23] Cage has been cited by seminal artists such as Brian Eno as influence.[23]
In the 1960s, many music groups experimented with unusual methods, with some of them creating what would later be called ambient music.
In the summer of 1962, composersRamon Sender andMorton Subotnick foundedThe San Francisco Tape Music Center which functioned both as an electronic music studio and concert venue.[24] Other composers working with tape recorders became members and collaborators includingPauline Oliveros,Terry Riley andSteve Reich. Their compositions, among others, contributed to the development ofminimal music (also called minimalism), which shares many similar concepts to ambient music such as repetitive patterns or pulses, steady drones, and consonant harmony.[25]
Many records were released in Europe and the United States of America between the mid-1960s and the mid-1990s that established the conventions of the ambient genre in the anglophone popular music market.[26] Some 1960s records with ambient elements includeMusic for Yoga Meditation and Other Joys andMusic for Zen Meditation byTony Scott,Soothing Sounds for Baby byRaymond Scott, and the first record of theenvironments album series byIrv Teibel.
In the late 1960s, French composerÉliane Radigue composed several pieces by processing tape loops from the feedback between two tape recorders and a microphone.[27] In the 1970s, she then went on to compose similar music almost exclusively with anARP 2500 synthesiser, and her long, slow compositions have often been compared todrone music.[28][29] In 1969, the groupCOUM Transmissions were performing sonic experiments in British art schools.[30]Pearls Before Swine's 1968 albumBalaklava features the sounds ofbirdsong and ocean noise, which were to become tropes of ambient music."[31]
Developing in the 1970s, ambient music stemmed from theexperimental andsynthesizer-oriented styles of the period.
Between 1974 and 1976, American composerLaurie Spiegel created her seminal workThe Expanding Universe, created on a computer-analog hybrid system called GROOVE.[32] In 1977, her composition,Music of the Spheres was included on Voyager 1 and 2'sGolden Record.[33]
In April 1975,Suzanne Ciani gave two performances on herBuchla synthesizer – one at the WBAI Free music store and one atPhil Niblock's loft.[34] These performances were released on an archival album in 2016 entitledBuchla Concerts 1975. According to the record label, these concerts were part live presentation, part grant application and part educational demonstration.[35]
However, it was not until Brian Eno coined the term in the mid-70s that ambient music was defined as a genre. Eno went on to record 1975'sDiscreet Music with this in mind, suggesting that it be listened to at "comparatively low levels, even to the extent that it frequently falls below the threshold of audibility",[19] referring to Satie's quote about hismusique d'ameublement.[36]
Other contemporaneous musicians creating ambient-style music at the time included Jamaicandub musicians such asKing Tubby,[2] Japaneseelectronic music composers such asIsao Tomita[3][4] andRyuichi Sakamoto as well as thepsychoacoustic soundscapes ofIrv Teibel'sEnvironments series, and German experimental bands such asPopol Vuh,Cluster,Kraftwerk,Harmonia,Ash Ra Tempel andTangerine Dream. Mike Orme ofStylus Magazine describes the work ofBerlin school musicians as "laying the groundwork" for ambient.[37]
The impact the rise of the synthesizer in modern music had on ambient as a genre cannot be overstated; as Ralf Hutter of early electronic pioneersKraftwerk said in a 1977Billboard interview: "Electronics is beyond nations and colors...with electronics everything is possible. The only limit is with the composer".[38] TheYellow Magic Orchestra developed a distinct style of ambientelectronic music that would later be developed intoambient house music.[39]
The English producerBrian Eno is credited with coining the term "ambient music" in the mid-1970s. He said other artists had been creating similar music, but that "I just gave it a name. Which is exactly what it needed ... By naming something you create a difference. You say that this is now real. Names are very important."[40] He used the term to describe music that is different from forms of canned music likeMuzak.[41]
In the liner notes for his 1978 albumAmbient 1:Music for Airports, Eno wrote:[42]
Whereas the extant canned music companies proceed from the basis of regularizing environments by blanketing their acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncrasies, Ambient Music is intended to enhance these. Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities. And whereas their intention is to "brighten" the environment by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks and leveling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms) Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think. Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.
Eno, who describes himself as a "non-musician", termed his experiments "treatments" rather than traditional performances.[42][43]David Bowie created theBerlin Trilogy with Eno, both of whom were inspired during the production of the albums in the trilogy by Germankosmische Musik bands and minimalist composers.[44]
In the late 70s, new-age musicianLaraaji began busking in New York parks and sidewalks, including Washington Square Park. It was there that Brian Eno heard Laraaji playing and asked him if he'd like to record an album.Day of Radiance released in 1980, was the third album in Eno's Ambient series. Although Laraaji had already recorded a number of albums, this one gave him international recognition.[45] Unlike other albums in the series,Day of Radiance featured mostly acoustic instruments instead of electronics.
In the mid-1980s, the possibilities to create a sonic landscape increased through the use ofsampling. By the late 1980s, there was a steep increase in the incorporation of the computer in the writing and recording process of records. The sixteen-bit Macintosh platform with built-in sound and comparable IBM models would find themselves in studios and homes of musicians and record makers.[46] However, many artists were still working with analogue synthesizers and acoustic instruments to produce ambient works.
In 1983,Midori Takada recorded her first solo LPThrough the Looking Glass in two days. She performed all parts on the album, with diverse instrumentation including percussion, marimba, gong, reed organ, bells, ocarina, vibraphone, piano and glass Coca-Cola bottles.[47] Between 1988 and 1993,Éliane Radigue produced three hour-long works on theARP 2500 which were subsequently issued together asLa Trilogie De La Mort.[48]
Also in 1988, founding member and director of theSan Francisco Tape Music Centre,Pauline Oliveros coined the term "deep listening" after she recorded an album inside a huge underground cistern in Washington which has a 45-second reverberation time. The concept of Deep Listening then went on to become "an aesthetic based upon principles of improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation".[49]
By the early 1990s, artists such asthe Orb,Aphex Twin,Seefeel, theIrresistible Force,Biosphere, and theHigher Intelligence Agency gained commercial success and were being referred to by thepopular music press asambient house,ambient techno,IDM or simply "ambient". The termchillout emerged from Britishecstasy culture which was originally applied in relaxed downtempo "chillout rooms" outside of the main dance floor where ambient, dub and downtempo beats were played to ease thetripping mind.[50][51]
British artists such as Aphex Twin (specifically:Selected Ambient Works Volume II, 1994),Global Communication (76:14, 1994),The Future Sound of London (Lifeforms, 1994,ISDN, 1994),the Black Dog (Temple of Transparent Balls, 1993),Autechre (Incunabula, 1993,Amber, 1994),Boards of Canada, andThe KLF'sChill Out, (1990), all took a part in popularising and diversifying ambient music where it was used as a calming respite from the intensity of thehardcore andtechno popular at that time.[50] Other global ambient artists from the 1990s include American composersStars of the Lid (who released 5 albums during this decade), and Japanese artistSusumu Yokota whose albumSakura (1999) featured what Pitchfork magazine called "dreamy, processed guitar as a distinctive sound tool".[52]
In the early 2000s, offshoots oftrance music oriented around ambient music garnered popularity. Established in France in 2001,Ultimae has become the go-to label for space ambient, and they included artists such asCarbon Based Lifeforms. DJs inIbiza'sCafé Del Mar began creating ambient house mixes that drew on jazz, classical, Hispanic, andNew Age sources. Consequently, the popular understanding of "chill-out music" shifted away from "ambient" and into its own distinct genre.[53] ProducerWolfgang Voigt co-runs the German labelKompakt, which has released installments of the influential ambient techno compilation seriesPop Ambient annually since 2001.[54]
Inindie music,chillwave emerged, inspired by the atmosphere ofdream pop.[55]Atlas Sound debuted with the albumLet the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel, which featured ambient pieces.[56]Animal Collective'sMerriweather Post Pavilion was an album released in January 2009 that was particularly influential for its ambient sounds and repetitive melodies.[57]
From the early 2010s to present, ambient music gained widespread recognition onYouTube, with uploaded pieces, usually ranging from one to eight hours long, getting over millions of hits. Ambient videos assist online listeners withyoga,study,sleep (seemusic and sleep),massage,meditation and gainingoptimism, inspiration, and creating peaceful atmosphere in their rooms or other environments. Such videos may be titled "relaxing music".[58]
Many uploaded ambient videos may also be influenced bybiomusic where they featuresounds of nature, though the sounds would be modified withreverbs anddelay units to make spacey versions of the sounds as part of the ambience. Such natural sounds oftentimes include those of abeach,rainforest,thunderstorm andrainfall, among others, withvocalizations of animals such asbird songs being used as well. Pieces containingbinaural beats are common and popular uploads as well, which providemusic therapy andstress management for the listener.[59][60][a]
iTunes andSpotify havedigital radio stations that feature ambient music, which are mostly produced byindependent labels.[5]
Acclaimed ambient music of this era (according toPitchfork magazine) include works byMax Richter,Julianna Barwick,Grouper,William Basinski,Oneohtrix Point Never, andthe Caretaker.[64][65][66][67] In 2011, American composer Liz Harris recording asGrouper released the albumAIA: Alien Observer, listed by Pitchfork at number 21 on their "50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time".[68] In 2011, Julianna Barwick released her first full-length albumThe Magic Place. Heavily influenced by her childhood experiences in a church choir, Barwick loops her wordless vocals into ethereal soundscapes.[69] It was listed at number 30 on Pitchfork's 50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time.[68] After several self-released albums, Buchla composer, producer and performerKaitlyn Aurelia Smith was signed to independent record label Western Vinyl in 2015.[70]
In 2016, she released her second official albumEARS. It paired theBuchla synthesizer with traditional instruments and her compositions were compared toLaurie Spiegel andAlice Coltrane.[71] Kaitlyn has also collaborated with other well-known Buchla performer,Suzanne Ciani.[72]Long Ambients 1: Calm. Sleep. was released by Americanelectronica musicianMoby in 2016, as a free download.[73][74] In March 2019, Moby released a follow-up ambient album,Long Ambients 2.Iggy Pop's 2019 albumFree features ambient soundscapes.[75]Mallsoft, a subgenre ofvaporwave, features various ambient influences, with artists such asCat System Corp. and Groceries exploring ambient sounds typical of malls and grocery stores.[76]In 2019, Canadian composerKyle Bobby Dunn released the 3 hourFrom Here To Eternity album. It was praised byExclaim! magazine who wrote: "Dunn's ability to subsume the subject into his detailed sonic landscapes with minor shifts in the onslaught of drones speaks to this album's ability to impact a wide-ranging listenership. From Here to Eternity serves as a masterful articulation of the power of ambient music."[77]
Ambient house is a musical category founded in the late 1980s that is used to describeacid house featuring ambient music elements and atmospheres.[78] Tracks in the ambient house genre typically featurefour-on-the-floor beats,synth pads, and vocal samples integrated in an atmospheric style.[78]
Ambient house tracks generally lack adiatonic center and feature muchatonality along with synthesized chords. The DutchBrainvoyager is an example of this genre.Illbient is another form of ambient house music.
Ambient industrial is a hybrid genre ofindustrial and ambient music.[79] A "typical" ambient industrial work (if there is such a thing) might consist of evolving dissonant harmonies of metallic drones and resonances, extreme low frequency rumbles and machine noises, perhaps supplemented bygongs, percussive rhythms,bullroarers, distorted voices or anything else the artist might care to sample (often processed to the point where the original sample is no longer recognizable).[79]
Entire works may be based onradio telescope recordings, the babbling of newborn babies, or sounds recorded through contact microphones on telegraph wires.[79]
Ambient pop is a leftfield indie style that developed in the 1980s and 1990s contemporaneously withpost-rock in the first wave, deriving fromindie pop. It incorporates structures that are common toindie music, but extensively explores "electronic textures and atmospheres that mirror the hypnotic, meditative qualities of ambient music", which is also central toindie electronic music.[80] Ambient pop utilizes the musical experimentation ofpsychedelia and the repetitive traits ofminimalism,krautrock andtechno as prevalent influences. It is distinguished by its adoption of "contemporary electronic idioms, includingsampling, although for the most part live instruments continue to define the sound"; examples of bands in the style includeStereolab,Laika andBroadcast.[80]
Dream pop bandSlowdive's 1995 albumPygmalion was a major departure from the band's usual sound, heavily incorporating elements of ambientelectronica and psychedelia with hypnotic, repetitive rhythms,[81] influencing many ambient pop bands and subsequently being regarded as a landmark album in the genre;[82]Pitchfork critic Nitsuh Abebe described the album's songs as "ambient pop dreams that have more in common with [first wave] post-rock [bands] likeDisco Inferno than shoegazers likeRide".[83] The genre continued to stylistically progress in the 2000s, often in conjunction with indietronica.[84]
Ambient techno is a music category emerging in the late 1980s that is used to describe ambient music atmospheres with the rhythmic and melodic elements oftechno.[85] Notable artists includeAphex Twin,B12,Autechre, andthe Black Dog.
Brian Eno's original vision of ambient music as unobtrusive musical wallpaper, later fused with warm house rhythms and given playful qualities by the Orb in the 1990s, found its opposite in the style known as dark ambient. Populated by a wide assortment of personalities—ranging from older industrial and metal experimentalists (Scorn'sMick Harris,Current 93'sDavid Tibet,Nurse with Wound'sSteven Stapleton) to electronic boffins (Kim Cascone/PGR,Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia),Japanese noise artists (K.K. Null,Merzbow), and latter-day indie rockers (Main,Bark Psychosis).
Dark ambient features toned-down or entirely missing beats with unsettling passages of keyboards, eerie samples, and treated guitar effects. Like most styles related in some way to electronic/dance music of the '90s, it's a very nebulous term; many artists enter or leave the style with each successive release.[86] Related styles includeambient industrial (see below) and isolationist ambient.
Drone music is aminimalist[87] genre of music that emphasizes the use ofsustained sounds,[88] notes, ortone clusters calleddrones. It is typically characterized by lengthy compositions featuring relatively slight harmonic variations.La Monte Young, one of its 1960s originators, defined it in 2000 as "the sustained tone branch of minimalism."[89] Elements of drone music have been incorporated in diverse genres such asrock, ambient, andelectronic music.[90][91][87]
Ambient music fused with new-age music styles has an explicit purpose of aidingmeditation and relaxation, or aiding and enabling various alternativespiritual practices, such asalternative healing, yoga practice,guided meditation, orchakra auditing.[92][93] The proponents of new age-ambient music are almost always musicians who create their music expressly for these purposes.[94] To be useful for meditation, the music must have repetitive dynamic andtexture without sudden loudchords or improvisation, which could disturb the meditator. It isminimalist in conception, and musicians in the genre are mostly instrumentalists rather than vocalists.[95]
Subliminal messages are also used in new-age music, and the use of instruments along with sounds of animals (like whales, wolves and eagles) and nature (waterfalls, ocean waves, rain) is also popular. FlautistDean Evenson was one of the first musicians to combine peaceful music with the sounds of nature, launching a genre that became popular for massage and yoga.[96]
Space music, also spelled "Spacemusic", includes music from the ambient genre as well as a broad range of other genres with certain characteristics in common to create the experience of contemplative spaciousness.[97][98][99]
Space music ranges from simple to complex sonic textures sometimes lacking conventional melodic, rhythmic, or vocal components,[100][101] generally evoking a sense of "continuum of spatial imagery and emotion",[102] beneficial introspection, deep listening[103] and sensations of floating, cruising or flying.[104][105]
Space music is used by individuals for both background enhancement and foreground listening, often with headphones, to stimulate relaxation, contemplation, inspiration and generally peaceful expansive moods[106] andsoundscapes. Space music is also a component of many filmsoundtracks and is commonly used inplanetariums, as arelaxation aid and formeditation.[107]
Ambient has been selected by participants from online sleep surveys to aid sleep.[108] The ambient music genre, among other genres, was used in a study pertaining toinsomnia in adults, where it facilitated a large improvement insleep quality for insomnia patients.[109] Participants, who were between 20 and 45 years old, listened toMax Richter's albumSleep, which was originally meant to work as a sleep aid. They used headphones and were able to shut their eyes, but they were instructed to stay in a sitting position so they do not fall asleep. Despite this, one participant fell asleep while listening to the music.[110]
Examples of films withsoundtracks that feature some, or extensive, usage of ambient music include,Forbidden Planet (1956),Solaris (1972),[111]Blade Runner (1982),[111]Dune (1984),[111]Heathers (1988),[111]Akira (1988),[111]Titanic (1997),[112]The Virgin Suicides (1999),[113]Traffic (2000),Donnie Darko (2001),Solaris (2002),The Passion of the Christ (2004),[114]Pride & Prejudice (2005),[111]The Social Network (2010),[111]Her (2013),Enemy (2013),Drive (2011),[115]Interstellar (2014),Gone Girl (2014),[111]The Revenant (2015),Columbus (2017),Mandy (2018),[116]Annihilation (2018),Ad Astra (2019),Chernobyl (2019)[117] andDune (2021),[118] among many others.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)... Originally a 1970s reference to the conjunction of ambient electronics and our expanding visions of cosmic space ... In fact, almost any music with a slow pace and space-creating sound images could be called spacemusic
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