How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports (2019) | Hacker News Reader

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

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523 pointsjim-jim-jim127 comments

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

~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

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.

It'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.

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.

If 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

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.

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

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.

For the first, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musikalisches_W%C3%BCrfelspi...

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.

Bowie even came up with a software in the 90s called the Verbasizer to further automate his cut-ups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3IKLMgFaDA

There is also a web app version at https://verbasizer.com/

Interesting. An associate of Burroughs, Ian Sommerville, wrote a program in the 1960s to permute lists of words to help Burroughs for similar reasons.

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.

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!)

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.

> 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.

> Music is about tempo and sync. I

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.

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:

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.

I spent my adolescent years listening to Eno and this album in particular while studying, so this means a lot to me. Thanks for sharing.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f38SHzR0HKE

Lets 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=PLCpWLhn2tf...

I was just listening to this last night. So good for getting work done. Too bad he didn't make more.

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.

0: https://web.archive.org/web/20220222224201/https://www.nytim...

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscure_Records

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.

It'll be very good to hear some new tracks.

There’s a few Ambient records. I know this because I have the vinyl records. Did they not release these digitally?

This and Untitled by Sigur Rós[0] are my go-to work albums.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(_)_(album)

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.

I take it every CD contained the same tracks, but each played a recording of a single instrument?

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaireeka

This would be impossible to play on Spotify, without several Spotify accounts. It might explain why these tracks has been mixed together on Spotify.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

Other albums with the same idea: https://rateyourmusic.com/list/fidwell/synchronizing-albums/

>The end result was that the music never sounded the same twice

Or that nobody played it, or bothered more than once :)

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.

https://www.amazon.com/Brian-Enos-Another-Green-World/dp/082... https://www.amazon.com/Music-Airports-Brian-Eno/dp/B0000069C...

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.

https://www.codaworx.com/projects/skys-the-limit-united-airl...

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

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.

Tycho.

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

You may enjoy Patrick O'Hearn - particularly something like Still Standing from the Slow Time album.

Stars of the lid and Steve Roach have a lot of comparable stuff.

Burial (his ambient tracks like State Forest, Forgive), Huerco, Biosphere

Steve Reich was another tape loop pioneer.

I love ambient music. Some favorites in the same corner of the genre as Eno:

Pauline Oliveros - Deep Listening

Virginia Astley - In Gardens Where We Feel Secure

Machinefabriek - Slaapzucht

Biosphere - The Hilvarenbeek Recordings (anything Biosphere is sublime but a lot of it is darker ambient than Eno)

I could go on forever. But check these out.

Also, every release from this label is gold:

http://www.slaapwelrecords.com/

Try the EoN app from Jean-Michel Jarre.

Thanks 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

Milieu's soundtrack to Eufloria, https://milieumusic.bandcamp.com/album/eufloria

You might like https://ambientsleepingpill.com/

Check out the album “Tape Loops” by Chris Walla, artist Loscil, and John Cage’s “In a Landscape”.

KEXP out of Seattle has a good program on Sunday mornings with music that often falls in this genre. https://www.kexp.org/shows/pacific-notions/

Also, the blog Headphone Commute has some excellent ambient showcases. Suggest finding their year-end lists and listening through: https://headphonecommute.com/ https://headphonecommute.com/best-of-lists/headphone-commute...

In the 1990s Virgin released a 2 CD sampler followed by a whole series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Brief_History_of_Ambient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Ambient_series

The first pair of CDs is basically a "who's who" of ambient artists up to that point.

BT did a pair of ambient albums in 2019 that I really enjoy:

Everything You’re Searching For Is Between Here and You

I also appreciate Brain FM [0]. It makes it easy to dial in background music that matches my mood and activity.

[0] https://www.brain.fm

« Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2 »

Vol. 1 is not really ambient but is a masterpiece nonetheless.

Check out Astral Industries (https://www.astralindustries.co.uk/) and Silent Season (http://www.silentseason.com/) - this is another good place to "dig" for ambient stuff https://daily.bandcamp.com/best-ambient - cheers!

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)

Biosphere for sure. Also William Basinski who is somewhat hated but if you love endless loops its great.

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.

Great suggestions, to which I would add Marty Hicks.

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.

There's also mainstream artists/series like:

The Orb

KLF (Chill Out)

Tipper

Irresistible Force / Mixmaster Morris

Future Sound of London

Higher Intelligence Agency

Sun Electric

Vermont

Erased Tapes (label)

Apollo (label)

Armadillo (label)

12K (label)

Pop Ambient (series)

Some (perhaps) less-known: Masayoshi Fujita, Yutaka Hirose, Void

Plus 10k+ electronic music artists that dabble in ambient / chill out.

Self-plug: I DJ 2-3x month for Sunday Sundowns with The Ambient Mafia

Some great choices. I’m gonna pile in with my own suggestions, as it’s been a topic for me this week. Specific works in brackets:

Ryuichi Sakamoto (Async LP, collabs with Alva Noto)

Kelly Moran

Burial (1st half of Tunes 2011-2019 LP)

Oneohtrix Point Never (Returnal, R plus 7 LPs)

Kara Lis-Coverdale

Harold Budd

Huerco S (For Those Of You.. LP)

Steve Hauschildt

GAS

Laurel Halo (Raw Silk Uncut Wood LP)

Malibu

Loscil

Hiroshi Yoshimura

Kareem Lofty

Ulla Straus

Sky H1

Johnny Jewel

Roedelius (Einfluss LP)

Dedekind kut

You might try Deus Arrakis by Klaus Schulze https://youtu.be/UPCq1o4yvow

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)

Look into Japanese environmental music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx7CyMZVhHY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9UtpJ2iAQA

Jordan De La Sierra

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kGay5yTzELiOx8...

Madis, Sea of Tranquility, Ambient Edit (2020) is really good.

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 :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icnjrONRCdQ&list=OLAK5uy_lxK...

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.

not quite like eno but still great ambient album, green by hiroshi yoshimura: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx7CyMZVhHY

I like Eno, Eluvium and Helios and these are some artists that have similar music I’ve found that I didn’t see mentioned so far:

Ryuichi Sakamoto (sample piece: solari)

Roedelius (sample piece: A Short Walk in the Hills)

Vangelis (sample piece: Memories of Green)

Jun Fukamachi - Quark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9UtpJ2iAQA

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.

Kyle Bobby Dunn (apparently he's done some unkind things in the past, but the music stands alone): https://open.spotify.com/album/2NVB7DIA1wTUEM7KmXnWeZ

Hotel Neon: https://open.spotify.com/album/4qpdELAzEbL1nI8fvWtLLE

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.

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.

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=...

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.

Ulrich Schnauss (a bit more of a beat, but still extremely minimal) - Far Away Trains Passing By, A Strangely Isolated Place.

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 slightly different flavor of ambient, but I love this playlist. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0FRsEBJWjCWOyia0Yyz7ak?si=...

Very musical ambient compared to Eno but I love this currently: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2aGCFk3Mvhs9Am7JHwoyRr?si=Ci...

This free stream:

http://echoesofbluemars.org/

various artist including Brian Eno. Listening to the bluemars stream 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.

[0] https://musicforprogramming.net/

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.

More soundscapey: Warmth, 36, Azure State, Purl, Poemme, Hilyard

Other ambient I like: Global Communication, Balmorhea, Marconi Union

David Sylvian & Holger Czukay produced two wonderful ambient albums together in the 80s...

Plight & Premonition - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plight_%26_Premonition

Flux + Mutability - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_%2B_Mutability

Couple of articles about their collaboration: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/david-sylvian-holger-cz... | https://thequietus.com/articles/24916-david-sylvian-holger-c...

This 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).

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

The language is probably Haskell.

Nothing to fix. The distortion sounds good.

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

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.

> 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?

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.

I really like working to this kind of music. Is there anything out there in the internet that generates infinite Eno-style ambient music?

https://www.flowful.app/ Can't promise Eno quality, but flowful claims something similar

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32149989

https://play.generative.fm/browse

Endel https://endel.io/ is also a good alternative for generative music.

Love this album. Got into the habit of listening to it while waiting in the Sea-tac terminal for early morning flights.

Dumb 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?

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."

Rivers Cuomo, Weezer frontman, is doing work in Python:

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/

"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!"

What luck! I have just recently been listening to all of Eno's Ambient albums. Thank you!

This is my goto music for helping getting calm and to sleep after bed time stories.

Incredible how Brian Eno was able to pioneer this style of music

Is there a playlist of his music on Spotify? Otherwise someone should make it.

https://open.spotify.com/artist/7MSUfLeTdDEoZiJPDSBXgi

Thank you.

I wonder if there is something similar for elevator music?

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