Why is ambient super popular (for iOS Producers)?

michael_m

@MrSmileZ said:
but yea I can make it with my peen on a touchscreen

I think you misunderstand why it’s called a ‘touch screen’

jwmmakerofmusic

@MrSmileZ said:
but yea I can make it with my peen on a touchscreen

Well...that's one way to ensure nobody steals your ipad. 🤢

shinyisshiny

@jwmmakerofmusic said:

@shinyisshiny said:
A.M.B.I.E.N.T: Amateur Music By Inexperienced Enthusiasts, No Talent.

Those are fightin words, pal! 😂 Kidding, lol. I'm definitely inexperienced with Ambient than other genres I produce, but that's okay. It's all in practice, research, and knowing which reverbs fit the best for the given piece of Ambient music that can cover up any mistakes. 🤣

yah, im just feeding the trolls. Im a huge fan of ambient. majority of stuff up on my youtube is "ambient" or some form of it. The cool thing about ambient, is there are so many ways it can go. Two of my all time favorite albums are some variation of Ambient, and they are completely different from each other.

jwmmakerofmusic

@shinyisshiny said:

@jwmmakerofmusic said:

@shinyisshiny said:
A.M.B.I.E.N.T: Amateur Music By Inexperienced Enthusiasts, No Talent.

Those are fightin words, pal! 😂 Kidding, lol. I'm definitely inexperienced with Ambient than other genres I produce, but that's okay. It's all in practice, research, and knowing which reverbs fit the best for the given piece of Ambient music that can cover up any mistakes. 🤣

yah, im just feeding the trolls. Im a huge fan of ambient. majority of stuff up on my youtube is "ambient" or some form of it. The cool thing about ambient, is there are so many ways it can go.

Exactly! Ambient is such a wide vast genre of (non?) music that encompasses a lot of variety. The amateur Ambient producer will record a sound, stretch it in PaulXStretch, slap on a reverb, and call it a day. The high-level producers will carefully consider what sounds they wish to use and use them in interesting, fascinating ways.

Some producers will lay out the sounds on a timeline in a DAW and use automation to shape and sculpt the source materisl. Others like to get their hands dirty and sculpt the sounds live. I'm more of the latter sort, with AUM as my usual canvas, but I may attempt the former at some point.

And now that Koala has mixing busses, I can even sculpt my sounds live in that environment!

Two of my all time favorite albums are some variation of Ambient, and they are completely different from each other.

Exactly! No two artists will create Ambient the same way. By the way, what are the albums? (Maybe you listed them above already, but I can't be arsed to trudge through the mire to find the gems. 😂)

Svetlovska

“ When I say 'musician,' I wouldn't apply it to myself as a synthesizer player, or 'player' of tape recorders, because I usually mean someone with a digital skill that they then apply to an instrument. I don't really have that, so strictly speaking I'm a non-musician. None of my skills are manual, they're not to do with manipulation in that sense, they're more to do with ingenuity, I suppose." - Saint Brian Eno

If it’s good enough for him…

shinyisshiny

@jwmmakerofmusic

async from Ryuichi Sakamoto. incredibly moving album, expertly crafted, from one of the greatest.
https://open.spotify.com/album/2OKN3NwlITzfVpDJecA4Z3?si=nVzfCC0SRHa_QBT_up4v9A

and

https://open.spotify.com/album/6zmjuahViUThOMvruPhffI?si=o7Be037oRwKaIYMl-PeJHA
Glitchy, experimental, subby, noisey, distorted ambient techno.

Both of these albums make me feel a deep sense of longing, unease, joy and sorrow.

Luxthor

Danny_Mammy

@Svetlovska said:
“ When I say 'musician,' I wouldn't apply it to myself as a synthesizer player, or 'player' of tape recorders, because I usually mean someone with a digital skill that they then apply to an instrument. I don't really have that, so strictly speaking I'm a non-musician. None of my skills are manual, they're not to do with manipulation in that sense, they're more to do with ingenuity, I suppose." - Saint Brian Eno

If it’s good enough for him…

i do think it's interesting that both Eno and Harold Budd did not see themselves as musicians and more as artists in regard to 'ambient' a term Budd hated coincidently.

Svetlovska

I interviewed Harold Budd in my time as a music technology journo. A fine and intelligent man.

HotStrange

@Luxthor said:

😂😂😂

HotStrange

@Svetlovska said:
I interviewed Harold Budd in my time as a music technology journo. A fine and intelligent man.

No way! That’s super cool. Seems like a good guy.

Svetlovska

It was an interesting time. Budd, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Ryiuchi Sakamoto, Eno, of course, the crossover success for Philip Glass the movie Koyaanisqatsi achieved, Michael Nyman’s soundtracks for The Draughtsman’s Contract, A Zed and Two Noughts etcetera, and even at the more whimsical end, Simon Jeffe’s Penguin Cafe Orchestra… lots of people operating in that avant ambient space for a while there, and achieving a degree of mainstream success with it, too. Informed my lifelong interest in the form(s).

HotStrange

@Svetlovska said:
It was an interesting time. Budd, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Ryiuchi Sakamoto, Eno, of course, the crossover success for Philip Glass the movie Koyaanisqatsi achieved, Michael Nyman’s soundtracks for The Draughtsman’s Contract, A Zed and Two Noughts etcetera, and even at the more whimsical end, Simon Jeffe’s Penguin Cafe Orchestra… lots of people operating in that avant ambient space for a while there, and achieving a degree of mainstream success with it, too. Informed my lifelong interest in the form(s).

All great musicians for sure. I think a lot of people don’t realize how vast and storied ambient music can be. I’ve always been more in the industrial side (Throbbing Gristle, Coil, Swans, Cabaret Voltaire, etc) but I do love some good ambient. Budd in particular did some amazing stuff. Eno of course did as well.

Gavinski

. > @HotStrange said:

@Luxthor said:

😂😂😂

Spot on haha

BroCoast

@Svetlovska said:
It was an interesting time. Budd, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Ryiuchi Sakamoto, Eno, of course, the crossover success for Philip Glass the movie Koyaanisqatsi achieved, Michael Nyman’s soundtracks for The Draughtsman’s Contract, A Zed and Two Noughts etcetera, and even at the more whimsical end, Simon Jeffe’s Penguin Cafe Orchestra… lots of people operating in that avant ambient space for a while there, and achieving a degree of mainstream success with it, too. Informed my lifelong interest in the form(s).

My parents used to always play the Penguin Cafe Orchestra albums and sit me in front of this as a kid:

The opening theme still slaps.

Svetlovska

@HotStrange : The mag I worked on specialised in pretty much anything left field (probably why we went out of business so fast!), but it meant my editor and me could put whatever we wanted to in it, meet our heroes, and get paid (a bit) for doing so. So we had the Cabs, Young Gods, Foetus and Coil alongside the , er, tasteful stuff . I was at the same uni as Geoff (aka John Balance) from Coil, knew him slightly as the bands we were in went to some of the same parties, and did the interview with him a few years later when he was living with Sleazy… a beautiful boy, sadly missed.

Simon

@Birdpie said:
there are even people here not knowing what a phase switch does, but doing youtube tutorials about sound.
how much more ridiculous can it get?

100%!

We need to bring back flogging to keep these YouTube Johnnies in their place!

Simon

@OnfraySin said:
My three childs in a boring afternoon overpass any of this.

The only one of those I've seen "in the flesh" is Blue Poles and it is about 20 feet long and 6 feet high - quite large.

I doubt that your "three childs" would be able to create a painting like that without giving up from boredom or succumbing to the urge to add their favourite cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse or Pluto into the art work which would, of course, create significant copyright problems.

Disney is well known for being very protective of their intellectual property, including their copyrighted characters, logos, and designs. If your "three childs" used copyrighted material without permission it could be considered copyright infringement and result in legal action.

What made Pollock such a master was his ability to create stunning paintings without ever having to defend a single copyright infringement claim. Plus, he could start a painting after lunch and have the whole splodgy mess finished before tea time. And sell it for ten million quid. Let's see your "three childs" do that!

ervin

@jwmmakerofmusic said:

@Gavinski said:
By the way, I think I remember that someone mentioned earlier that they thought the OP wanted to have poke fun at ambient, or denigrate it in some way, is that right? I just want to throw in my 2 cents that, having gone back and read the original comment, I don't see any criticism of ambient in the original post. More likely it was a genuine question. This forum does lean towards the ambient more than you would expect to find in a polling sample of random people, and that is a question very much worth exploring.

This! 👆 💯

In that spirit, I'll comment on the original question and not on the"What is music/art?" discussion it evolved into.

While I agree there is plenty of good and bad in all genres, I think the popularity of ambient in these parts does have at least a bit to do with how it can be produced with relatively little effort (it can be - not that it always is).

We tend to become less and less patient in general, leaning more and more toward instant gratification. The way I see it, learning music theory, chords, instruments etc. takes time and you can't really produce what most of us would recognise as "songs" without at least some such knowledge. But you can absolutely produce something that you can then call ambient; we even have iOS apps that do it for you at the tap of a button.

This is an easy to see, and very practical reason imho.

You understand I'm not passing judgment here. Great is great, whatever the genre.

All I'm saying is that at the simpler/easier end of the ladder, where most iOS producers statistically are, it is clearly less effort to produce something that passes as "ambient" than something that passes as a "song" or a "symphony". And that's fine, isn't it, we're here to enjoy ourselves after all.

HotStrange

@Svetlovska said:
@HotStrange : The mag I worked on specialised in pretty much anything left field (probably why we went out of business so fast!), but it meant my editor and me could put whatever we wanted to in it, meet our heroes, and get paid (a bit) for doing so. So we had the Cabs, Young Gods, Foetus and Coil alongside the , er, tasteful stuff . I was at the same uni as Geoff (aka John Balance) from Coil, knew him slightly as the bands we were in went to some of the same parties, and did the interview with him a few years later when he was living with Sleazy… a beautiful boy, sadly missed.

Oh that’s awesome! How long did you work there? Man Coil is one of my favorites, I’m pretty jealous lol wish their entire discography was on Spotify. A couple of crucial albums are missing which sucks.

I miss the days of weird magazines lol I’m sad it’s a dying format, but I get it. Sounds like a pretty sweet gig. When I was still in college (never finished) I had planned to work for a magazine or as an editor but clearly that never happened 😂

Luxthor

@ervin said:

@jwmmakerofmusic said:

@Gavinski said:
By the way, I think I remember that someone mentioned earlier that they thought the OP wanted to have poke fun at ambient, or denigrate it in some way, is that right? I just want to throw in my 2 cents that, having gone back and read the original comment, I don't see any criticism of ambient in the original post. More likely it was a genuine question. This forum does lean towards the ambient more than you would expect to find in a polling sample of random people, and that is a question very much worth exploring.

This! 👆 💯

In that spirit, I'll comment on the original question and not on the"What is music/art?" discussion it evolved into.

While I agree there is plenty of good and bad in all genres, I think the popularity of ambient in these parts does have at least a bit to do with how it can be produced with relatively little effort (it can be - not that it always is).

We tend to become less and less patient in general, leaning more and more toward instant gratification. The way I see it, learning music theory, chords, instruments etc. takes time and you can't really produce what most of us would recognise as "songs" without at least some such knowledge. But you can absolutely produce something that you can then call ambient; we even have iOS apps that do it for you at the tap of a button.

This is an easy to see, and very practical reason imho.

You understand I'm not passing judgment here. Great is great, whatever the genre.

All I'm saying is that at the simpler/easier end of the ladder, where most iOS producers statistically are, it is clearly less effort to produce something that passes as "ambient" than something that passes as a "song" or a "symphony". And that's fine, isn't it, we're here to enjoy ourselves after all.

I read Gav and your post, and it would be fantastic to sit at some rustic plaza coffee bar and argue to the end of time. But the final assessment would still be that Gav is just a polite gentleman, I’m too sensitive, and you don’t like ambient music.

“You understand I'm not passing judgment here.”

id_23

Bananambient?

Slush

Here you go.

hghon

The next drone synth has to have a banana theme/background now

Grandbear

Gavinski

@Simon said:

@OnfraySin said:
My three childs in a boring afternoon overpass any of this.

The only one of those I've seen "in the flesh" is Blue Poles and it is about 20 feet long and 6 feet high - quite large.

I doubt that your "three childs" would be able to create a painting like that without giving up from boredom or succumbing to the urge to add their favourite cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse or Pluto into the art work which would, of course, create significant copyright problems.

Disney is well known for being very protective of their intellectual property, including their copyrighted characters, logos, and designs. If your "three childs" used copyrighted material without permission it could be considered copyright infringement and result in legal action.

What made Pollock such a master was his ability to create stunning paintings without ever having to defend a single copyright infringement claim. Plus, he could start a painting after lunch and have the whole splodgy mess finished before tea time. And sell it for ten million quid. Let's see your "three childs" do that!

😂 😂 😂​

Prog1967

@Grandbear said:

"Tape and his two guns"

Luxthor

@Grandbear said:

Hahahaha! 🤣

drez

What I find fascinating about people that say "it's easy to do ambient" and "my dog could do it" is that they never post their attempt at doing that for real. Please...post your ambient. If it's easy to crank out ambient that's as good as the most popular stuff, then please link your work here. I would love to hear how easy it is to do, how long it took, and the tools you used. If it's all just whatever drenched in reverb, then let us put that to the test so we can be amazed with some more great ambient.

colorsinspace

Speaking of Ambient this is a great thread over on Muff Wiggler.

https://www.modwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=276353&start=425