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How are looong songs/music recorded?
Have been looking at some of the eleven & twelve hour ambient vids on YouTube, and wondering how they make such long music. Are they “short” tracks that looped? I know some ARE quite repetive so guess they are loops. I’ve been trying (unsuccessfully) to make ambient tracks and, should I get something decent, how would I go about making very long versions?
I have Cubasis 2 and it seems like there is no limit to the lenhth of a track (iPad limitations aside) to how long a traxk could be.
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Take your favorite keyboard and find a nice ambient patch on it. Now put a brick on the keys, hit record in your DAW, and then come back in 12 hours
To sum up not just the recording but also the composition and production techniques of ambient music in four lines is quite a feat, maestro. 🎖️
Most likely a few core patterns are programmed and then chained into a semi-random order using follow actions.
A couple of an 8-16 bar patterns at 20BPM take a while to play thru and then do bunch of copy & paste and the hours start to fly. It could also be 'random generated' based on a few set rules or use a self-modifying step-sequencer to add variation.
AUM with a bunch of generative midi plug-ins could be a good starting point...
I'm seeing a lot more generative long-form ambient stuff come my way for mastering lately. Seems to be something that's taking off a lot more now that we have more tools for it.
Just a heads up that one thing to be aware of is not all OS's, apps, or online streaming sources will support files greater than around 4GB in wav format. A good work around if you run into that is to use AIFF or BWF (Broadcast Wave Files), those usually work ok.
I daresay there are probably very, very few songs worth listening to lasting more than a few hours. Not even in the realm of orchestral works. That's just pushing it. If a composer can't say what they want to say in a span of time which respects their listeners, then they need an editor.
Music can be more passive too though, just background sound while you’re going trough out your day. I actually really miss the old Bloom app for that sort of evolving ambient background noise thing.
You’ve never been to an Indian music gig, have you? They just keep playing all night…
Ah, no big deal. Wagner's "Ring" goes on for 13 hours and he didn't even have a multitrack.
I did say "...there are probably very, very few..."
I'm always amazed at how short many of the classic pop songs of the 50s and 60s are - 2min 30sec or less.
Some of the Buddy Holly tracks are around 2 mins.
Wouldn't it be great if there was an app that could generate the 12 hour file in less than 5 minutes? Then you could make such a beast and never have to listen to it. Win-win. I suspect people use such audio as musical wall paper. The local aquarium has an endless soundtrack that serves just this purpose to heighten the visual experience.
@echoopera has shared a Drambo project that is perfect for this type of project... you may need to substitute apps or FX'es for those he used that you do not own:
https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0oDSSYBbxWoFQhUBj1vARk8Yg#Going_in_to_states
@seachord
There are multiple techniques for making generative systems/patches, which can play indefinitely. Here are a few elements that might get you started:
1) Note generators that incorporate an element of randomness, so something like ZOA or Snakebud.
2) Phasing sequence loops or audio loops, ie of different lengths, so they slowly drift apart and the relationships constantly change. Gauss is ideal for this kind of thing.
3) Long delay lines, like Frippertronics, which gives you a similar kind of phasing, but with slow degradation/fade-outs. Again, Gauss is great for this.
4) Lots of processing with reverbs, delays, distortion etc. Rymdigare and Other Desert Cities are useful for this, as are NeonSilicon's effects.
5) Modulation, preferably with different rates, and randomisation. LFOs, Sample and Hold etc are your friends here.
The long pieces you refer to are not short pieces just being looped (there may well be looped elements, though), there will be constant transitions/modulations/changes (often with a slow rate of change), so the textures constantly shift about.
MiRack (or hardware modular synths) is great for generative patches, as pretty much everything is modulatable, and it has things like long period LFOs, etc. but you can do wonderful things with really simple apps, for example KQ Unotone, in conjunction with freebies like Filterstep, the Blamsoft filter, NeonSilicon's EQs and delays etc, so experimenting with these techniques needn’t be expensive.
If you have MiRack already, Dean from Electronisounds has a nice video on doing a first ambient patch that you might find useful.
You might find that using AUM works better than a linear DAW for this kind of thing, particularly if you use one of the LFO apps to twiddle controls.
Cutting and pasting random 10 minute ambient music sections in a DAW might work. Have fade ins and fade outs in the sections and overlap them to make it sound continuous.
There are iOS apps that you can start and they'll "play forever". The Eno apps and Moodscaper, GuitarScaper etc.