about half of all the electronic music made during the last 50 years was ambient. obviously i made that up but the point is that if you take ambient not in the brian eno sense, but as a catchall label for the billions of hours of harmonious floaty synth music people have recorded from the 70s to now, you have an entire planet on your hands.
yet compared to dance music aren't there considerably fewer subgenres, considerably fewer formal distinctions debated? it's as though there's a prevailing assumption that, even though it's been a thing for arguably longer than electronic beats, ambient is all kind of the same. it's never meaningfully evolved and never will. but i don't think this assumption can be right. so why not fly lower into the planet's atmosphere and survey the terrain, just to check.
admittedly, this might be my problem. maybe there's already more than adequate documentation of this music and i'm just searching for a kind of appraisal that other people aren't interested in. a formalist (and gear-conscious) history insensitive to cultural distinctions. a map informed more by close listening and phenomenology than interviews and oral histories. ambient from the perspective of its audio animation.
to give an idea of what a formalist mapping approach could mean, here are a few parameters one might organize what they're hearing by:
arpeggiated, MIDI grid movement <------> free movement
rigid sounds <------> malleable sounds
frozen <------> hyperkinetic
discrete chord structures <------> blended textural harmony
my interest in revealing the ambient map stems from the feeling that most of it is boring to the point of offense and some of it is amazing. i want to be able to better sort the wheat from the chaff. as some of you know, i think electronic music should not sound like "music" but rather a sci fi environment come to life. that's basically what i mean by audio animation. with ambient, there's the added hope that this environment will be, to use afx's favorite word in the 90s, lush. a cozy and magical "super docile" headspace.
you don't need to share my taste to post in this thread. the stipulations above are just suggestions. it'll just be a space to close listen to specific releases with an eye on the big picture.
yet compared to dance music aren't there considerably fewer subgenres, considerably fewer formal distinctions debated? it's as though there's a prevailing assumption that, even though it's been a thing for arguably longer than electronic beats, ambient is all kind of the same. it's never meaningfully evolved and never will. but i don't think this assumption can be right. so why not fly lower into the planet's atmosphere and survey the terrain, just to check.
admittedly, this might be my problem. maybe there's already more than adequate documentation of this music and i'm just searching for a kind of appraisal that other people aren't interested in. a formalist (and gear-conscious) history insensitive to cultural distinctions. a map informed more by close listening and phenomenology than interviews and oral histories. ambient from the perspective of its audio animation.
to give an idea of what a formalist mapping approach could mean, here are a few parameters one might organize what they're hearing by:
arpeggiated, MIDI grid movement <------> free movement
rigid sounds <------> malleable sounds
frozen <------> hyperkinetic
discrete chord structures <------> blended textural harmony
my interest in revealing the ambient map stems from the feeling that most of it is boring to the point of offense and some of it is amazing. i want to be able to better sort the wheat from the chaff. as some of you know, i think electronic music should not sound like "music" but rather a sci fi environment come to life. that's basically what i mean by audio animation. with ambient, there's the added hope that this environment will be, to use afx's favorite word in the 90s, lush. a cozy and magical "super docile" headspace.
you don't need to share my taste to post in this thread. the stipulations above are just suggestions. it'll just be a space to close listen to specific releases with an eye on the big picture.