After my tutorial with Milo and being recommended Brian Eno and his ambient project music for airports, I decided to look into this project and how it was made, as well as ambient music. I’m curious to see the differences and similarities to minimalistic music by Steve Reich.
I’ve been listening to this project over the last few days and weeks and found it very peaceful. I’m not sure if this is early ambient music or perhaps one of the earliest pieces but it does spark interest for me to look further. I can imagine creating similar ideas with my own field recordings. How can I present field recordings in a way that brings attention to issues? Or a creative composition, positive reinforcement through enjoying something?
How was music for airports made?
https://reverbmachine.com/blog/deconstructing-brian-eno-music-for-airports/
I found an in-depth blog discussing the famous Ambient 1: Music for Airports project.
This project was released in 1978, although not the first ambient project it was the first to have ambient in the title and explicitly be ambient music. This project was also one of the projects that Eno continued to research into generative music and tape loops. He was interested in systems that made music, to set up parameters and let the systems create the outcome.
The article goes on to say that this project is a continuation of Eno’s ideas with tape loops dating back to 1972. Where Eno would play guitar loops playing over each other from two tape machines that would go in and out of phase, creating delay and time differences. This reminds me of my previous research with Reich and his piece Come Out.
The particular piece I’m referring to was done by using a whole series of very long tape loops, like fifty, sixty, seventy feet long. There were twenty-two loops. One loop had just one piano note on it. Another one would have two piano notes. Another one would have a group of girls singing one note, sustaining it for ten seconds. There are eight loops of girls’ voices and about fourteen loops of piano.
I just set all of these loops running and let them configure in whichever way they wanted to, and in fact the result is very, very nice. The interesting thing is that it doesn’t sound at all mechanical or mathematical as you would imagine. It sounds like some guy is sitting there playing the piano with quite intense feeling. The spacing and dynamics of “his” playing sound very well organized. That was an example of hardly interfering at all.“
Brian Eno
Brian explains here how he composed some songs in the album, the long tape loops and letting them run, letting the system figure out what works in whatever way. Generative systems were clearly an important part of his work, this does remind me of soundscapes and I would say that soundscapes have similar aspects to this. Modern-day soundscapes are generative systems laid out by humans left to create themselves.
Graphic Scores
Later on, the article describes the graphic scores that would come with the vinyl of this record. Brian Eno created these scores for others to perform and play the record if they wanted to. He made sure to create these as he felt it was for non-musicians. That if his work was generative how could normal musical notation work for it?
I also found this short writing by Brain Eno where he explains ambient music and the ideas behind this album he created and the other 3 that accompanies the first one. I’m interested in these ideas he has on ambience and the generative systems, I will search if there is any essays or further writings by him.
I want to create some tape loops and graphic scores and experiment with my field recordings within it, perhaps making some sort of ambience minimalistic track?