An Intro

I make music.


Whenever you hear someone say that, what do you usually think of? Do thoughts of a group of kids playing their rock instruments in a garage come to mind? Do you envision someone playing a piano or a violin to a perspective audience? Do you think of someone staring at a computer screen, dragging green bars around that represent chords of a digital instrument while they rearrange blocks on a digital dark-gray canvas, and then press a Play button to test it?

Now, when you hear this, which of those three do you think is the most likely scenario?

Though this song is not conventional, listen to it carefully. Allow your mind to wander and create visual scenarios for this song on its own. For best effect, try to remove yourself from any other auditory and/or visual distractions. Turn the lights down, if not off entirely, and just listen. If you find yourself lacking the patience to just listen, then you may allow yourself to read or view something, be it from a physical source or off the internet. Just make sure there's no other audio involved. (though I find that normal speech doesn't detract from the experience too much) Once you feel you have listened for long enough, scroll down some to see the basal image that inspired this song.

The song is titled Whitecreek. It was inspired by the image above, taken in the winter of last year. (February 2011)

Assuming that you didn't scroll ahead too soon, what came to mind before you saw this image? Now that you have seen it, do you feel that your vision came anywhere close to this image, or the name of the title? Did you enjoy the song, or were you bored by it? Do you think that the song added to or detracted from your local atmosphere? Did you turn it off early, or did you let it loop for a bit? If you were reading and/or listening to someone speak, do you feel that your mental imagery was altered more by the song, or the words? Which were you paying more attention to?

(keep in mind that there are no right or wrong positions to come to regarding this manner)

The song linked to above is formally classified as Ambient.

Ambient music, as coined by the father of the genre and not to be confused with the term of ambience, refers to music that is soft and unobtrusive by nature. The name comes from the Latin word ambire, which means 'to surround'. Instead of acting to grab your attention, it instead serves as a backdrop, and helps to enhance the mood of a setting. And, due to my particular tastes in music, it is my obsession.

At least to me, it is the penultimate in emotional manipulating, and is second to none for fuel to the imagination. It is music at its core. In order to demonstrate this further, I refer to this track, written and composed by master Brian Eno in the late seventies.

Notice that this song is nothing more than recordings of a choir, paced in a non-structured fashion. This is a demonstration of how an extremely simple and minimalistic track can be made so powerful when tuned just right. It is songs like these that inspire me. They help me out of pits of depression, and help me get into flows of creativity more easily. I've practically become addicted to them at this point, since I find it more difficult to sleep at night without my nocturnal playlist of long-form ambient songs. In fact, I love it so much, that I came to eventually start writing my own, as you saw with the first example.

My first official track was made and released on January 6th, 2009. Most of my attempts to make songs fail, as they would naturally, and the ones that succeed usually derive from other things I've listened to, and others from things I have thought about. Songs with good ideas and chords typically tend to survive better than those that do not, especially in the ambient genre.

If you still do not understand my devotion to ambient music, then please take a moment of your time to listen to this particular song, by America's ambient forte, Steve Roach:

If you share my fascination, or are at least interested in the topic, then please read on, and keep this blog in mind.  I would also highly suggest commenting, to leave suggestions and thoughts.