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Why is ambient super popular (for iOS Producers)?
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There are definitely some bot posts here but I don't think I've seen any about ambient. With the recent increase in bot posts on the forum, it's surely only a matter of time though 😂
A lot of good points in this thread so I don't know if I'm adding anything new, but agree that Ambient isn't 'easy'. It takes a lot of skill (that I don't have) to keep a listener engaged with an evolving soundscape without melody and harmony to help.
The diverse nature of workflows on iOS lend themselves to experimentation, and given its so easy to lie on a couch with an iPad with headphones on, it doesn't feel like work.
l wouldn't do the same amount of noodling around if sat at a desk with a screen in front of me and speakers either side for sure.
I think, therefore I ambient.
@sevenape : I want that on a T shirt!
Here's a pic of me rocking the classic rising high records tee in '93, they are still available I think
And maybe an 'I don't think therefore I ambient' version for the hataz...lol
Does anyone know Thom Brennan? (I believe he and Steve Roach did some things together).
He does some exceptional ambient.
I bought his ‘Silver’ album years ago https://thombrennan.bandcamp.com/album/silver
This thread is disrespectful and cringe-worthy. It looks like the OP's intention was to mock the iOS platform as a whole. Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know.
"I can do perfect rock’n’roll crap on my ’80s Yamaha PS3, hitting the ‘Rock’ button and mingling power chords with two fingers."
"My grandma does mumble rap every morning (talking without teeth), just steering a cup of tea, and the spoon does great reverb every time it touches the ceramic. And she is better than 50% of everything mumbled by the mainstream."
We can talk nonsense about everything; I could write an entire essay of negativity about every piece of art in existence. The tree needs hunderd years to grow strong and magnificent; fools need 5 minutes to destroy it.
Let's be honest, OP has form when it comes to cringeworthy threads, sadly
Heres my 2 cents :
Music is very often a counter reaction to what is going on in the world. World is pretty crazy right now and everyone can use some ambient music to rest their mind.
Exactly. Considering it’s a forum of musicians, you’d think we’d be more respectful towards other genres, but I guess that’s not the case. I know the OP uses iOS quite a bit so I don’t think that was the intention (who knows) but it at least feels like it was made to mock anyone that likes and/or makes ambient/drone music. And as Gav said, OP has historically had some cringe opinions.
And the comments about not needing any musical knowledge to make is ambient is just laughably ignorant. Imagine letting someone who’s never played music before in their lives into your studio and saying “okay make a 30 minute ambient piece”. Not gonna happen lol.
Yep... There is definitely a lot of mediocre ambient out there, so I can kind of understand the hate, but it takes skill and taste to make good stuff
For sure. But even then you need to at least know how a DAW works. A lot of the comments here made it seem as simple as standing up and walking. But even to make really really shitty ambient you need some music knowledge.
IMVHO the 'skill' is in your choices. Knowing what to keep, what to bin. What sounds good. What doesn't. And yes, exactly as @Gavinski said: Taste. You don't need to be a virtuoso to spot a killer melody. And it doesn't matter whether that melody was auto generated or played on your Steinway Grand with decades of practice beneath the fingertips.
The tools we have available to us on the iPad make Ambient a particularly easy genre to get into. Ambient is also relatively easy to make sound good. Even if it's boring and turgid, making an ambient piece sound professional is pretty easy with the tools we have available. You can put together something and master it yourself in a way that can sound pretty much indistinguishable from many commercial ambient releases from an overall sound point of view, all on an iPad.
It's much harder to, say, record and mix a rock song and have it sound anything other than an amateur demo. And it's MUCH harder to record and mix a great vocal than it is to make an instrumental. Speaking from my personal experience anyway. Your skills might contradict that, which is cool too. I'm sure there are some rockers amongst us that can't make ambient for toffee. And if you are recording a rock band professionally, you're almost certainly not using an iPad to record it all. Wheres there aren't many if any compromises to making Ambient on an iPad on a technical level.
Does that make Rock better or harder than Ambient? Of course not. It's probably harder if not just as hard to make a great Ambient track as you have forgone much of what makes contemporary music so popular. Without the beat and the hooks and the lyrics you can sing along to you have to keep somebody's attention in different ways. And that's not easy. Ambient also rewards a certain kind of confident bravery. To be able to make a piece where not much is actually happening as not much needs to. It's very easy as a 'producer' to keep adding stuff. It's very hard to know when enough is enough. Personally I alway try to keep it simple but end up chucking the kitchen sink at it anyway Which is probably why I'm typing this instead of sitting on a tour bus draped in groupies and soaked in stale champagne...
I'm personally incapable of adhering to a genre. I don't even know what 'genre' my own music is. I just select the "electronic" option in soundclound as I really, honestly don't have a clue, and therefore I have very little interest in what labels are assigned to music I like. I don't care what you call it, if it's good it's good.
We should all be happy for others to share their tastes without feeling that it diminishes ours. We should all know that we have better taste than everybody else. Because it's our taste and it's taken a lifetime to develop. It really shouldn't bother us when somebody hates something we love if we have confidence in our own taste.
Even when our taste is appalling.
And ultimately I'd rather make music that just one person loved than make something one million people thought was "OK".
A great post as usual!
Ambient is not music, is an onanism exercise
Sorry, my friend, but I do not agree on this one. The truth is that there is less mediocre ambient than any other more popular genre out there because of the statistics alone. I will argue that those other genre musicians actually envy beautiful, simple soundscapes, ASMR relaxing, and cures for the mind. 🫶
"ambient is not music"
maybe thats the point. alot of those noise tools are like "how do i put that in a musical context?" not at all, because its background noise.
State Azure blows my mind, I’m a huge fan.
i'm here semi-retired from psy but have multiple releases with diff labels and played at festivals
Why is necroposting super popular (for iOS Producers)?
ambient music in the non-professional field attracts a lot of people due to the ease of making and fiddling with sounds as enjoyment as opposite to the grind of learning say a piano or trumpet and the theory which goes with it.
The eurorack space for ambient sounds is almost like a personal meditation which i also enjoy myself.
When i study Bach it's a long, long grind before any sort of true meditation.
Wow... now next step is inevitable .. give some examples of your production, really interested to hear..
He amazing ... also Substan has some mind blowing amazing ambient/chillout content
"Mediocre Ambient" is my favourite genre.
100% agree. I’m not usually an ambient cat, but this week Jogging House and The Washington Monument absolutely carried me. And Lullatone soundtracked bedtime for almost a year after my daughter was born.
Great picture! Reminds me of younger days. Gigging until 1:00am. Going out to Dennys afterward. Good times. Good friends. Good music. Rock on!
I have a strong background in visual art, and for me, there is no distinction in quality regarding the noise and sound. Noise is just like ‘desaturated’ color; it’s the fundamental part of any music genre.
Only laymen can think that noise is not the sound and ambient music is not the music.
i respect your opinion, mine is different.
sorry🤷🏻♂️
I like ambient because it’s mostly boring.
At my age, I don’t want any agitation.