Compositional ambient music
https://www.quora.com/What-is-ambient-music-and-how-do-I-compose-it
Ambient music is about the tone/mood/atmosphere as opposed to the structure and rhythm. The style of music is incredibly subjective and can be inspired by many things. Often, nature is a big inspiration due to the many types of sounds you can hear - for example relaxing noises such as rain fall or chaotic noises such as crashing waves or gale winds. Even everyday sounds can be translated into and used in ambient music composition - like car radios or voices on telephone calls.
“must be as ignorable as it is interesting”
characteristics of ambient music
- tone & timbre. sounds are sculpted over longer timescales
- layers. instead of multiple instruments working in call or response or being different in tone, the layers in the piece of ambient music have a similar tone and blend together well.
- tempo. ambient music does not have a discernible tempo and is fairly irregular, with elements having their own tempo and not being built around a rhythm.
- form. the pieces of music are often long and drawn out as opposed to the normal 3-5 minute length of other genres. there are no verses and choruses but instead sections that fade in and out of each other. ambient music is very gradual, but sometimes builds to a crescendo
- space. ambient music considers the spatial characteristics of music. The layers in ambient music can fill more than just the physical space (eg in surround sound, pitch, and spectral space which is the space between a low note and a high note)
- experimental. the music can sound very random and all over the place. It is explorative and has more depth
elements/tools
- reverberation. gives music an airy feel
- long pauses. to simulate nature
- natural sounds/samples
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