Small gig, impressions and the problem of performing ambient

[Louigi Verona]

So I just returned from a gig me and another musician played at a small gathering. The theme of the evening was "Rain", everybody would read poems and tell stories and their thoughts about rain and we played some ambientish semi-ethnic improvisations.
The guy, a fabulous musician known in classical circles, Antonio Gramsci (yeah, the famous philosopher is his grandfather) was on marimbas and percussion and he also played an instrument he invented himself. I was on flutes and computer. Computer had GNU/Linux where I used Kluppe for playing and mixing loops and also Jack Rack for adding reverb and echo to my mic, through which I played the flutes.

Unfortunately, we did not record the gig - there was no technical way to do that. There may be some photos some time later.

My impressions are dual.

We certainly were the heart of the evening and our contribution turned out to be the main one. Later people would come sit by us, we would give them instruments and everyone would play with us, like a jam. People did not know how to play, but they could play rhythms and bang the marimbas and it was all very nice.

So it was fun and I am happy that I have performed some music - it's been a long time. I also have a short performance planned in November, but I am not sure how fun it will be - there are a lot of limits placed on that, including the time and type of music and how it should be played.

Anyway, the second thing which I thought and which will be the main topic of discussion here is that I find it extremely difficult to perform ambient and here's why.


When I am playing something live, recording it to my computer and knowing that my listeners will listen to the thing in the intimate atmosphere of their headphones or at least home speakers, all is fine.

But when I am on a venue, the intimacy is lost. With it, it takes away the subtle detail which is so important in ambient music, it takes away the tightness of sound, it takes away the rhythm, the slowness of development. Between the sound and the listeners stands the room, the air which diffuses the sound into a cloud of artificial sound, sound that looses all of its magic and becomes just some sound from speakers which stand over there, not part of the environment. Making it louder never helps. Making it quieter only makes it... um... quiet.

In case of many gigs I had where I tried to do ambient, the situation is always the same - the audience expects something to be played over the ambient. In fact, when I hear how it sounds, I understand that by itself it does not stand out.

Once again, making it louder does not help because in order to deliver the intimacy of sound you need to make it way louder. In the end it will just result in loud music, which is not enjoyable. I have been to a couple of "ambient" festivals where it was so loud I left after the first composition.

What can be the solution?

At this moment I do not know.
The most obvious thought is to create a special room for that - with many speakers that would cover the whole room and thus deliver more intimacy without too much loudness. But this is 1. very expensive since you've got to own the venue and basically have it built for the shows and 2. it will limit your performances to it.

The other solution is to play in concert halls with good acoustics. This is of course very good and in November I am planning to test that since I will be playing in a concert hall, not in a small club. I will report my impressions after that. But typically I am not invited to concert halls - at least, not yet. However, last year I played in a concert hall and the sound was much better, of course.


There is, of course, another major problem. And this is a problem of ambient as standalone music.

Generally, people do not understand ambient music. This is a fact that many ambient musicians would not bring up simply because they hate to take the "misunderstood genius" pose. But as a person who is very much into ambient and who has been doing and listening to a lot of such music, I can say that it is so - ambient is largely and fundamentally misunderstood by most people in the world. It is too specific, it is surrounded by stereotypes and the lifestyle of large cities does not welcome any serious music anyway - you either need a song with lyrics or else it is all just labeled a background.

One of the most typical effects that ambient music has on people is that it makes them fall asleep. People say it makes them relaxed. In concert halls same effect is created with classical music - people are not used to focus their attention for long on anything. It requires effort, education and experience. As an experienced ambient person, I can say that ambient music never puts me to sleep - never has, to be honest. I am too occupied with listening to it.

I have in the past raised the topic of how composers deal with ambient music and how many of them generally misinterpret what ambient is, simply labeling any "atmospheric and mysterious sounding" music as ambient. And I also have seen cases when a musician would make serious compositional mistakes and "spoil" the whole thing. For instance, a great group of musicians from a small Russian city has written a formidable work that showed extremely delicate handling of sound and development but was basically wasted by too loud drums and bass. This shifted the attention to drums, created a too pronounced hierarchy in the music and instead of exposing the richness of the sound universe made the album sound simplistic and empty, just some drum music with atmospheric sounds in the background.

How to tackle this I do not know. I am not even sure there is anything one person can do. This is a cultural problem, really, and to me the lack of ambient culture is a serious problem during a performance since I always feel the audience is not right, that people will be bored. And this, of course, is not the best way to be tuned during a concert.

Actually, the concert hall performance I spoke about is held at Union of Composers, annually. And there the audience seems to be more right, people expect this sort of stuff. But on the other hand, the level of understanding ambient (and sound music in general) among composers who perform is disappointing.

First of all, most of them have classical backgrounds and the mix of melodic and sound music is to me absolutely inappropriate and I would also say lousy, very careless. Mixing melodic and sound music is not just a dangerous business, it is simply wrong. It can work once or twice in a specific situation, but as a method it is very poor and mixing melodies with serious sound composition is almost never a good decision.
In case of the Union, I would say that most composers look into the open door and put one foot inside, but never actually enter. They work with sound and record manipulation but still clutch to the melodies and sheet music and their pianos and cellos and this duality shows very much in their music, with the melodic part usually winning over. In fact, the music officially is called smth like "electro-acoustic" music. And this is the name any electronic music is referred to in classical circles all over the world, that is to electronic music they consider serious.
So this is a pity, since I strongly believe that this duality, this mixing of melodic music and sound music is a fundamental mistake, something that seriously stands in the way of focusing on sound music as art.

The second problem basically comes from the first. Sound (ambient) music is not regarded as standalone and most electro-acoustic music is written FOR something, thus making it application art. I understand that many people would argue that a lot of in-depth art is applicative art and it is okay, but to me the depth and the perception differ a lot if you consider something as standalone from the start. Any type of art can be put to an application, this is okay. But many composers start out with sound music as an application.

All in all, I have many times planned to begin writing down the principles of sound music and my experience with it and examples of where it is done well and methods of composition that I have developed (or better say, discovered). Perhaps, this gig will inspire me to finally do so.

And I hope all of the above was interesting to you, reading it.

[Sam_Zen]

Thanks LV, a very interesting article indeed.
It's too early to give an overall comment, there are too many issues passing along, so 1 read isn't enough.

So just some points that triggered my thoughts :
1. This is about a live performance, not about, as said, listening at home to the work.
Playing a track with a laptop is not a performance, or at least a not very interesting one.
As was done with the academical concerts of electronic music in the 70's with a taperecorder on stage.

2. Indeed a confusion about what 'ambient' is. I'm stuck with the concept of 'environment', like
the Airport work by Bryan Eno.
Now, it's the other way around, the result is defined as a certain 'style', which has to be cloned to make 'ambient'.

3. When 1. and 2. come together, there's a big chance of a blurred perspective, and the influence of the classical music approach makes it even worse.
Trying to mix ambient with melodic song elements is a pathetic attempt to avoid boredom.

4. Questionmark : is performing ambient music a concert in the default sense ?
Wouldn't it be better to present these sounds in a room or hall, where people can enter, sit for a while and listen,
and then leave again if they want ?

[Louigi Verona]

Playing a track with a laptop is not a performance, or at least a not very interesting one.
As was done with the academical concerts of electronic music in the 70's with a taperecorder on stage.

Yeah, true. And in the Union they tend to do this - just put a recording, perhaps with a video on the screen. I never do that, all my performances are always... well, performances. Last year I played a midi controller, manipulating stuff in real time and basically people from the audience later told me it was the most memorable thing out of a concert.

This time I am asked to not do any interaction and just "pretend" to play something, but I will not comply with this one - I will play my Tape Loops, since I wrote those apps specifically for this November performance. We'll see how it goes.

2. Indeed a confusion about what 'ambient' is. I'm stuck with the concept of 'environment', like the Airport work by Bryan Eno.
Now, it's the other way around, the result is defined as a certain 'style', which has to be cloned to make 'ambient'.

It can, of course, be both. After all, the word "ambiance" in the English language has a meaning of "environment". So if someone wants to call their music "ambient" or "soundtrack" or whatever - they are free to do so. But in the music field I believe the handling of terms should be more strict.
The concept of environment defined by Eno is valuable because it has a very definite technical method - a music that does not exhibit any special hierarchy between the voices. This is the foundation for the new type of music - form of art, even. And it can be shown that sound music - that is, music that is based on manipulating sound, not on presenting note combinations - tends to be ambient. That is why I often say ambient meaning sound music and vice versa.

Trying to mix ambient with melodic song elements is a pathetic attempt to avoid boredom.

Nicely put. And I would add that this comes out of poor skill at doing ambient music.

4. Questionmark : is performing ambient music a concert in the default sense?
Wouldn't it be better to present these sounds in a room or hall, where people can enter, sit for a while and listen,and then leave again if they want ?

This is a good question.
From my perspective I would say that it depends.
There are many approaches possible to composition in ambient. One of them is to create a piece with a "continuous scheme" - that is when the music is presented as a part of a larger or even potentially endless whole. It does not have the beginning or end and so it does not have any specific "development" that is important to show. Such music is great for an installation.
However, there can be ambient which does not take the endless approach. It will have an intro and the main part and outro and a whole lot of development. In this case it would be better to present such a music in a concert hall setting where people would actually follow the music carefully.

[LPChip]

Interesting article.

I am guilty of one of those who don't fully understand Ambient and thus get bored rather quickly. I like to have distractions like drums to focus on, as I fail to notice the small details that ambient is all about. (Now that I know this, I might start to appreciate ambient more)

But I do think that I can help you with your problems.

If you face the problem that you can only do one thing and people will thus miss another action, maybe you can use something like a loopstation. To see what it is and how it has been used effectively, look up an artist by the name of Dubfx on youtube. He explains his method to his audience. You could maybe use this to get a richer sound experience.

Another option you could do is use EQ to create full sound on certain frequencies. This will give you a "gap" on other frequencies which allows you to make the music louder without getting the "just loud" experience. You could put your details in these gaps to make them noticeable. Also panning can help in this. The reason is, that if you make something louder, your ears will protect itself against the excessive volume and thus make the sound more dull. By only making certain frequencies louder, it will allow you to make the sound louder but still keep those details in place. In fact, you can enhance the details slightly so they remain there.

(I hope this rambling made sense) X)

[Sam_Zen]

Nice you mention the concept of an 'installation', LV.
I've participated in such art manifestations, often together with people of other disciplines.
Composing for this has specific demands, like, as you say, no begin no end, no 'tension envelopes', or solo.
The endless approach is not necessary. If the piece is 30 min. nobody will notice the repeat.

And you're right, if there is development, intro outro, etc, then it's a matter of realtime control.
Then it's a performance, so a concert, so belongs in a venue for that.

LP reminds of an aspect in your article about the volume.
I don't go for the obvious maximum in this.
Presenting ambient has other rules than presenting a song.
Ambient should give the real environment the right to be there, not overrule it.
So one should start with a very low volume, then turn it up slowly until it's embedded in the real world.

[Louigi Verona]

If you face the problem that you can only do one thing and people will thus miss another action, maybe you can use something like a loopstation. To see what it is and how it has been used effectively, look up an artist by the name of Dubfx on youtube. He explains his method to his audience. You could maybe use this to get a richer sound experience.

I will certainly watch this today. Also - I do aim to make what I call an ambient station. And this is why I created my Tape Loops software - so that it would all be visual. In the November concert I plan to use Tape Loops, as this is the concert that triggered me to create the apps.

[Sam_Zen]

I have to seriously experiment with your Tape Loops software yet, but I sure will.

But I still have my doubts about the value for the audience of seeing someone moving a mouse.
Even when this is projected on a big screen.
As a visual, I would prefer seeing a single chosen bitmap during the performance, than some monitor action.

But if, as you mentioned, you're playing live on a flute with a running laptop beside you, that's another story..

[Louigi Verona]

But I still have my doubts about the value for the audience of seeing someone moving a mouse.
Even when this is projected on a big screen.

It's not about moving a mouse, really. It is about seeing the representations of sound. I am not sure how compelling it would be to the audience, there is no way to know but to try.

[LPChip]

But I still have my doubts about the value for the audience of seeing someone moving a mouse.
Even when this is projected on a big screen.

It's not about moving a mouse, really. It is about seeing the representations of sound. I am not sure how compelling it would be to the audience, there is no way to know but to try.

I think the audience is more curious about the sound. Only those with a musical background might have a problem with the way its being presented.

[Louigi Verona]

I think the audience is more curious about the sound.

My experience shows the opposite - to a regular person visuals are more important. He is on a concert. Sound he can get at home.

[LPChip]

I think the audience is more curious about the sound.

My experience shows the opposite - to a regular person visuals are more important. He is on a concert. Sound he can get at home.

People that are on a concert often wants to experience the concert for various reasons.

1. The sound at home never sounds as good as the real thing
2. The atmosphere in the theater is something that you have to have experienced in order to fully enjoy the glory. Its like football. You can watch it at home on the tv, but its just not the same as being there.

[Louigi Verona]

I will do my best to deliver the most pleasant experience during that concert in November - but it will still be experimenting. I will of course tell you all about it!