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Deconstructing Brian Eno's Music for Airports

https://reverbmachine.com/blog/deconstr ... bhCYRTbVAE

As a pioneer in ambient and generative music, I have always been a fan of Brian Eno. Hmm, that doesn’t sound right? Eno is the pioneer, not me, I am simply an unworthy follower and practitioner. Interesting article about his process, nonetheless.

I have been doing some generative experiments of my own using Ableton. I am wondering now how Eno decided on the lengths of his loops? Random? Experience? Defined relationships? I am trying different mathematical formulae myself.

That was a really cool read, thanks for posting. Despite knowing Eno has experimented with generative music for a while, I didn’t realize Music For Airports was all generative, especially off such short loops. Fascinating.

Fascinating indeed! Thanks for sharing this.

my bloody television wrote: ↑

Mon Jul 15, 2019 12:09 pm

That was a really cool read, thanks for posting. Despite knowing Eno has experimented with generative music for a while, I didn’t realize Music For Airports was all generative, especially off such short loops. Fascinating.

I only found out in the past year when it was referenced in an article about his more recent work with generative systems.

That was superb, thanks for posting

Very interesting article, thanks a lot for that.

D

Thanks for this, I really enjoyed reading it, right up my alley.

It's interesting to compare Eno's approach against Reich's use of basically the same technique in pieces like Violin Phase. Because the time differences in Reich's works are much tighter, the effect is more of a textural thing than the melodies/harmonies that are generated by Eno's loops.

I'm not sure that the comment about Basinski is entirely on the mark, as to my ears Basinski did not set loops against each other to generate emergent phenomena but simply relied on the gradual deterioration of a single loop, very effectively of course.

I came up with some interesting results using loops of guitar snipped out of recordings and subjected to Reich's kind of process - one slightly longer loop repeated against the original until they pass through a cycle of phase and line up again. There are all kinds of unexpected things cropping up in there!

fuzzjunkie wrote: ↑

Mon Jul 15, 2019 9:34 am

I have been doing some generative experiments of my own using Ableton. I am wondering now how Eno decided on the lengths of his loops? Random? Experience? Defined relationships? I am trying different mathematical formulae myself.

Do you have any examples of your work easily available? I love this kind of thing.

mezcalhead wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 16, 2019 12:25 pm

Thanks for this, I really enjoyed reading it, right up my alley.

I'm not sure that the comment about Basinski is entirely on the mark, as to my ears Basinski did not set loops against each other to generate emergent phenomena but simply relied on the gradual deterioration of a single loop, very effectively of course.

I think you’re correct here. That was my understanding as well.

fuzzjunkie wrote: ↑

Mon Jul 15, 2019 9:34 am

I have been doing some generative experiments of my own using Ableton. I am wondering now how Eno decided on the lengths of his loops? Random? Experience? Defined relationships? I am trying different mathematical formulae myself.

Do you have any examples of your work easily available? I love this kind of thing.

I plan on putting something up eventually. I have some snippets from 2 film scores that I need to have online and the generative music loops creation is part of a bigger Eno-style experiment that relies on a biometric interface to trigger which loops get played and when. The idea is for brainwaves and heartbeat readings of a musician to trigger loops via midi and then the musician improvises alongside.

^ that sounds interesting, would like to hear it.

Just remembered seeing that Canadian ambient musician loscil has been doing some generative music lately, app available via:

http://loscil.ca/adrift/

mezcalhead wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 16, 2019 2:36 pm

^ that sounds interesting, would like to hear it.

Just remembered seeing that Canadian ambient musician loscil has been doing some generative music lately, app available via:

http://loscil.ca/adrift/

Thanks for the link. There have been a few apps put to this use, but most aren’t commercial products.

I’ve posted a few things in my blog, this one has most of the general info, the rest go into more detail:

https://adrienlexington.com/biometric/