Can ambient music contain beats?

[orczy]

Hiya all.
I've been thinking about this a bit recently.
Anyone who has heard my stuff will know that I like traditional ambient, ie no beats etc.
It came to my attention that I ma very out-of -date. This doesn't bother me, but it has made me think.
What do you all think...
Can music that has a beat be truly ambient?
Or am I being pedantic?!
I look forward to some discussion on this.
Cheers
Chris

[mosc]

[I moved this topic from editorials to composition and deleted a duplicate post.]

I'm sure people have strong opinions about this stuff, but I'll sound off anyway. I think ambient music can have beats, if you extend the meaning of beats from in-your-face intense drum-like sounds to include subtile repeating rhythms of any sound. Thus, a motorcycle engine would have beats. Much ambient music uses delays which impart a rhythmic quality. Is it a stretch to call this beats?

Some ambient music features LFO type modulations. These are rhythmic; why not call them beats. Often, these rhythms are made by beat frequencies.

I never could relate to the term ambient music in the first place. It implies a beatless, sustained, non-gestural, relaxed, unimposing, and background quality. I don't see why you can't have beats in music that is also described that way.

The term ambient implies that the music is somehow less important that non-ambient music. There is an unspoken "It's just background music, no need to listen critically to it." Well, perhaps this is a misunderstanding, but it is a common one. I prefer the terms relaxing, meditative, nurturing, spritutal, sustained or maybe steady-state.

[Mohoyoho]

I like to put rhythms in some of my ambient tracks. I don't like it to be overpowering or dance/club-like. I like it to be exotic, and many times I don't like the percussion to sound like traditional drums. Sometimes my rhythms are strange glitchy sounds. I think the key to ambient music is restraint.

[seraph]

I am against pigeonholing music inside strict rules so I don't see why "so-called" ambient music shouldn't have beats. I agree with Mosc:

[gravehill]

I also voted yes.

It's not a question of if something is allowed, it's what you do with it. The beat doesn't have to dominate in any way. It can even be almost inaudible, just adding a little bit something to the forward flow of music.

[jkn]

Absolutely.

I personally think of ambient as music that's equally at home in the background (the classic 'wallpaper' definition) and up front and actually 'listened' to.

Ambient has quite a few different definitions that people latch onto - I like to think of all of them as correct - they're just different flavors of the whole ambient ice cream sundae.

What instruments are involved I don't think really has a strong bearing on whether the music is ambient or not.

The music I write I pretty much lump all of it into ambient - but different pieces meld in different ideas from other areas - a bit of funk, a touch of industrial, some techno, jazz, generative, micro, whatever... but overall - I think it still has that ambient feel to it. Subtle shifting. Taking it's time to get where it's going.

John

[General Elektrick]

Yes it can!
I think Drone music should may not contain beats but there are anyway no fixed rules.

[gravehill]

I just posted the following tip to the software vocoder thread. I'll repeat it here as it fits the subject:

Especially with more ambient stuff I use vocoder often with drums. A good companion would be a choir sound or a pad. Then just try out which one works better as carrier and which one as modulator. It works both ways, the result is just a bit different.

This is one way to make beats that even sound more or less ambient

[elektro80]

I am still not quite sure what ambient music is. Does it matter? Anyway, I guess we shouldn?t step on the toes of the journalists/ music reviewers. We make the stuff, and they decide what it is?

[elektro80]

My understanding of what ambient music is of course coloured by this story:

( this version is written by John Kelman - allaboutjazz.com )

[mosc]

Eric Satie - protrait by Suzanne Valadon

Eric Satie was more of the father of ambient music than Eno.

There are many references to him. This is from http://www.af.lu.se/~fogwall/intro.html

[Kassen]

I don´t have a lot of time at this moment but I have three points, in accending order of relevance;

a)I thought I´d show my pale snout; Hi. :¬)
Stuff happened. I feel much better now.
A sincere thanks to those who cared, I suppose I had to go through a little phase.

b)One thought that struck me as amusing is that in the English language (as perhaps in others) "beat" as a word in the musical context has multiple meanings. It can be the sound of a hit percussion instrument, but it also refers to two or more tones drifting in and out of phase (piano tuners use that, at least the good ones). Apart from being a amusing word joke, it does bring our attention to the fact that you´d have to go out of your way not to have rithmic elements. Satie, to make matters even more amusing composed for a percussion instrument; the piano is a percussive instrument, in nature more like the kick drum then like the organ, even if you wouldn´t say by it´s looks. I´m not trying to lecture, merely point out correspondences.

c)I think it´s much more usefull practically to sort music by it´s effect and the composer´s intention then by the instruments and techniques used (even if I´m greatly in favour of discussing instruments and techniques on their own). If some definition of what ambient is could be given, based purely on what is and what isn´t allowed to be in a "ambient" piece then within days somebody would compose a piece that was clearly within those rules and very opfront at the same time, I probably have a few lying around already in my little collection of music. A few days ago I attended a performance where breakcore and deathmetal were mixed (with ambient too!), in my own DJ sets I often mix loop based piano pieces with minimal techno. People who say they like "guitar music" make little sense to me. I once fell into the same trap, asking a german record dealer who specialised in easterneuropean music for "messed up drum & bass". After some searching he found a record that he felt was perfect, I think it was chegoslovakian avandgardism based on only a drummer and a bass player. I couldn´t listen to it there and it was expensive so I had to leave it.... It looked like it would go down well with a audience for "messed up drum and bass" too, perhaps as a breakdown in a three turntable set.

Rules can be stimulating, I like to remember that following them is a choice.

Just my thoughts, as always.

[egw]

I know it's not always a good idea to try to put music into categories.
But sometimes, when working with other musicians, it's useful to communicate what kind of music you are going to play.
If I say, let's play something ambient, it means that the rythmic elements will be minimal.
If ambient music has beats, then what do we call music that doesn't have any beats?

welcome back Kassen

[orczy]

I suppose the reason I first really loved ambient music was for the lack of percussion instruments. Drone, drift, soft, spacious. A beat regulates this too much for me. Freedom!!!
All this being said, Hassell and Eno did some wonderful work using percussion, and I still think of that as ambient.
I agree with one comment that is central to all reply: pigeonholing is not good. I use the term ambient to describe my own stuff for 2 reasons: if I didn't, some people (reviewers, critics etc) may think I am attempting "Classical" music because of the instrumentation. I am not doing that. Secondly, it gives listeners a clear idea of my intentions. Maybe "somnambient" would be more useful!
Anyways, I see I am the only non beat guy, so I guess I have a narrow view of "ambient". C'est la vie!

[Kassen]

[Kassen]

Mustel, are you aware of the work of Thomas Koner? He did a few great albums of ultraminimal drones with names like "Permafrost", but he also was (is?) half of a minimal techno formation where he combines similar textures with very downplayed and deep beats. You night want to check out his work and compare the effects on you the "spoil/spoiled" 12" on Force-Inc is a personal favourite of mine on the beats side, "Nuuk" on the drone one.

[mosc]

[jkn]

Actually - "experimental" has a certain genre sound attached to it for a lot of people... And an experimental band using guitar/bass/drum is fairly different from an experimental artist cutting up tape loops or scratching their cd's... Don't get me wrong - I like that name for music...

I only go back as far as the early 80's as far as actually paying attention to this kind or that kind of music - and there was just as much compartmentalization as there is today.

People can slice and dice all they want to - I like the term "ambient" to be sort of like "rock" in a vague sense - it's an umbrella term to me that covers a lot of territory without getting ridiculously into niche-land. Calling it "electronic" would probably be just as useful - except to me that term pulls in all the heavier techno, drum n bass, idm, whatever - that is generally pretty far away from most people's definitions of ambient that I've run across. That not to say that we can't have ambient mixed with techno or ambient mixed with dnb...

In the end - it's all a big pointless debate - everyone puts things into their own categories in their head - and marketing generally drives the genre names. Most ambient usually ends up in the new age section in brick and mortar record stores - it doesn't split out into ambient unless you're in a specialized shop.

[jkn]

Same discussion a couple of months back on the ambient.us forum:

http://www.ambient.us/forum/topic-359.html


note: I post as "interstitial" on that forum.

[Forseti]

For me, ambient refers to music which permeats and (re)enforces my current surroundings, or even 'mindspace', without requiring any (overt) awareness of the music playing.

As such, a freektekno dj set, the "reshaped" Basic Channel E2E4 (for me personally, a very good example of beated ambient) or the breaks of Snares' printf("shiver in eternal darkness/n") (even) are just as valid ambient music experiences as Wieland Samolak's Steady State Music, Köhner or Lustmord; they just 'require' the right setting, and/or mindset.

That said, music which is described by an artists as "ambient" and carries beats usually sounds very, very corny to me, with few exceptions.

[Kassen]

[elektro80]

[Kassen]

[richie_dionysus]

AFX-Selected Ambient Works

[orczy]