"Sitting among the gleaming steel fixtures and softly glowing concrete lines of the modernist Cologne Bonn Airport on a sunny Sunday morning in late 1977, en route to his homebase, the perennially nervous flier recoiled once again at the canned pop pleasantries mindlessly piped into such an inspired space. The music was not only an afterthought but also insulting to the idea that you would soon climb into a sleek metal tube and be propelled by engines through the sky at 40,000 feet. “I started thinking, ‘What should we be hearing here?’ I thought most of all you wanted music that didn’t try to pretend you weren’t going to die on the plane, ” Eno, laughing but serious."
It's a ritual of mine to play Eno's Discreet Music during takeoff. Something about it is just so enveloping, introspective and morose and no other piece of music hits me that way. So I figure, if I'm going to die, I want it to be to Discreet Music.
Thank you for sharing! I'm currently playing Discreet Music while there's lightning and thunder outside. My dog shivers with fright during bad storms and this is helping me to calm down, which in turn helps my pup.
And if you happen to already have a copy of Audacity, it has an implementation of paulstretch built-in. (Certainly not as nice looking as that dedicated tool, though.)
I'll add that there's a lot of extremely timestretched tracks from Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II on youtube as well. They all sound glorious, too
Doesn't phase only matter if you want to mix it with some other sound? If you're editing the final version you're going to be playing, what's the point in preserving phase?
The Black Dog's "Music for Photographers" is probably my favorite album of all time. Yet it's almost completely unknown. Everyone should give it a listen.
I like that one a lot, too. But it's not the kind of music a lot of people like. You'll get mostly blank or concerned looks if you make everyone listen to it.
If anyone would like to play with something more interactive, I'm testing out some new effects on Ambiphone, my ambient soundscape web app. The test version is at https://test.ambiph.one
There's a basic playback speed control now (basic in as much as it doesn't preserve pitch) plus things like reverb and delay effects
Hey thank you for sharing your project! I am really enjoying using it while working at home.
A quick observation, the link to share a mix for the birthday is not clickable cause the save menu is clicked instead (yes I'm a QA Engineer). Great feature to save mixes!
When the AI songs started happening, I've been hoping someone would make a very long version of 1/1 from Music for Airports. This is not that. I don't mean stretched out. I just mean that it gets interpolated outwards after the original composition ends.
It's not exactly for 1/1, but scroll down to "Deconstructing 2/1" or "Deconstructing 1/2", then down to the music staves section - Hit "Start All", then roll the dice, and it will randomize the loop times! With a little javascript hacking I'm sure you can add more control over the loops and such.
He has some samples for 1/1 tracks too, those could be looped or fed to some AI music software I'm sure to come up with some interpolated result too.
It seems like the website is region locked?
I haven't seen an 405 error mentioning a specific country yet though, it seemed interesting.
https://imgur.com/a/AiY9xMJ
also here to mention stars of the lid. I just found out about them and they're great. on the same youtube binge I also learned about Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and have become fascinated with their work as well
It's a must-read! It has analysis of all Eno's tape loops and an interactive note randomizer. Mentioned in the article's related content but it's worth an extra shout.
Fun to play around with for anyone who likes the album or ambient music in general.
I bought Bang On A Can's version soon after it was released in 97, and it remains one of my favourite pieces of music to code to. For reasons that I can't adequately explain I prefer it to the (itself wonderful) original.
I heard of a study many years ago that concluded that listening to music you like made you drive your car a bit faster, regardless of the pace of your preferred music. Not sure that translates to cognitive performance, but might suggest listening to music at the gym is useful.
Interesting bit there about music for facing mortality. An ambient classic from that same era is Steve Roach “Structures from Silence”. He had an NDE and that music is what he heard during.
I heard this music off on for decades, but couldn’t place it. I doubled down and only having a memory of it I was certain it was by Brian Eno.
It took me a while to stumble upon it, it was music written for an ITV Science programme’s April Fool’s episode; which due to strike action was delayed until July.
This comes up repeatedly with regards to conspiracy theories, I assume not by people who think the Moon landings are a hoax, that would be insane. Erm wait a minute…
God is this annoying. How can I listen to music where a single note stretches longer than my window of attention? My mind perceives this the same way as the sound of my fridge working, except much louder.
Fun fact: it seems to be somewhere around 33 beats per minute that people lose the connection between one beat and the next and therefore lose the ability to perceive rhythm. Though oddly enough this video asserts that and then immediately disproves it by having a band play a 33 BPM song while the audience counts along.
"Sitting among the gleaming steel fixtures and softly glowing concrete lines of the modernist Cologne Bonn Airport on a sunny Sunday morning in late 1977, en route to his homebase, the perennially nervous flier recoiled once again at the canned pop pleasantries mindlessly piped into such an inspired space. The music was not only an afterthought but also insulting to the idea that you would soon climb into a sleek metal tube and be propelled by engines through the sky at 40,000 feet. “I started thinking, ‘What should we be hearing here?’ I thought most of all you wanted music that didn’t try to pretend you weren’t going to die on the plane, ” Eno, laughing but serious."
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/brian-eno-ambient-1-mus...
It's a ritual of mine to play Eno's Discreet Music during takeoff. Something about it is just so enveloping, introspective and morose and no other piece of music hits me that way. So I figure, if I'm going to die, I want it to be to Discreet Music.
Thank you for sharing! I'm currently playing Discreet Music while there's lightning and thunder outside. My dog shivers with fright during bad storms and this is helping me to calm down, which in turn helps my pup.
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Mine is Burning Airlines Give You So Much More, also by Eno.
> It's a ritual of mine to play Eno's Discreet Music during takeoff.
Mine is Giegling Mix 07. Less ambient and more 4/4 + breakbeat but beautifully emotive. Even better during sunset
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Perhaps the uplifting responsorial to this would be "An Ending (Ascent)" from his Apollo soundtrack.
I never thought to see a link to a Pitchfork Sunday review on HN. I've been reading them with my morning coffee every Sunday for years.
Great song.
For anyone curious how to produce something that sounds like this, paulstretch is the way to do it. https://sonosaurus.com/paulxstretch/
My personal favorite use of this: https://youtu.be/XiKWfcy-Z70?si=iJTP0XTEAAObI_rU
And if you happen to already have a copy of Audacity, it has an implementation of paulstretch built-in. (Certainly not as nice looking as that dedicated tool, though.)
Paulstretch is such an utterly genius algorithm. Ridiculously simple solution to a difficult problem but it gets you amazing results
The algorithm is described at https://www.paulnasca.com/algorithms-created-by-me
This is just excellent, it works a lot better than I thought it would. You can really drown in the song, whoa.
I'll add that there's a lot of extremely timestretched tracks from Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II on youtube as well. They all sound glorious, too
Great share, thank you! Scratches the itch of "I'd love to turn some of my beats into ambient soundscapes but don't want to spend the time".
Less distructive, but also -the [vst3] plugin 'valhalla supermassive'.
The paulxstretch completely obliterates phase component of audio input. Its not really way to do it if you want real output.
Define "real" in this instance? We're talking about audio manipulation, fiddling with time and frequency domain. Something's going to have to give
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Phase is relative, you are trying to sound intelligent
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As long as you match the phase of the positive and negative frequency components you'll get real output
Doesn't phase only matter if you want to mix it with some other sound? If you're editing the final version you're going to be playing, what's the point in preserving phase?
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Mind blown. Thanks!
Ah yes, pop some ketamine, turn this one, and never return.
I'm rather fond of The Black Dog's Music for Real Airports, myself. https://ra.co/reviews/7404
The Black Dog's "Music for Photographers" is probably my favorite album of all time. Yet it's almost completely unknown. Everyone should give it a listen.
I like that one a lot, too. But it's not the kind of music a lot of people like. You'll get mostly blank or concerned looks if you make everyone listen to it.
The High-Rise Living 78-86 mix with Regis is stunning too
Music for Real Airports is one of the albums I put on to block out the world when I’m trying to get work done.
Thanks for introducing me to this. This is the kind of music I like and had never heard of it.
Ah yeah love this album!
If anyone would like to play with something more interactive, I'm testing out some new effects on Ambiphone, my ambient soundscape web app. The test version is at https://test.ambiph.one
There's a basic playback speed control now (basic in as much as it doesn't preserve pitch) plus things like reverb and delay effects
Here's some slowed-down ambient music: https://test.ambiph.one/?m=1-Slow+Realisation-ap50a25c60
And a cat purring at 50% speed makes a pretty convincing lion: https://test.ambiph.one/?m=1-Lion's+Den-aa8a34c60e37f100ac50...
(Audio may be a little glitchy on Android Chrome if you have lots of sounds playing - I'm debugging that at the moment)
Hey thank you for sharing your project! I am really enjoying using it while working at home. A quick observation, the link to share a mix for the birthday is not clickable cause the save menu is clicked instead (yes I'm a QA Engineer). Great feature to save mixes!
When the AI songs started happening, I've been hoping someone would make a very long version of 1/1 from Music for Airports. This is not that. I don't mean stretched out. I just mean that it gets interpolated outwards after the original composition ends.
Does anyone know what can make that?
I linked this page in another comment:
Deconstructing Brian Eno's Ambient 1: Music for Airports https://reverbmachine.com/blog/deconstructing-brian-eno-musi...
It's not exactly for 1/1, but scroll down to "Deconstructing 2/1" or "Deconstructing 1/2", then down to the music staves section - Hit "Start All", then roll the dice, and it will randomize the loop times! With a little javascript hacking I'm sure you can add more control over the loops and such.
He has some samples for 1/1 tracks too, those could be looped or fed to some AI music software I'm sure to come up with some interpolated result too.
The Black Dog have a lovely Patreon where they personally answer comments. Have you considered asking them?
I would say only Brian Eno can make one.
Maybe he made some other music thats continuation.
Try https://play.generative.fm/browse. The endless aisatsana generator is pretty good, I'm sure there's an option that's similar to 1/1.
In this field : Windows 95 startup sound, from Brian Eno as well : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnoX3E2WFcc
It has that calming quality, and I would hear it frequently as I would still shut down my computer after every session.
It seems like the website is region locked? I haven't seen an 405 error mentioning a specific country yet though, it seemed interesting. https://imgur.com/a/AiY9xMJ
No problem here from The Netherlands... I wonder what's so specific about Slovenia.
But the site is mostly a link to this 6 hour track: https://youtu.be/ZWUlLHv7-64
Might be the Potica https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHEPzEKTcss
For anyone else perusing the comments for more ambient music, I recommend Stars of the Lkd for anyone looking for similar feels.
https://youtu.be/c4E6RO4muLU?si=6QbUatQXm0zzWy0N
also here to mention stars of the lid. I just found out about them and they're great. on the same youtube binge I also learned about Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and have become fascinated with their work as well
https://music.youtube.com/channel/UCeYcG8gnFjGA5lUShHsz3yQ
Semi-related in the same vein of background ambient music:
For fans of the film Heat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHP4qbgAN6s One of my absolute favorites to work to.
Deconstructing Brian Eno's Ambient 1: Music for Airports:
https://reverbmachine.com/blog/deconstructing-brian-eno-musi...
It's a must-read! It has analysis of all Eno's tape loops and an interactive note randomizer. Mentioned in the article's related content but it's worth an extra shout.
Fun to play around with for anyone who likes the album or ambient music in general.
Gary Hustwit (Helvetica, Objectified) just made a worthwhile documentary about Eno: https://www.hustwit.com/eno
It's only streaming right now and each streamed version is unique, riffing off of Eno's "generative" music.
Perfect opportunity to point out that there is a 23x slowed down version of Brian Enos Windows 95 startup sound https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNIfbdi41ho
I bought Bang On A Can's version soon after it was released in 97, and it remains one of my favourite pieces of music to code to. For reasons that I can't adequately explain I prefer it to the (itself wonderful) original.
If you like Brian Eno's music, you might enjoy Hiroshi Yoshimura. Wet Land is one of my favorite albums of all time.
Only on HN do we get these great music recommendations.
Listened to a bit of it and it seems like a decent analogue to East Forest's Music For Mushrooms which is 5 hours.
Well I know what I’m listening to at work tomorrow. Wonder if this is going to make my code happier or sadder.
Also now wondering if there’s any research on how music affects (cognitive) performance.
I heard of a study many years ago that concluded that listening to music you like made you drive your car a bit faster, regardless of the pace of your preferred music. Not sure that translates to cognitive performance, but might suggest listening to music at the gym is useful.
Your code will no longer be afraid of crashing.
Not sure anyone posted it already, also great: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hOVdjxtnsH8
For those who find this finishes all too quickly, before it really gets started, here's Igor Levit's performance of Satie's Vexations
https://www.youtube.com/live/Uu_03mUPgHU?si=ggJYSJH8SUy0AcKO
sounds like paulstretch is heavily used. you can get similar results when applying this to almost any sont.
Interesting bit there about music for facing mortality. An ambient classic from that same era is Steve Roach “Structures from Silence”. He had an NDE and that music is what he heard during.
> NDE
Near-death experience. For those (like me) unfamiliar with the acronym.
Or, on Thursday afternoons, you can listen to one of my favorites
https://youtu.be/TTHF2Dfw1Dg?si=PKvJpnG88hjV2-St
I'm glad to see that someone finally got the hang of Thursdays. I never could.
One great musician to listen to during late coding sessions.
Brian Eno - Alternative 3
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H9AldyuIh5A
I heard this music off on for decades, but couldn’t place it. I doubled down and only having a memory of it I was certain it was by Brian Eno.
It took me a while to stumble upon it, it was music written for an ITV Science programme’s April Fool’s episode; which due to strike action was delayed until July.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_3
This comes up repeatedly with regards to conspiracy theories, I assume not by people who think the Moon landings are a hoax, that would be insane. Erm wait a minute…
God is this annoying. How can I listen to music where a single note stretches longer than my window of attention? My mind perceives this the same way as the sound of my fridge working, except much louder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRLTjESyuQk
Fun fact: it seems to be somewhere around 33 beats per minute that people lose the connection between one beat and the next and therefore lose the ability to perceive rhythm. Though oddly enough this video asserts that and then immediately disproves it by having a band play a 33 BPM song while the audience counts along.
great to visit with Eno at his long-time music machine installation at the Palace of Fine Arts SF, so long ago.. a real artist!
Not really necessary. So little happens in the original (in a good way)
Alternative title: Journalist discover the paulstretch software
dupe? this was on the homepage 4 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43520122