Boards of Canada Chord Theory, Part Two
In Part Two of the Boards of Canada Chord Theory series, we delve into writing exclusively with major/minor chords, chromaticism, suspensions, and how to write melodies over unusual chord progressions.
Category: Ambient
Boards of Canada Chord Theory, Part One
Explore the enigmatic musical world of Boards of Canada and their use of fifths intervals to craft the idiosyncratic harmonies that underpin their signature sound.
How Aphex Twin Created Selected Ambient Works 85-92
Celebrating 30 years of Selected Ambient Works 85-92, a landmark of electronic music.
How Brian Eno Created Thursday Afternoon
Brian Eno’s Thursday Afternoon was released in 1985 as an audio accompaniment to his video installation of the same name. The album consists of a single 61-minute ambient track, which manages to be both discreet and stark, but also stimulating and hypnotic at the same time. The piece is another step in his exploration of generative music – the creation of music derived from a system, usually incommensurable loops that reconfigure upon repeats.
How Brian Eno Created Discreet Music
Brian Eno released Discreet Music in 1975; the majority of the album is taken up by its 30-minute title track, which was one of Eno’s first experiments in the quiet, unobtrusive music that would go on to define his career, as well as ambient music. The songs concept was conceived by Eno when he “discovered” a new way of listening to music, where at low volumes the sounds is on the verge on vanishing, and merges with the sounds of its environment.
In this article I’ll explore how Eno created Discreet Music using a simple but clever system that utilised early synthesizer sequencing and sound-on-sound tape looping. I’ll also recreate the sounds using Arturia Synthi V and Soundtoys Echoboy.
How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports
In 1978, Brian Eno released Ambient 1: Music for Airports, a landmark album in ambient and electronic music. Although it wasn’t the first ambient album by any means, it was the first album explicitly released as an ‘ambient music album’. The album was essentially a continuation of Eno’s experiments with the tape machine as a compositional tool, as well as his exploration of generative music. In this article I’ll discuss how the music was composed, break down and recreate the tracks 2/1 and 1/2, and hopefully give you some ideas about how to adopt this approach yourself.
Tycho’s Awake Synth Sounds
Tycho started out as something of a solo project for bandleader Scott Hansen, and has since evolved into an ambient rock band whose signature sound consists of swirling pads, dreamy synth leads, and muted electric guitars, usually backed by live drums and bass guitar, all washed out with a saturated wall of reverb.
I’m going to talk about the synth lead in the song Awake from the album of the same name. Here’s what we’re going to end up with: