by David W. Mann

I’m sitting in front of my computer trying to finish a massive composition. I need to get this piece done, but there are so many instruments to choose from, so many harmonies, so many possibilities. How do I develop the main theme? How do I create the right amount of contrast between the first section and the second section? How do I maintain the dramatic arc? You might be thinking I’m writing Beethoven’s 9th Symphony but I’m not – I’m writing a rather nondescript piece of ambient music, the type you might hear in the waiting room of a spa.

There is a notion in popular culture that the highest and most difficult art form in music is composing for a symphony orchestra. The image of nearly one hundred musicians on stage, each with a page of cryptic black notes in front of them, ready to wield their instrument like a magical weapon is indeed formidable. The great composers such as Beethoven, Strauss and Tchaikovsky are often seen as musical anomalies, born with gifts the most mere mortals lack. In this composer’s opinion every style of music offers its own challenges and often the simplest music can be the most difficult to write. What if I told you that composing a piece of ambient music, the type you would normally think of as “background music”, is just as difficult to write as a symphony?

One key difference between orchestral music and ambient music lies in timbre (pronounced “tamber”) which is the sound quality of a note. A violin and a synthesizer have different timbres, even if they both play the same note. Even one violin and another violin will produce a slightly different timbre. The same violin, recorded on two different microphones, will also produce a different timbre. Timbre is an infinite realm and as such there is no easy way to map it. Some musical parameters such as notes, chords and scales have a finite number of combinations (352 to be exact). Timbre on the other hand is infinite. We will never stop discovering new timbres. In this way writing for orchestra is easy. Why? There are only twelve main instruments: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, French horn, trombone, tuba, violin, viola, cello and bass. When writing for a synthesizer, the main instrument used in ambient music, the choices are limitless. One can easily exhaust an entire afternoon designing just one sound. There are hundreds of knobs to manipulate and every one can make or break the composition.

Another major difference between ambient music and orchestral music is in the degree of subtlety. Orchestral writing, by nature, tends to be very grand and extroverted. In ambient music, the goal is to not be noticed. This is problematic and very difficult to achieve. If music does not develop and change over time it becomes irritating very fast. Ambient music must change but it must do so without calling attention to itself. One way to do this is to introduce changes very gradually over a long period of time. This may be as long as thirty seconds. At this speed the listener may not explicitly notice the change but they will feel it. Click the link below to hear an example:

Light Matter

In orchestral writing and in most writing, melody is king. Composers strive for a memorable hook that listeners will hold on to for life. Ambient music in contrast requires either a melody which is very simple, or no melody at all. As music is made of notes, how can one avoid melody? How can one create structure without it? How can a melody be both memorable and non-memorable? The key here is form. Form describes how the musical elements change over time. If the same element is used over and over it feels repetitive. If the elements are always changing it feels chaotic. The key is to find a balance between variety and repetition. Even if the piece is without a melody per se, the form still matters. The pseudo-melody may be as simple as a whole note which enters every four measures, but as long as it follows a pattern which balances variety with repetition it will work.

While the number of instruments in an orchestra may seem daunting, the number of layers in a piece of ambient music, if well written, can also be daunting. What sounds like a homogenous mass of sound may actually be a dense, undulating web of many different musical threads coming in and out of focus. Those layers are often less complex then classical music melodically, but in terms of sound design are more complex.

Organic vs. Synthetic – Natural instruments such as violins, flutes and oboes obey the laws of nature. That is, they are limited in terms of how loud they can play, how soft they can play, and the sounds they produce must obey other natural laws such as the overtone series. Synthetic instruments have no such constraints. They can be arbitrarily loud, arbitrarily quiet, and can create sounds that mother nature never dreamed of. Those sounds would defy the laws of physics and cause Sir Isaac Newton to turn over in his grave. Because these sounds are not produced by nature, they are often harder to mix and more difficult to combine with other sounds. If you put a bunch of acoustic instruments together, you are likely to get a somewhat pleasing result. With synthesized instruments there is no such guarantee.

Every style of music has its unique challenges and ambient music is no different. With an unlimited palette of sounds to choose from and limited melodic freedom, creating a piece which still works is very challenging. A hundred years from now when AI writes our music for us, our great great grandchildren may ask, “How did the ancient masters compose ambient music like that?”.