How Did You Discover Ambient?

[windspace]

I think the first thing I heard that I would consider Ambient (other than TD, if that's Ambient) was the track 'Nucleus' on the Alan Parsons Project - I Robot album around '79. I knew then that I wanted to make music like that. Of course it's taken me until now to start trying...

[V0RT3X]

Quite a few Nine Inch Nails tracks did it for me. Especially the Quake game soundtrack which made me absolutely HAVE to learn how to make something similar someday. I still have a ways to go, but I am getting closer ;)

[Phase47]

Started in Punk // New Wave. When the expiration date on that scene hit, I drifted toward 4AD style stuff, and went back to things like Cabaret Voltaire, John Foxx, The Future, Kraftwerk & Throbbing Gristle, which all had a distinct electronic music foundation.

Then I heard Eno. (On Land.)

[teezdalien]

I really don't know if I can honestly answer this question, but to the best of my knowledge I think I mainly discovered ambient music through listening to other people's mixes on another electronic music forum I used to frequent a lot, and then recommendations from others came after that.
But I also used to listen to a lot of different rock, and progressive music and had felt a connection to the somewhat ambient parts of songs that often cropped up within these styles and the bands I used to listen to.

[[Aphelion]]

It's a pretty interesting story actually.

A few years back I was really into psytrance and I visited a lot of psytrance parties over here. Almost every party had some sort of chillout room where they played psychedelic chillout and I took a liking to that music. Fast forward to 2010, I woke up one morning and I had this insane ringing in my right ear. A few weeks later my left ear started ringing as well. Sleeping became a hopeless endeavour because of it so I needed music that could mask the sound whilst still being passive enough to allow me to sleep. That's how I discovered Carbon Based Lifeforms and it all went from there. My days of tinnitus induced insomnia were over once I discovered drone and I haven't looked back since.

[MetaDronos]

I discovered ambient experimentally ;)

When I was in my early teen years, my father gave me old reel-to-reel tape recorder. I started to record everything making sounds, and soon I discovered power of time stretching, by manipulation of tape reel rotation speed.

One day I recorded some jammer from radio. After playing its sound many times slower, I discovered new beautiful world. Today I can name that sound a drone On that day it was like powerful bright illumination - I knew that I will return to that world some day...

Few years later amateurs electronics became my hobby. Of course I started to develop various sound generators. Once again tape recorder was in frequent use - I've "timestretched" sound generated electronically, torturing poor tape recorder ;)

Few years passed and I moved my drone obsession to computer. My first software instrument was Windows Sound recorder from Windows 98 :D Overlaping sounds, reversing, slowing them - that was enough for me to create quite ambiental but very short tracks...

One day I've "inherited" PC with Cool Edit on it. That was another illumination. Starting from this day my musical evolution became very dynamic. Later, when I discovered VST and VSTi, it was just a matter of months to maintain large collection of instruments and effects.

This was my "discover by experience" path.

[UnstaticNoise]

My mother had an old cassette, back in the 90'... It was ambient / nature recordings, three of them. I remember that one of them had some storm sounds, composed into a song. I think this was my first encounter with ambient music, I loved lying on the floor and listening to that. Kind of a scary, aerie and menacing experience. Years later, I discovered Carbon Based Lifeforms. That was by pure luck and was followed by finding Loscil by playing Osmos. That cemented my love for ambient.

[IOK-1]

The first I heard was probably something by Lustmord, because I was very into the old industrial scene. It seemed like a natural progression.

[metrosonus]

I don't think I ever really discovered it perse. The type of music I preferred when I was a kid was the kind of stuff you'd hear in the background of old 70's BBC sci fi shows and documentaries and shows like "In Search Of".

The only artists I've had exposure to formally are Steve Roach, Robert Rich (whom I've talked with on Facebook a few times, nice guy!), Alex Patterson (again, nice guy!) and Palancar (again, nice guy!). Although now nearly all the time I listen to some sort of ambient station on Sky.fm or dronzone on somafm.com.

I guess what I'm trying to say as much as I love ambient and make it, I don't know much about it, the artists involved in it or any of the "scene" for lack of a better word. But that's also why i'm here... to try and reach out a bit and learn some new stuff.

[falls a star]

As long as I can remember, my dad was into Isao Tomita and Wendy Carlos (on 8-track tape!). He got me into them too. That's probably what started it, though they were covering classical music.

When I was in high school just starting to buy my own cassettes and vinyl and exploring a lot of different styles of music, an article in the local newspaper about New Age music made me curious. There's about an 80% overlap from late 80s/early 90s "New Age" to ambient.

(During high school and college I also managed to get into jazz fusion, synth pop, industrial/EBM, Celtic folk, Finnish folk, and darkwave. I've been through several other phases since then... prog rock, alt-country, taiko, powernoise, dubstep, Celtic metal, and other things. So there's a wide range of influences.)

[GaryG]

Brian Eno Rock Star

For some reason, when I first read that I thought in terms of the Rockband games. How awesome would that be: Rockband: Eno edition! All poised waiting for a cluster of notes with your rockband keyboard... your friend standing to your side with his plastic reel-to-reel controller ready to manipulate the incoming audio with his virtual tape loops...

[seismic1]

A bit like this then:-

http://www.teenageengineering.com/products/op-1

Quite an amazing instrument. In fact it's a portable studio.

[seismic1]

Including tax

[Pyne]

It started with metal. Alot of metal bands back in the day were including these atmospheric intros, outros, and interludes on their albums. I'd make a 'mix tape' of these, so I could have just an atmospheric album to listen to. Around the same time, I was experimenting with a keyboard and a 4 track making some dark atmospheric tracks, not being familiar with any ambient "scenes" or even the term 'ambient' as a genre. Then metals bands started making some keyboard/ambient side projects...like Glenn Danzig's Black Aria, and Burzum's Dauði Baldrs and Hliðskjálf. Then once I had access to the internet, a whole new world of dark ambient and underground music opened up to me...I started listening to artists from labels like CMI, Cold Spring, Tesco, and eventually Cylic Law, etc.

I totally bypassed Eno as a result...never listened to him and still don't. I don't listen to Robert Rich, Steve Roach, TD, or those kind of guys either.

[Negative Spectrum]

a friend brought up a copy of Aphex Twin's selected ambient works vol 2 the morning after a particularly heavy night, i loved that right away, i then got into the Orb, i've never really delved into older stuff like Eno, maybe one day