27 essential ambient production tips

[YnotB]

Even classic "lone nut" artists like Kafka or Van Gogh were in fact intensely networked guys, and their networks kept producing for them even after their suicides,

Errr... Kafka didn't commit suicide.... :daydream:

But hang on, are we talking about being artistically influenced by others, or having a team of flunkies to do the "heavy lifting".

That's where I got lost in Golodkins argument.

No one can argue with the former generally, maybe a few 'outsider' artists have just spontaneously created something without ever having heard or seen art before but... generally, no.

Heavy lifting: having someone source your samples is a collaboration in my book. If I ever wanted to release any of my one sample dare challenges, the source of the sample would be credited too. How could they not be? It's not like sending someone out for a new tube of chromium blue...

I guess I see inspiration as an amazingly complex net, you'll always be standing on the shoulders of giants, whether you have the 'talent' to apply those influences and create something markedly new is the question. Even if not, most art is a variation on something that's gone before and no shame in that. A cliche I know but it's about personal expression not creating new art forms in my book.

I think the difference between influence and heavy lifting is more one of degree than one of kind -re collaboration Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side popped in to my head a an example of collaboration - for me that song is totally made by Herbie Flower's bass line and I have never liked the idea that Reed wrote that song, for me it is a collaboration.

[Thought Experiment]

...it's about personal expression...

I totally agree

[GaryG]

But hang on, are we talking about being artistically influenced by others, or having a team of flunkies to do the "heavy lifting".

That's where I got lost in Golodkins argument.

No one can argue with the former generally, maybe a few 'outsider' artists have just spontaneously created something without ever having heard or seen art before but... generally, no.

Heavy lifting: having someone source your samples is a collaboration in my book. If I ever wanted to release any of my one sample dare challenges, the source of the sample would be credited too. How could they not be? It's not like sending someone out for a new tube of chromium blue...

I guess I see inspiration as an amazingly complex net, you'll always be standing on the shoulders of giants, whether you have the 'talent' to apply those influences and create something markedly new is the question. Even if not, most art is a variation on something that's gone before and no shame in that. A cliche I know but it's about personal expression not creating new art forms in my book.

[MetaDronos]

Both of these stories captures something we all understand on a deep intuitive level, but our creative egos sort of don’t really want to accept: And that is the idea that creativity is combinatorial, that nothing is entirely original, that everything builds on what came before, and that we create by taking existing pieces of inspiration, knowledge, skill and insight that we gather over the course of our lives and recombining them into incredible new creations.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/08/01/networked-knowledge-combinatorial-creativity/

[MetaDronos]

getting someone to find four or five examples you are giving over part of the selection to someone else even if you make the final selection, therefore the population from which you select is determined by someone else and will be different because of that. That may actually make the final result better, but even so it will be different. Secondly the usual "while you do one thing you aren't doing something else" applies. In this case you aren't undertaking the search process and so you won't have the possibility of the "happy chance" serendipitous find that may be tangential to the goal but of great value.

I often work with samples and I higly value the role of chance and serendipity in creative process.
For example, clicking THIS LINK allowed me to find many unique sounds for further reprocessing in my tracks.
I make my own field recordings for this purpose, too.

I prefer to find and create such samples personally and I would not refer that work to others. I think that
every person is a kind of "filter", so I want to keep all sonic input without "human prefiltering" as much as possible.

I don't have a problem with the division of labour - I have a problem with 'subcontracting out' aspects of the creative process. I know there's nothing new about this, I know even Michelangelo let his students 'fill in' the backgrounds etc. It just doesn't seem right to me. But I hardly ever use samples in my work, maybe I'd feel differently if they were a significant part of it

What do you think about generative methods, then? Using generative tools as "subcontractors/assistants" can relieve artist from unnecessary mechanical work. And selecting "boundary conditions" by artists in his generative tools is probably enough significant.

I don't want to rag on TE here because I think he's simply one of the millions of people who have fallen for what is probably THE great cultural myth, namely that "real" art is an individual effort.

It never has been true. It never will be true.

The abiding musical myth of the 21st century is that the advent of cheap digital recording has made it possible for some asocial neurotic to produce a #1 hit in the virtual vacuum of his basement. It's incredibly seductive, but it's not true. It never will be true. The delusion sells a lot of gear, though. ;)

Even classic "lone nut" artists like Kafka or Van Gogh were in fact intensely networked guys, and their networks kept producing for them even after their suicides, never mind that they were actively and liberally inspired by the work of (and criticism by) others -- and every other random influence.

No matter what you're doing, you can't do it without being artistically influenced by others and you'll do it better with some help with the heavy lifting. What is the material difference between telling an assistant, "I want four or five samples of elderly Slavic women talking by tomorrow" and stopping all productive work in order to dig it up yourself? None. As the adage goes, "Doing things the hard way doesn't mean you're smart; doing things the hard way means you're stupid."

Any tool that facilitates achieving your artistic vision is legitimate.

This was the earliest lesson I learned as an artist's assistant when I was seventeen. Unfortunately, I forgot it for many years.

Get help whenever and wherever you can, even if (and maybe especially if) it's for mundane work. Listen to everyone. You never know.

I agree - we are all networked to some extent, and to quite a large extent really. And popularity is by definition a networked phenomenon. A minimal network would be the artists at home producing artworks using means of production they make themselves. In music that might be voice, hand made / found percussion and so on. But the musical language will come from a network of influences - changed by the artist but nonetheless developed within an environment. But once an artist goes public the extent of that public will be due to a whole lot of people and not at all just due to the artist and/or the work they produce.

I disagree with the "Slavic women" example for two reasons - in getting someone to find four or five examples you are giving over part of the selection to someone else even if you make the final selection, therefore the population from which you select is determined by someone else and will be different because of that. That may actually make the final result better, but even so it will be different. Secondly the usual "while you do one thing you aren't doing something else" applies. In this case you aren't undertaking the search process and so you won't have the possibility of the "happy chance" serendipitous find that may be tangential to the goal but of great value. Of course, you'll be doing something else with your time and that may yield great benefits of its own. There's no way of knowing which course of action is better from a creative point of view but there is no doubt that getting someone else does change things on the creative side not just on the production efficiency side. But from a production output point of view, getting someone to find those samples is obviously the way to go.

[Thought Experiment]

I don't have a problem with the division of labour - I have a problem with 'subcontracting out' aspects of the creative process. I know there's nothing new about this, I know even Michelangelo let his students 'fill in' the backgrounds etc. It just doesn't seem right to me. But I hardly ever use samples in my work, maybe I'd feel differently if they were a significant part of it

What do you think about generative methods, then? Using generative tools as "subcontractors/assistants" can relieve artist from unnecessary mechanical work. And selecting "boundary conditions" by artists in his generative tools is probably enough significant.

I don't want to rag on TE here because I think he's simply one of the millions of people who have fallen for what is probably THE great cultural myth, namely that "real" art is an individual effort.

It never has been true. It never will be true.

The abiding musical myth of the 21st century is that the advent of cheap digital recording has made it possible for some asocial neurotic to produce a #1 hit in the virtual vacuum of his basement. It's incredibly seductive, but it's not true. It never will be true. The delusion sells a lot of gear, though. ;)

Even classic "lone nut" artists like Kafka or Van Gogh were in fact intensely networked guys, and their networks kept producing for them even after their suicides, never mind that they were actively and liberally inspired by the work of (and criticism by) others -- and every other random influence.

No matter what you're doing, you can't do it without being artistically influenced by others and you'll do it better with some help with the heavy lifting. What is the material difference between telling an assistant, "I want four or five samples of elderly Slavic women talking by tomorrow" and stopping all productive work in order to dig it up yourself? None. As the adage goes, "Doing things the hard way doesn't mean you're smart; doing things the hard way means you're stupid."

Any tool that facilitates achieving your artistic vision is legitimate.

This was the earliest lesson I learned as an artist's assistant when I was seventeen. Unfortunately, I forgot it for many years.

Get help whenever and wherever you can, even if (and maybe especially if) it's for mundane work. Listen to everyone. You never know.

I want to thank you for opening my eyes to this universal truth of which I have been blissfully unaware for all of my 56 years on this planet. Where have you been all my life? I don't feel too bad though, if I'm one of millions of dupes. But if we're all asocial neurotics, how does that help? I'm so confused, please enlighten me some more.

But hang on, are we talking about being artistically influenced by others, or having a team of flunkies to do the "heavy lifting". I don't have a problem with the former, but unlike Van Gogh (yeah, guess what - I heard of him. Who knew he was "intensely networked"? And Kafka too? Crikey...) I don't have a well-to do family prepared to indulge (i.e. financially support) my whim to live the life of an artist, so how am I going to pay these flunkies? Besides, like I said, my methods don't involve the use of loads of samples - the heaviest lifting involved in my studio is picking up a guitar from it's wall-hanger. But of course you didn't hear what I said, your equipment is stuck on TRANSMIT which is probably why you come across as insultingly PATRONISING

You're entitled to your own opinions, you may even be right, I'm not qualified to judge. But I've been around the block a few times, and I have the wit and experience to make up my own mind about what works for me, though I wouldn't presume to think I know, or ever will know, everything. Anyway, must go now, nanny has made breakfast and my butler is waiting to dress me...

[Golodkin]

Careful with absolutes like never.

Shhh. Listen.......NEVER.

It's a sucker bet. Stake the entire universe, you can't possibly lose. There are too many self-defining impossibilities in the premise, almost all of which would be obvious to anyone but a musician.

As a former national new-music playlister and broadcast format developer, I will tell you it can take a couple of hundred people (or more) to get a really great new act to chart, nearly any single one of whom can carelessly screw up and sink the entire thing as mysteriously and irrevocably as Flight 370. I'm neither joking nor exaggerating.

Of course, nobody doing Ambient is even remotely hoping to chart, but whatever his idea of an objective is, even doing twenty-seven seconds of soundtrack in some crappy student video on public-access cable, it's going to take more hustle than the asocial neurotic in his basement has. That's OK, a lot of artists are asocial neurotics in basements (and the only thing that seriously separates me from that demographic is that I don't have a basement), but they absolutely need people on their side who believe in them and will pitch in on their behalf. It doesn't matter if it's someone who tells you that an arpeggio would work better if it started on the 5th, or a talented graphics artist or an aspiring publicist or someone with a strong back and two more hands when you need them.

It's all part of your creative process as long as you're doing the steering. You're not going anywhere alone. Seek and accept help whenever it presents itself.

I submit this as Rule #28. ;)

[Golodkin]

I don't have a problem with the division of labour - I have a problem with 'subcontracting out' aspects of the creative process. I know there's nothing new about this, I know even Michelangelo let his students 'fill in' the backgrounds etc. It just doesn't seem right to me. But I hardly ever use samples in my work, maybe I'd feel differently if they were a significant part of it

What do you think about generative methods, then? Using generative tools as "subcontractors/assistants" can relieve artist from unnecessary mechanical work. And selecting "boundary conditions" by artists in his generative tools is probably enough significant.

I don't want to rag on TE here because I think he's simply one of the millions of people who have fallen for what is probably THE great cultural myth, namely that "real" art is an individual effort.

It never has been true. It never will be true.

The abiding musical myth of the 21st century is that the advent of cheap digital recording has made it possible for some asocial neurotic to produce a #1 hit in the virtual vacuum of his basement. It's incredibly seductive, but it's not true. It never will be true. The delusion sells a lot of gear, though. ;)

Even classic "lone nut" artists like Kafka or Van Gogh were in fact intensely networked guys, and their networks kept producing for them even after their suicides, never mind that they were actively and liberally inspired by the work of (and criticism by) others -- and every other random influence.

No matter what you're doing, you can't do it without being artistically influenced by others and you'll do it better with some help with the heavy lifting. What is the material difference between telling an assistant, "I want four or five samples of elderly Slavic women talking by tomorrow" and stopping all productive work in order to dig it up yourself? None. As the adage goes, "Doing things the hard way doesn't mean you're smart; doing things the hard way means you're stupid."

Any tool that facilitates achieving your artistic vision is legitimate.

This was the earliest lesson I learned as an artist's assistant when I was seventeen. Unfortunately, I forgot it for many years.

Get help whenever and wherever you can, even if (and maybe especially if) it's for mundane work. Listen to everyone. You never know.

[Thought Experiment]

I don't have a problem with the division of labour - I have a problem with 'subcontracting out' aspects of the creative process. I know there's nothing new about this, I know even Michelangelo let his students 'fill in' the backgrounds etc. It just doesn't seem right to me. But I hardly ever use samples in my work, maybe I'd feel differently if they were a significant part of it

What do you think about generative methods, then? Using generative tools as "subcontractors/assistants" can relieve artist from unnecessary mechanical work. And selecting "boundary conditions" by artists in his generative tools is probably enough significant.

Interesting point of view. I don't have a problem with generative tools, in fact I use them (in my case, Nodal and Noatikl) quite often. But I don't see them as labour-saving devices - I think of them as a means of 'thinking outside the box', giving me alternatives to my own decision-making processes, taking my music in directions which might not have occurred to me. So in my case I end up with more choices, not less

[MetaDronos]

I don't have a problem with the division of labour - I have a problem with 'subcontracting out' aspects of the creative process. I know there's nothing new about this, I know even Michelangelo let his students 'fill in' the backgrounds etc. It just doesn't seem right to me. But I hardly ever use samples in my work, maybe I'd feel differently if they were a significant part of it

What do you think about generative methods, then? Using generative tools as "subcontractors/assistants" can relieve artist from unnecessary mechanical work. And selecting "boundary conditions" by artists in his generative tools is probably enough significant.

[Thought Experiment]

I don't have a problem with the division of labour - I have a problem with 'subcontracting out' aspects of the creative process. I know there's nothing new about this, I know even Michelangelo let his students 'fill in' the backgrounds etc. It just doesn't seem right to me. But I hardly ever use samples in my work, maybe I'd feel differently if they were a significant part of it

[Golodkin]

Surely part of the art is in the selection process, this "mining for gold"?

Sure, but the but the object is to make an intelligent selection from a hundred plausible options, not from fifty thousand implausible ones. Anyone who can take direction can sort out much of the obvious chaff -- and learn from doing it.

If you can't be bothered to do this yourself then don't be surprised if one of these young, energetic people decides to collect the bones and make his/her own art...

Of course, that's more or less what's supposed to happen, eventually, though it rarely does. It's how the artistic system has worked for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

The fundamental necessity of the mature (in multiple senses of the word) artist to to minimize his involvement in routine process and maximize his executive control of effective outcome, and this has always been done by delegating time-consuming secondary tasks to assistants.

The division of labor works. There's nothing wrong with it.

[Thought Experiment]

The only problem with buying CDs from shops to sample is the matter of copyright? ???

The problem for the mature artist is mainly assembling young, energetic, process-oriented people to do (and enjoy) the coarse filtering and scutwork needed to collect the bones of his art, and man the greasier machinery of its production.

Surely part of the art is in the selection process, this "mining for gold"? If you can't be bothered to do this yourself then don't be surprised if one of these young, energetic people decides to collect the bones and make his/her own art...