V 6 Brian Eno Ambient 1 Music for Airports DIY Generative Tape Loop System Emulator Vox 6/7

Hi all!
This is a simple tool for emulating the work method and music of Brian Eno's seminal album Ambient 1 - Music for Airports. More specifically, track 1/2 and 2/1. This video is part of a playlist that, in and by itself, is all you need to create your own generative version of those two tracks. Sounds interesting? Dive in. 🙂

   • Brian Eno Ambient 1 Music for Airports DIY...  

But first. It goes without saying that this is a far cry from the original music, especially soundwise. And Brian’s system was more intricate than this, of course. I know that. But, at the same time, this one has a few other things going for it. The open and light-weight nature makes it quite powerful. And, I think, very much in spirit of Eno’s original concept. I've been in awe of this album, and the idea behind it, for a very long time, but always felt that it could/should be taken further in some shape or form. Some have, Eno included, but not in this way. So, here goes.

As you may know, Brian never actually played the music on "Ambient 1" but instead implemented a (rather unwieldy) tape loop system to do it for him. And, most importantly, it was very cleverly constructed to change and permutate over time. To generate music made possible. Given the constraints of the medium, the music committed to vinyl is essentially just a tiny snapshot of a potentially endless and ever-changing piece of music. With this playlist you can, to some extent, emulate that process and run with it. The possibility for experimentation and variation is endless, really. The tracks are to be played SIMULTANEOUSLY and as LOOPS. Each video represents a reel-to-reel tape machine that run independent to the others. As they are of different lengths, and contain mostly silence, they will continuously reconfigure against each other. Some smart person could probably calculate how long it would take to get back to square one and hear the exact same music again. Not me…

How to get things going.

Open any video in the playlist. Right-click on the image and choose "LOOP". Then right-click any other video in the list and choose "OPEN IN NEW TAB". Select the new tab, right-click "LOOP" - and so on. Run all or just a few. You decide. The playback will go on until you stop it and, basically, never repeat itself. The volume can of course be set separately in each tab, and I would recommend going pretty low to begin with, and then adjust according to taste.

I find it convenient to run the Piano and Vox tracks in two separate browsers, as it gets a bit hard to navigate and overview them all otherwise.

Note that this is not Eno's actual music playing. But the sound is pretty close. The original files of music is taken from Reverb Machines breakdown of the album. (Thank You!) Recommended reading and listening. https://reverbmachine.com/blog/decons... My original idea was to extract the loops from the album but that proved impossible. Or make them myself. Too hard. In that process, I came across the above article and download. I have since made adjustments and edits to the files as I thought they could get closer to the original with panning, saturation, reverb and such. But the length and position of the sound is intact. That is spot on as far as I can tell. For practical reasons, I've repeated them a few times already. It's convenient of course but also allows the notes, in some cases, to sustain longer than the original track length instead of cutting it short.

So, will this sound like the original stuff then? Yes, and no, I guess. But that’s the whole point, isn’t it?

Anyway. This was fun and interesting to me in any case. I hope someone else can get something out of it too.

Cheers /// spiderbite