ArtyAmb

ArtyAmb1 (mp3 format; 60:20 -- 86.9 Mbytes)
ArtyAmb2 (mp3 format; 60:20 -- 86.9 Mbytes)

When I'm doing non-musical work -- answering e-mails, getting caught up with payments, etc., or just reading -- I often like to listen to long, ambient pieces like the 5-6 hours-long stretched versions of Eno's music or the long, subtly-shifting compositions of ambient musicians like Arctica. Lately I've been putting out a lot of music, having great fun exploring different techniques and music technologies. Most of that work has been between five and ten minutes long.

I decided I'd go "full ambient" on a piece, and aim to make it an hour long. I've done other ambient/ambient-like pieces in the past. For this one, though, in addition to making it 'ambient'-sounding, I set myself a technicai challenge: the piece should be generated in "real time" from my Eurorack synthesizer system. It would be rendered untouched by human hands! To be sure, the hour-long constraint was arbitrary; I could turn off the system at any time. Hence the name "Arty" ambient (R-T, get it? Real Time! ha ha!).

I conceived of the layout for ArtyAmb2 first, with four interacting lines. Again, all done at once by the patch I designed and tweaked on my hardware synth. I decided to make things even MORE ambient by abstracting just one of the lines, modifying it a little bit, and generating ArtyAmb1. The numbering is because I thought of ArtyAmb1 as the sonic precursor for ArtyAmb2.

Aesthetically, the biggest challenge was to keep it from becoming too busy. I'm not sure I completely succeeded (or perhaps I went too far and it's a little too sparse), but I do like the results. Now I'll unpatch my system and embark on some more audio adventures.

I hope people find this music relaxing. The summer is starting to wind down, and relaxing is good.

Brad Garton
August, 2026