If you're an artist of any sort, you know that art is an infinitely delicate balance of soft and hard. Black and white. Empty and full. It's an endless continuum of extremes. More is less is perhaps the most poignant and familiar expression to express this idea. So why is that which is ambient; minimalist; silent, even; so frequently overlooked as one of the composer's most invaluable assets?
Anyone who's played the game Metroid Prime or Echoes knows that it almost arrogantly prided itself on just how ambient and atmospheric it was. You're isolated on a hostile planet in the presence of eldritch and abominable creatures who'd find no greater joy than in eviscerating you and making love to your insides.
Needless to say, a suitable environment for such a scenario is an ambient one. Kenji Yamamoto realized this and composed (I use this term loosely) the famous Metroid Prime soundtrack. As we play through MP, we note, even if not cognizant of it, a distinct lack of conventional traits in the music to which we're so accustomed. No urge to tap your foot and nothing that really constructs a musical statement. We pay it no mind aside from a passive acknowledgment of its oddity. There are no sprightly melodies and no complex harmonies, rather, the platinum of subtlety. I want to examine this further.
Without being pedantic, one can divide music into two categories--very disparate categories whose natures and purposes are distant: ambient and traditional. While traditional music is far too expansive to elucidate what it is, allow me to elucidate what it isn't. To me, traditional music serves as a complement to the environment. The field is set, the cards are down; all that remains is the wrap.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IHIcPtJXxs - "Traditional" music
Notice how the music encapsulates the sandy, arid and exotic flavor. As language flows in a rhythmic balance of consonant statements and phrases, so too does this music. Dissonance is not pervasive, and if present, only serves to contrast the consonance.
Then we find:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymv7GQR6jqc - Ambient music
What do hear when you listen to this? Predictable--nay, safe--rhythm? Well-formed musical syntax? No. Erratic rhythms. Garbled, minimalist and cruelly brief intervals of structure.
Traditional music is built on structure. The relationship between the sounds is exulted and placed in highest regards. As previously mentioned, traditional music approaches music in such a way that it endeavors to translate the context into sound--an abstract homeomorphic bridge of sight to sound and sound to sight connecting two worlds, if you'll excuse the written acrobatics. Ambient music serves a purpose entirely different. It aims to not restate the visual thesis, rather, to project itself onto the very walls and make them crawl--to be heard not with your ears, but with your body. It does not vivify the environment, rather, it sterilizes the air around you. It disturbs you and manipulates your senses. It clasps an unutterable nerve. Just as the sounds and minimalism are primitive, so is the aspect of us which it aims to affect and appeal: primal.
One could go as far as to say ambiance and silence are almost offensive to the ears and mind. Being as such though, has it not accomplished the ultimate goal of music? To move us to our bones? To aggravate our comfort and burgle the safety of rhythm and consonance. Such is the execrated, yet indispensable value of silence and ambiance. To focus not on the structure and relationship of the notes in baroque fashion, but on the very aesthetics of each sound--or the hauntingly fashionable lack thereof.
It starves us of the patterns and rhythm we lust for. It makes the floor slither, the air sting and the walls knock. The responsibility now lies within the artist to gracefully allocate this silence and ambiance to the dimensions of his/her vision. Whether it be the psychotic vestiges of "rhythm" that unsettle the dormant madness in us, or the dramatic undulation of sounds to wrap our perceptions in marionette strings--there's limitless potential in the oft-ignored and imprecated art of perturbation. It's easy to give into the temptation of grandeur, but sometimes, the void simply need not be filled.
Anyone who's played the game Metroid Prime or Echoes knows that it almost arrogantly prided itself on just how ambient and atmospheric it was. You're isolated on a hostile planet in the presence of eldritch and abominable creatures who'd find no greater joy than in eviscerating you and making love to your insides.
Needless to say, a suitable environment for such a scenario is an ambient one. Kenji Yamamoto realized this and composed (I use this term loosely) the famous Metroid Prime soundtrack. As we play through MP, we note, even if not cognizant of it, a distinct lack of conventional traits in the music to which we're so accustomed. No urge to tap your foot and nothing that really constructs a musical statement. We pay it no mind aside from a passive acknowledgment of its oddity. There are no sprightly melodies and no complex harmonies, rather, the platinum of subtlety. I want to examine this further.
Without being pedantic, one can divide music into two categories--very disparate categories whose natures and purposes are distant: ambient and traditional. While traditional music is far too expansive to elucidate what it is, allow me to elucidate what it isn't. To me, traditional music serves as a complement to the environment. The field is set, the cards are down; all that remains is the wrap.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IHIcPtJXxs - "Traditional" music
Notice how the music encapsulates the sandy, arid and exotic flavor. As language flows in a rhythmic balance of consonant statements and phrases, so too does this music. Dissonance is not pervasive, and if present, only serves to contrast the consonance.
Then we find:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymv7GQR6jqc - Ambient music
What do hear when you listen to this? Predictable--nay, safe--rhythm? Well-formed musical syntax? No. Erratic rhythms. Garbled, minimalist and cruelly brief intervals of structure.
Traditional music is built on structure. The relationship between the sounds is exulted and placed in highest regards. As previously mentioned, traditional music approaches music in such a way that it endeavors to translate the context into sound--an abstract homeomorphic bridge of sight to sound and sound to sight connecting two worlds, if you'll excuse the written acrobatics. Ambient music serves a purpose entirely different. It aims to not restate the visual thesis, rather, to project itself onto the very walls and make them crawl--to be heard not with your ears, but with your body. It does not vivify the environment, rather, it sterilizes the air around you. It disturbs you and manipulates your senses. It clasps an unutterable nerve. Just as the sounds and minimalism are primitive, so is the aspect of us which it aims to affect and appeal: primal.
One could go as far as to say ambiance and silence are almost offensive to the ears and mind. Being as such though, has it not accomplished the ultimate goal of music? To move us to our bones? To aggravate our comfort and burgle the safety of rhythm and consonance. Such is the execrated, yet indispensable value of silence and ambiance. To focus not on the structure and relationship of the notes in baroque fashion, but on the very aesthetics of each sound--or the hauntingly fashionable lack thereof.
It starves us of the patterns and rhythm we lust for. It makes the floor slither, the air sting and the walls knock. The responsibility now lies within the artist to gracefully allocate this silence and ambiance to the dimensions of his/her vision. Whether it be the psychotic vestiges of "rhythm" that unsettle the dormant madness in us, or the dramatic undulation of sounds to wrap our perceptions in marionette strings--there's limitless potential in the oft-ignored and imprecated art of perturbation. It's easy to give into the temptation of grandeur, but sometimes, the void simply need not be filled.