Ambient music is a type of music that focuses more on creating a mood or atmosphere than on following traditional music patterns. It often sounds calm and does not always have clear melodies, beats, or structured compositions. Instead, it uses layers of sounds that can be enjoyed whether someone is listening actively or passively. This music often gives the feeling of being peaceful, visual, or not distracting. Natural sounds, such as those found in nature, may be included. Some pieces use long, repeated notes, similar to a style called drone music. Instruments like the piano, strings, and flute may be played or imitated using electronic devices called synthesizers.

This genre began in the 1960s and 1970s, when new musical tools, like synthesizers, became more widely available. It was influenced by earlier styles, such as Erik Satie's "furniture music," musique concrète, minimal music, Jamaican dub music, and German electronic music. However, it was British musician Brian Eno who gave it its name and helped it become popular in 1978 with his album Ambient 1: Music for Airports. Eno said that ambient music should be "as ignorable as it is interesting," meaning it can be listened to without needing full attention. Early pioneers of the genre included artists like Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Wendy Carlos, and Kraftwerk. The genre gained new interest in the late 1980s with the rise of house and techno music, and it became more popular among a dedicated group of fans by the 1990s.

Although ambient music has not become widely commercially successful, it has received recognition over time, especially during the Internet era. Because it is open to many influences, ambient music often draws from other styles, such as classical, avant-garde, experimental, folk, jazz, and world music.

History

Erik Satie, a French composer from the early 1900s, created a type of music he called "furniture music" (Musique d'ameublement). This music was meant to play in the background during events like dinner, not to be the main focus. Satie described it as blending with the sounds of the environment, such as the noise of eating, and helping to soften loud or uncomfortable moments. He believed it could also help people ignore boring conversations and reduce the distraction of outside noises.

In 1948, a French composer and engineer named Pierre Schaeffer introduced the term "musique concrète." This style of music used recorded natural sounds, which were then changed or mixed to create new compositions. Schaeffer’s methods, such as using tape loops and cutting and joining recordings, became the basis for modern sampling techniques.

In 1952, John Cage created a famous piece called 4'33", which is a performance of complete silence lasting four minutes and thirty-three seconds. The piece is meant to highlight the ambient sounds of the performance space, such as audience movement or breathing, as the "music." Cage’s work has influenced many artists, including Brian Eno.

During the 1960s, many musicians experimented with new methods that led to the creation of ambient music. In 1962, composers Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick started The San Francisco Tape Music Center, which served as both a studio and a place for concerts. Other musicians, like Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich, worked there and helped develop minimal music, which shares ideas with ambient music, such as repeating patterns and steady sounds.

Between the mid-1960s and mid-1990s, many records were released in Europe and the United States that helped define ambient music. Examples from the 1960s include Music for Yoga Meditation and Other Joys and Music for Zen Meditation by Tony Scott, as well as Soothing Sounds for Baby by Raymond Scott.

In the late 1960s, French composer Éliane Radigue used tape loops and feedback from recording equipment to create music. In the 1970s, she used an ARP 2500 synthesizer to make long, slow compositions often compared to drone music. In 1969, the group COUM Transmissions performed sound experiments in British art schools, and Pearls Before Swine’s 1968 album Balaklava included bird and ocean sounds that became common in ambient music.

Ambient music developed in the 1970s from experimental and synthesizer-based styles. In 1974–1976, American composer Laurie Spiegel created The Expanding Universe using a computer-analog system called GROOVE. In 1977, her work Music of the Spheres was included on the Voyager 1 and 2 Golden Records.

In 1975, Suzanne Ciani performed on her Buchla synthesizer at two events, which were later released as Buchla Concerts 1975. These performances were part of a grant application and educational demonstration.

Brian Eno introduced the term "ambient music" in the mid-1970s. He described it as music meant to be played softly, even below the level of hearing, similar to Satie’s idea of furniture music. Eno’s 1975 album Discreet Music and his 1978 album Ambient 1: Music for Airports helped define the genre.

Other musicians creating ambient-style music at the time included Jamaican dub artists like King Tubby, Japanese composers like Isao Tomita and Ryuichi Sakamoto, and German bands like Popol Vuh, Cluster, Kraftwerk, Harmonia, Ash Ra Tempel, and Tangerine Dream.

The rise of synthesizers in the 1970s greatly influenced ambient music. Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hutter said in a 1977 interview that electronic music could break boundaries and allow limitless creativity. The Yellow Magic Orchestra later developed a style of ambient electronic music that evolved into ambient house.

Brian Eno, who called himself a "non-musician," used the word "treatments" to describe his experiments instead of traditional performances. He and David Bowie created the Berlin Trilogy, influenced by German kosmische Musik bands and minimalist composers.

In the late 1970s, musician Laraaji began playing in New York parks. Brian Eno heard him and invited him to record an album, Day of Radiance, which became the third in Eno’s Ambient series. This album used mostly acoustic instruments instead of electronic ones.

In the 1980s, sampling and computers made it easier to create ambient music. By the late 1980s, computers like the Macintosh and IBM models were used in studios and homes. Many artists still used analog synthesizers and acoustic instruments.

In 1983, Midori Takada recorded her first solo album, Through the Looking Glass, in two days using a wide range of instruments. Between 1988 and 1993, Éliane Radigue created three long works on the ARP 2500, later released as La Trilogie De La Mort.

In 1988, Pauline Oliveros, a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, introduced the term "deep listening" after recording an album inside a large underground cistern.

Related and derivative genres

Ambient house is a type of music that started in the late 1980s. It combines elements of acid house music with ambient sounds and atmospheres. Songs in this genre usually have steady, repeating drum beats, soft synth sounds, and short vocal clips that create a calm, atmospheric feel.

Ambient house music often does not focus on a single musical key or scale. Instead, it uses unusual, non-melodic sounds and synthesized chords. An example of this genre is the Dutch band Brainvoyager. Another similar style is called Illbient.

Ambient industrial is a mix of industrial and ambient music. A typical ambient industrial piece might include slow-changing, harsh-sounding harmonies made from metal noises, deep, rumbling sounds, and machine-like noises. These sounds may also include gongs, drum beats, special vocal effects, or other sounds the artist chooses to use.

Some ambient industrial works use sounds like radio telescope recordings, baby sounds, or noises captured by microphones placed on wires.

Ambient pop is a style of indie music that began in the 1990s. It developed at the same time as post-rock and came from indie pop. It uses musical structures found in indie rock but adds electronic sounds and atmospheres that feel calming and thoughtful. This style takes influence from psychedelic music, minimalism, krautrock, and techno. It often uses electronic sounds like sampling but still includes live instruments. The term was first used to describe music from the American Analog Set and other bands on the Darla Records label. Examples of bands in this style include Stereolab, Laika, and Broadcast.

The band Slowdive’s 1995 album Pygmalion was very different from their usual sound. It used many ambient and psychedelic elements with repeated, hypnotic rhythms. This album influenced many ambient pop bands and is considered an important work in the genre. A music critic called the album’s songs "calming, dream-like music that shares more similarities with post-rock bands than with other groups."

Ambient techno is a style that began in the 1990s. It combines ambient sounds with the rhythmic and melodic parts of techno music. Artists known for this style include Aphex Twin, Carl Craig, The Orb, The Future Sound of London, The Black Dog, Pete Namlook, and Biosphere.

Brian Eno first imagined ambient music as quiet background music. Later, this idea was combined with house music rhythms and made more playful by the band The Orb in the 1990s. A different style called dark ambient developed, which is the opposite of this. Dark ambient music includes a wide range of artists, from industrial and metal musicians to electronic and noise artists.

Dark ambient music often lacks steady beats and uses unsettling keyboard sounds, eerie samples, and altered guitar effects. It is a vague term, and many artists change their style with each new release. It is related to ambient industrial and isolationist ambient.

Drone music is a type of minimalistic music that focuses on long, sustained sounds, notes, or groups of tones called drones. It is usually made up of long songs with small changes in harmony. La Monte Young, one of the creators of this style in the 1960s, described it in 2000 as "the part of minimalism that uses long, continuous tones." Drone music has been used in many genres, including rock, ambient, and electronic music.

Ambient music combined with new-age styles is meant to help with meditation, relaxation, or spiritual practices like yoga or healing. Musicians who create this type of music usually make it specifically for these purposes. To help with meditation, the music must be simple and repetitive, without sudden loud sounds or improvisation. It is minimalistic and mostly uses instruments rather than vocals.

New-age music often includes natural sounds like whales, wolves, and eagles, as well as waterfalls, ocean waves, and rain. Instruments like flutes are also common. Flautist Dean Evenson was one of the first musicians to mix peaceful music with nature sounds, creating a genre popular for yoga and massage.

Space music, sometimes spelled "Spacemusic," includes music from the ambient genre and other styles that share certain features. These features create a feeling of calm, open space.

Space music can range from simple to complex sounds. It often lacks traditional melodies, rhythms, or vocals and aims to create a sense of continuous, open imagery and emotion. It helps with deep listening, relaxation, and peaceful, expansive moods. People use space music for background or focused listening, often with headphones. It is also used in films, planetariums, and for meditation.

Sleep

Ambient music has been chosen by people who took online surveys about sleep to help improve their sleep. In a study about insomnia in adults, ambient music was used and helped many people with insomnia sleep better. The participants were between 20 and 45 years old and listened to Max Richter's album Sleep, which was created to help people sleep better. They wore headphones and closed their eyes, but they were told to stay sitting to avoid falling asleep. However, one person did fall asleep while listening to the music.

Film soundtracks

Movies that use ambient music in their soundtracks include Forbidden Planet (1956), Solaris (1972), Blade Runner (1982), Dune (1984), Heathers (1988), Akira (1988), Titanic (1997), The Virgin Suicides (1999), Traffic (2000), Donnie Darko (2001), Solaris (2002), The Passion of the Christ (2004), Pride & Prejudice (2005), The Social Network (2010), Her (2013), Enemy (2013), Drive (2011), Interstellar (2014), Gone Girl (2014), The Revenant (2015), Columbus (2017), Mandy (2018), Annihilation (2018), Ad Astra (2019), Chernobyl (2019), and Dune (2021), among many others.

Notable ambient-music shows

• Sirius XM Chill plays ambient, chillout, and downtempo electronica music.
• Sirius XM Spa mixes ambient and new age instrumental music on channel XM 68.
• Echoes is a daily two-hour music radio program hosted by John Diliberto. It features ambient, spacemusic, electronica, new acoustic, and new music directions. It was founded in 1989 and is broadcast on 130 radio stations in the United States.
• BBC Radio 1 Relax was a radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). It played ambient music and included various genres like electronic and instrumental compositions.
• Hearts of Space is a program hosted by Stephen Hill. It has been broadcast on NPR in the United States since 1973.
• Musical Starstreams is a US-based commercial radio station and Internet program. It has been created and hosted by Forest since 1981.
• Star's End is a radio show on 88.5 WXPN in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1976 and is the second longest-running ambient music radio show in the world.
• Ultima Thule Ambient Music is a weekly 90-minute radio show. It has been broadcast since 1989 on community radio stations across Australia.
• Avaruusromua, named "space debris" in Finnish, is a 60-minute ambient and avant-garde radio program. It has been broadcast since 1990 on various stations of the Finnish public broadcaster YLE.