Everything in one place
Working with Illustrator and Photoshop I have been creating some drawings of Birds. These are all based on a theme.
I have just finished a set of mixes for Killian Wells song ‘VIP’ under the moniker Soundslags.
Hear the remix and edit below.
Working in Illustrator I started to make a typeface, soon I ended up with a few variations of the same set including bold, italic, light and swash.
I hate how rude some phone tones sound, so I made my own.
All of these files loop. Ringer #1 is long and #2 is shorter.
Mobile Phone – New Message http://bit.ly/zHerb
Mobile Phone – Ringer #1 http://bit.ly/17PhGo
Mobile Phone – Ringer #2 http://bit.ly/pKqDw
Mobile Phone – Alarm http://twiturm.com/kn7n
Some print work I made with Illustrator for Coca-Cola advert mock ups. Using the bottle image I added liquid and bubbles as well as each countries flag and a colour scheme for each to test effects in Illustrator.
Last night I started to distort the Memphis LT Std Extra Bold typeface to see what I could create out of the type and how far could you push the type before it stops being legible.
www.robjn.co.uk/RobjnTitle.ttf
www.robjn.co.uk/RobjnStandard.ttf
Some random prints I have made over the past few months.
www.myspace.com/laserlong
www.laserlong.com
The songs used are in [square brackets]
Intro
Baby [We Float]
Fruit Tree Tea Video
Interlude [Sunshine]
My Music Outakes
Saints and Sinners Blip [Book Called Mistake]
Cini Film Blip [Spectrum of Visible Light]
Castle Blip [Warp]
No Win No Fee [Down]
Film/Making of/Walks-Getting out of the Studio [Moon And Sunset]
Spectrum of Visible Light Video
Mixset Extract [Goldfrapp - Utopia/Funkstörung - Clopping Heads (feat Tes)/Bjork - Hidden Place]
I have made a podcast for Robjn.com so that free music will download as and when I update it. I have also been doing remixes for more bands. Details on release.
Robjn Podcast: http://feeds.feedburner.com/robjn
Laserlong Podcast: http://feeds.feedburner.com/LaserlongPodcast
Some prints of the making of the Laserlong album cover.
www.myspace.com/laserlong
I had an idea while looking at a pink floyd photo that it would be perfect for stamps.
So here it is with the original image below. Note: These are not real and have no link to Royal Mail other than my photoshop work. Click for larger images:
Task:
A 6000 word essey on “Music for Spaces” using Brian Eno and Ambient music as a focus.
Download the full PDF. Click here.
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Robjn / Dissertation / Graphic Design BA (Hons)
“Music for Spaces”
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Contents:
Introduction
Music for Airports
Music for Windows 95
Music for Film: Glitterbug & Spinner
Conclusion
Bibliography
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Introduction:
In this essay I am going to compare three pieces of ambient music by the same artist, Brian Eno and then analyse how they each occupy the space they are in, the differences they make to it and the audiences perceptions of them. I shall outline each in individual chapters and then compare them in the conclusion.
The pieces are ‘Music for Airports’ (Track one on the Reference Cd), the ‘Microsoft Windows 95 theme’ (Track two on the Reference Cd) and the music from the Derek Jarman film ‘Glitterbug’. These pieces of music were all designed for a set space, these mediums are: architecture, film and a personal computer’s operating system. However they were not originally designed to go with them from the start of their manufacture or designing. An architect would not have thought about the music when designing the building in the same way as the music in a film is a post production process being that it was made to synchronise with the scene. The music for a computer would have been made after the software was developed. The sound would only have to travel a metre and so can be light and around 10 seconds or a short blast signalling power and automation.
In 1978 Brian Eno wrote the term ‘Ambient Music’ down in the sleeve notes for the “Music for Airports” album. These notes became a manifesto for him explain what the term means. “An ambience is defined as an atmosphere, or a surrounding influence: a tint. My intention is to produce original pieces ostensibly (but not exclusively] for particular times and situations with a view to building up a small but versatile catalogue of environmental music suited to a wide variety of moods and atmospheres.” (Eno. 1978)
This outlines the idea of designed environment music but also expresses that music can be designed for a situation in a specific space rather than all spaces. “The concept of music designed specifically as a background feature in the environment was pioneered by Muzak Inc. in the fifties, and has since come to be known generically by the term Muzak.” (Eno. 1978). The company of Muzak created soft and simple versions of popular songs at the time, normally stripping out vocals and making it into instrumental music, this has also come under the term, lift music. “To create a distinction between my own experiments in this area and the products of the various purveyors of canned music, I have begun using the term Ambient Music. “(Eno. 1978 ) The difference of Ambient music and Muzak is that Muzak takes popular songs, normally ones already famous and strips out vocals and drums. Ambient music is a music designed for a space or occasion and is an original work. The terms Muzak and Ambient Music are not so different. In 1978 Eno named Ambient Music but it was in 1934 that the Muzak company was founded. Muzak is music piped into the background of of hotels, offices and other public places. It was tested to to increase productivity. On their website today it say they have “350,000 clients. 100,000,000 people who experience us every day.” However in 1934 their music was mainly heard in a few factories. “Stimulus Progression(R) was a system invented by Muzak to boost productivity, reduce errors and improve morale in businesses throughout the country. ” (Muzak.com,11/12/2006)
‘The fact that music increased efficiency was substantiated by a team of British industrial psychologists. The study by S. Wyatt and J. N. Langdon gave the concept of special programming for work areas it’s foundation.” (Muzakcom, 11/12/2006) Based on reports like Wyatt and Langdons muzak became more popular across cooperate America as before there were no offices with music in them.
“Muzak is science. And when you employ the science of Muzak: in an office, workers tend to get more done, more efficiently, and feel happier. “(Muzak, 12/11/2006) The muzak company now have music they place in situations. They call it Audio architecture. “Audio architecture is the integration of music, voice and sound to create experiences between companies and customers”. (Muzakcom,11/12/2006)
Before this there were musical styles that contained ambience and used the same principles. ‘Musique d’ameublement’ by Erik Satie, also known as ‘furniture music’ is one of the most direct to be linked with ambience. Satie’s Furniture Music was coined in a phrase in 1917 and he directly designed his music for light lunches or show intervals. The music was to be played in the background and not to be the centre of attention. ”’Furnishing music’ (sic) is thoroughly industrial. Our habit, or custom, is to make music on occasions where music has no place. And so one plays ‘waltzes’, ‘fantasies on operatic themes’, and other such things written for another purpose.” (Moore Whiting, 1999. P.500) I believe the use of the word ‘industrial’ in the quote means mass produced. Manufactured music scores were to be distributed and sold in mass and to be played freely in this manner.
The key difference to understand in the history of these three styles is that the audiences were not intending to listen to them. They were to be played in the background of whatever was happening at the time. It’s mainly the technology that has been the difference of Furniture music, Muzak, and Ambient music as they have have all been played in different ways. Saties original scores were intended to be played by a small group of musicians or a pianist, Muzak subverted other peoples music and stripped it down, then played it from a reel to reel tape and records in shops. Ambient music from the Music for airports sleeve was originally designed for a space that it holds and to be played from a tape and record over vast sound systems. The spaces people would have been subjected to these sounds in are very different too. A restaurant with Furniture music would have background noise of conversation, plates and cutlery, serving food and the kitchen to contend with. In a shop with Muzak there isn’t much conversation but there is a bigger space, normally with rows of items, being counters for products or rows of clothing. In an airport it would be impossible to play the sound with one real band due to the effects in the music and it wouldn’t be possible to play it on a small speaker system like a shop with its low roof; an airport has a vast roof, even in the 1970′S when the music was created, airport design was much the same as today. The roofs in airports are normally open plan and the buildings on the ground level only reach up a few metres and all sit inside the shell of the building. Sound in this space, has to be on multi speaker systems to keep the sound local to areas of the terminals but also allow the sound to be at a set level rather than over projecting from one speaker in the centre. In all the cases the sound is local to a person wandering in the spaces of a shop, airport or computer but the sound is levelled with volume and multi speaker systems.
I believe these three genres are very similar but have all progressed with technology. Saties music was played live. Musical playback on tapes or records was not yet conceived but Muzak was designed using tape and records to be played in public places. The technology at the beginning of Ambient Music meant you could experiment with tape and sound to create a continuous sound without anyone physically playing the same notes over and again, as they are being looped. Ever since 1877, when Edison first recorded sound onto a cylinder ·wTapped in tin foil, music has changed. From this were recordings on to records and then onto magnetic tape to many media from Mini-disc to MP3 ; cd’s to dvds .. “Divorced from its sound source and preserved, recorded music could be experienced over and over again, a feature that in time would create the necessary mindset for the arrival of electronic and Ambient music.” (Prendergast. 2003, P.75)
Along with synthesizers in the past fifty years giving the option to design your own noises and sounds music has fundamentally changed in the performing and listening in the last 150 years. Music and performance have always been linked, for where there is a listener you have an audience to perform to. Technology helped to change the way we listen to music. Gramophone recordings, radio or tape. Cd-extra and dvds helped bring recordings to the viewer as aposed to the live audience. With television there is instant transmission for live events, if something is recorded it has to be edited and manufactured onto a medium (cd, dvd or tape) then distributed and there is normally a delay from days, weeks or months.
With cases like Internet broadcasts the delay for the performance can be seconds. “The digital revolution, and the corresponding developments in the miniaturization of portability of music recording and playback equipment, mean that virtually any music can now be heard at any time” (Miell, MacDonald, Hargreaves. 2005 PI) These pieces of music help the person in charge of the production seduce you into a mood or state of mind. As and example, a computer game will have fast active music to make you feel more motivational in the game, even though you are not physically moving. A film will have music designed to enhance the emotional aspects of the scene.
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Music for Airports:
“Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.” (Eno 1978)
Brian Eno started to make ambient music using technology and processing sounds. Both with tape loops (a repeating ribbon of tape that will synchronise and fall out of the other tracks of music) and other synthesizers and effect machines. He records pianos and then would add additional reverb with machines to make the sound less limited. This has the effect of sonicly blurring sounds as they just fade out over time when they could be played as a opposite in staccato. Along with using machines for effects he uses and manipulates synthesizers to make new sounds with waveforms. The piece itself, 1-1, is 17 minutes long and was composed by Eno with Robert Wyatt and Rhett Davies. Wyatt played the acoustic piano, other instruments were played by Eno and Davies. Eno engineered the piece. The electronic piano in the piece was recorded and put on a tape loop. “It was mostly physical loops of tape. I would then synchronize five or six loops and get a repetition which would generate an unpredictable sound or texture which always changes.” (Prendergast. 2003. p.123)
The idea behind the ‘Music for Airports’ album came from Eno sitting at Cologne airport early in the morning waiting to catch a plane. The music is a long piece that is calm and very slow.
“There is something so wrong where people don’t think about the music that goes into situations like this, you know, they spend hundreds of millions of pounds on the architecture, on everything, except the music” “So I thought, it would be interesting to start writing music for public places like that, and I started to think, so what kind of music would that have to be? Obviously it mustn’t interfere with human communication so it has to be either higher or lower than voice sounds are. It should last a very long time, because you don’t want changes all the time. It should be possible to be interrupted by announcements and so on without suffering. So I started to imagine a kind of music that would work in public spaces”. (Music for Airports 20/11/2006) In this Eno has hi lighted the ergonomics of the airport and designed the sound around it for the viewer. The highlights on communication announcements and his solution. If his music was like a standard pop song and there were announcements the music would cut off in order for the vocal announcement to be heard. With Eno’s music there are long pauses between the notes making announcements less likely to disrupt the flow of music.
“Can architecture be heard? Most people would probably say that as architecture does not produces a sound, it cannot be heard. But neither does it radiate light, yet can be seen”. “In the same way we hear the sounds it reflects and they, too, give us an impression of form and material. Differently shaped rooms and different materials reverberate differently” (Rasmussen. S, 1986, p.224). The architecture in airports is normally white, stark, with vast roof space and a lot of windows. Light and airy buildings. In the airport human communication is going on, there are announcements of flight calls as well as other loudspeaker announcements. Terminals miles long are wired to the same musical system. The audience to this music however had no intention on listening to it, they did not come for the music, they came for other reasons. Their stay in the airport will make them aware of the music if they stop and listen out for sounds but otherwise they have no intent to listen to anything other than announcements. However the people in the airports are all waiting, but hearing the music mostly as individuals, as a background not as a performance. They each experience it in an individual way.
The point of this music is that is doesn’t aim to make you feel happy, or fill you with some doubt but it is there is make you feel calm. It doesn’t want to lure you in the false sense of security but to make you feel relaxed. If you are anxious you don’t want to be told to be happy; if you are feeling tense and trying to relax you will be trying to look for distractions and this is when you might focus on the music. Ambience is not to be the centre of attention and this music does prove that. It has been designed for the generic space. Most airports are the same, the large architecture, the people, the reverberations of noise. Music for airports was tested in the “Marine Air Terminal of New York’s LaGuardia Airport.” but if used in other airports it would have had a bigger audience and a similar affect. With this idea that the music is pre-formatted for the space Eno has given us a designed form of Muzak. As noted with the announcements the music has been considered for the space, With the multi speakers in the airport it would be a sound that surrounds you wherever you are as it should always be in the background.
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Music for Microsoft Windows 95:
The Microsoft sound file would be played on a personal computer in your home or office. You are waiting for the computer to start and you are seeing the Microsoft 95 windows 95 logo and then you hear the start up sound. Why would Microsoft need a start up sound anyway? It’s a sonic logo. A jingle, like adverts such as “chicken tonight” have there tunes so can the computer, we see this with the Intel microchip. The space the sound is absorbed in is normally your personal space of around one metre when sitting at your computer station. It would be in the home, an office or public buildings like a library, school, community centre. The advertising of a song and its sound, even though short is ambient, its a subliminal advert, first you hear the sound as a jingle and over time the more you hear it you realise it is as iconic to the product of windows as Bernard Hermann’s Music is to the Hitchcock film Psycho.
The sound file is only six seconds long for a start and was an automatic pre-set in all copy’s of windows 95. Whenever the computer would start the sound file would play until changed by the user. In creating the file Brian Eno said Microsoft’s brief was” We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional, ‘ this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said ‘and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long.’ I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It’s like making a tiny little jewel.” (Q and A With Brian Eno 15/11/2006)
Microsoft wanted their customers to feel like you were being optimistic or inspired when you started the computer directly rather than having it as a background noise that you might pick up on it. It was audible and was projected out to tell the user the machine was functioning. It also ties in with the ‘start’ button; which implies that you are beginning to word processing or started some other application. “Start Creating” MS Advert. These are subtle ways of providing confidence and optermisum to the user.
With the sound file sounding calm, futuristic and inspirational and it being the lengths of a jingle it is not only a sonic logo, it’s an advert being projected around difference places. The sound when a machine starts up is an advert, like a keyring is to a car owner. You don’t see or hear it all the time but when you do you understand what the product is. The sound is something synonymous with windows 95 and gives it it’s own identity. It is confident to say that the Microsoft start up sound had a bigger audience than music for airports did at the time of it’s release as a record in 1978. If the music were to have been used in many airports the numbers would have far out balanced the windows theme. In the first two years of release, the legal sales alone were 110 million for Windows95.
The music for the windows 95 theme would have been made on computer, editing notes and wave files together and then adding reverb and short echoes to the digital piano with a soft string based pad from a synthesizer in the background towards the end.
The music for the following Microsoft start up sound, Windows 98 is rather like Eno’s version for Windows 95 in the heavenly sound and it is seven seconds long. This version is a synthesized sound descending a scale for three seconds and then another synthesizer sound ascends a few notes for the remaining three seconds.
For the second edition of Windows 98 there was a alternative start up sound on the instillation disc. This version is nine seconds long and starts with a quiet sound that is echoed three times and has pads fading over it. At the end there is a quick descent of a scale of notes that are also echoed.
The Microsoft Windows 2000 Start up sound takes a different musical approach. It’s 5 seconds long. A set of piano notes scaling up and down and then descending into a soft ending with a synthesized pad in the background. At 2 seconds you can hear a tone in this pad that is actually a very low note being played on the piano. (Track 06 on the Reference Cd)
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Music for Film: Glitterbug & Spinner:
“The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but it would be decades before reliable synchronization was achieved in a commercially practical way”. (Sound Film 15/12/2006)
This quotes tells some of the history of sound in films but it gives a interesting view that at the time the sound was complimentary to the film as the music 1-1 is to an airport. In the early days of motion pictures a pianist would play, improvising to the scenes of the film, then as the technology moved on sound being played with a gramophone was used “A historical survey of cinema music published in 1914 notes that while early films were accompanied only by a ‘scratchy gramophone’, ‘live’ music had come to oust ‘mechanical’ music in the auditorium, and the gramophone was now relegated to providing entertainment during the intervals.” (Bodger, Gunning, Tsivian, Taylor, 1998, p.86). With many combinations of inventions for using sound and film together, the soundtrack was played beside the film so they don’t run out of synchronization with each other this was developed more and really was fixed into what we know today in the 1920′S. “A film score is the music in a film, generally written for the film and often used to heighten emotions provoked by the imagery on the screen or by the dialogue.” (Film Score 13/12/2006)
The music for this chapter is from the film Glitterbug. The music was by Eno and the film was by Derek Jarman. During writing this I have discovered that the album I was taking the music from, called “Spinner” by Brian Eno and Jar Wobble is not completely the same as the film score. “Spinner, a collaboration with bass player Jah Wobble which updates the music Eno produced for the Derek Jarman film Glitterbug” (Strategies for making sense 10/12/2006)
It was reading this that is was clear that the music from the film was not completely the same and listening to the music from the film and then the record it was clear that Spinner has been edited and has more bass lines and drums in it. The album “Spinner” released in 1995 is just under a hour long at 57 minuets and 2 seconds and has many of the tracks flowing into each other without pauses. “Did you co-produce it? “No, 1 did the original music for Glitterbug. [Wobble] got the stereo tapes from me of that: he couldn’t take them apart in any way, because a lot of them never were anything other than stereo stuff that I did here. So he got those pieces, 19 altogether, and just worked on top of them – or didn’t”" (Strategies for making sense 10/12/2006)
Below are the comments from the “Spinner” album sleeve.
“This music originated as a soundtrack for Derek Jarman’s last film Glitterbug, which was released shortly after his death in 1994. He never saw it finished.”
“I made most of the music in my studio in Kilbum, working directly onto digital stereo, alone at night. I hardly watched the film, which, being made up of pieces of Super-B footage shot by Derek over the twenty years between the late sixties and late eighties, became more and more poignant as his life drew to its close.”
“I had intended to collect the music as a soundtrack record, but in the end a lot of it didn’t make much sense without the film. So 1 cut that connection and placed myself in the hands of Jah.”
“He received from me a number of stereo tapes and did what he does – spanning the gamut from leaving them completely alone (such as Garden Recalled), playing along (such as Like Organza), or using them as atmospheres for entirely new compositions (such as Steam).” (Eno.1995. Spinner)
Firstly Eno writes of how the music was designed to a soundtrack for the Jarman film ‘Glitterbug’. The The film was made from editions of film, over a twenty year period from the 1970 to 1985.
The ‘Glitterbug’ movie was started by Jarman but he became too ill to complete it and subsequently died. The movie was completed after his death. As Eno wrote: “He never saw it finished.”(Eno Spinner 1995) This is interesting alone as a film is normally made up of cuts and edits over weeks and months, they are designed to go together; however this film seems to be more like music of artists greatest hits, selecting pieces of film and slicing them together.
Eno also mentions that he hardly watched the film, as odd as this might be it seems to make sense. The film is a selection of edits and so is the music. The music for ‘Spinner’ was then re-produced by Jar Wobble. The music being reworked by Wobble also suggests that the music Eno was making was being remixed and subverted in the s~me way the edits of films were. As Eno’s music was now being re-edited it was not original to him. But the original score was original to the film and only one song remained unchanged on the ‘Spinner’ album that was in the original film, this was the fourth track “Garden Recalled”. (This is on the reference Cd as Track eight). The original version is Track eight and due to the way tracks from the. original soundtrack was mixed together in the film it has some of the previous track at the start, it also ends five seconds before the ‘Spinner version’ but this is because the version from ‘Spinner’ mixes into the next track on that album.
The original ‘Glitterbug’ (music is also on the reference Cd). It spans the video as the music was not released commercially so the recording is from the video. The music for the whole of the soundtrack is around 40 minuets. The film it’s self is made from old 8mm films edited together, in most cases this is very noticeable with the quality. With both the music and the film edit being selections and highlights of work, I think they compliment each other perfectly and you could ask someone what was made first, the movie ‘Glitterbug’? Or the music for it? However knowing the music was made with the film in mind even without specific editing for syncopation its my opinion too that the music fits the film rather well as a post production.
Watching the film with the ‘Spinner’ album on a CD player with the films’ sound down oddly has the same effect as the original music that was used. As most of the ‘Spinner’ album is mixed together you don’t notice the edits in the music much, its only when the music stops in some place. With Eno not watching the film much it gives the same idea of ‘stock music’. Music that can be used in set locations or times, music like Satie’s ‘furniture music’ or Eno’s Music for airports and indeed the music for a computer, the computer doesn’t have to be a Pc, it could be a Apple Mac. The sounds are all subservient to their location.
This is also proven by the fact that the music was used in a film, the viewing location being a cinema and then later, a television. In the cinema your sat in one location not moving and listening to the music and watching the film. You do much the same in a chair in front of a television. The ‘Spinner’ album is a abstraction from the original soundtrack of ‘Glitterbug’. But the abstracted music could be listened to in many ways.
There is nothing to view so you can wander around without anything to focus on. Even in the album’s liner notes Eno talked about Wobble’s use of the album. “After he finished working on this, he walked along the Grand Union Canal from Bethnal Green and up through the Lee Valley listening on headphones. He assures me that the music proved a very satisfactory companion, which opinion I pass on for any others considering the same walk” (Eno. 1995. Spinner)
With the case of ‘Glitterbug’ as mentioned I don’t think it would have made music difference on the film. The music fits in and with the film in mind Eno made the music, we can only assume that he understood the style for the music from working with Jarman before on the film “Blue” and from knowing the artist. “Music has persisted as an integral part of the sound film because it accomplishes so many things at once.” (Buhler, Flinn, Neumeyer. 2000 p.ll) The main difference of the music in a film is how it is viewed. A film has a completely different audience perception to than Music for Airports and the windows 95 theme. The audience intended to hear the music. Music and film enhance each other today. The music is normally chosen or designed to go with the film. “Music and sound effects add meaning and texture to the story that’s being told on the screen”. (Jewler, Drewniany 2004 P206)
Most modern films have post-production done on them, in visual effects but sounds too. From a car skidding on a road or to background sounds in a scene these are normally added after the original filming. “How closely the accompaniment matched the plot would depend. very much on how the audience experienced the film and reacted to it. (Bodger, Gunning, Tsivian, Taylor 1998 P8S)
The music in Stephen Spielburg’s movie “Jaws” especially the “shark” theme is a good example of suspense in that you can not see the shark but you know that it is there from the music. “The main “shark” theme, a simple alternating pattern of two notes, F and F sharp, became a classic piece of suspense music, synonymous with approaching danger.” “Spielberg later said that without Williams’ score, the film would have been only half as successful” (Jaws (film) 13/12/2006. The music is the key to making the audience feel there is danger coming for the actors on screen.
The music from the album spinner has an audience with a completely different perspective. The album version can be listened to anywhere but the original motion soundtrack for Glitterbug has to be heard with the film itself as the soundtrack was not released without the film. The idea a location could be a canal side for one with vast horizons and then the other has a TV screen that has a viewpoint located in the actions of the film are completely contrasting. The film would want to engage you into being in a collective of people and feeling your the only one watching it, as you connect with the screen in the same way a individual can connect with a computer monitor or television. In a cinema there is soundproofing and the speaker systems.
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Conclusion:
The mixture of media is a key part of the conclusion. We have music against:
Audience and Places
To these media we then have the mixture of the intents of their audiences. It’s interesting to see how people will collectively absorb the music and then how some audiences have no intent on listening to the music and its a secondly product of their visit to say an airport, however in a film its one of the things you would expect to hear with the film.
“The study of media audiences is broadly concerned with the who, what, where, how, and why of the consumption by individuals and social groups.” (Shuker. 2002 P.13)
Sound isn’t the only thing to make music ambient. There is a lot of ambient music based on Eno’s Music for Airports but a lot of the artists seemed to have missed the point of Eno’s purpose. The music’s location in these three pieces of music that makes them ambient. Eno has designed music based on the their settings and placements directly and indirectly, this complements the setting as we know from the examples.
Music for Films
With the example of the Original soundtrack for ‘Glitterbug’ the music was only heard with the film as the cd ‘Spinner’ was reworked, the music for windows 95 was also on the computer, you could record and transfer the music to other media like a MP3 player but that’s the audience abstracting their perception on the sound. So two of these sources were fixed to there media: being Operating Systems and Film. The visual space of the setting being a cinema or a computer station is how the music is absorbed. Eno reworked the music from ‘Glitterbug’ to give the audience of his work a different feeling, I would say that the Film helped to distract the audiences attention from the sound and so when the sound was on it’s own it needed something else. “I had intended to collect the music as a soundtrack record, but in the end a lot of it didn’t make much sense without the film” (Eno Spinner. 1995) It seems that to be a piece of music independent from the film, the music needed to be modified and so this would be a good motive for the re-producing of the works. To me this is why the Original score fits the space, Eno as an artist decided that it was fine placed in its context and so left it together with the film. In a film when a musical artist would edit the music to fit with what is happening, the production of music depends on what its emotional function has an effect on the audience even though they don’t think of the music, they are absorbing that and also the fact the people in the film are actors. The music is ambient, it is both ambient to the scene, computer, and the location, but the contradiction is that it has been designed to be there.
The music of film is normally something that is full of action and tempo but in the example for the Glittlerbug film the space is the screen and the sound compliments it and doesn’t try to over animate it. The music tends to keep the film consistent too as the edits that are included in the film are all visually different in types of light, location and actions happening in them, but the music holds the film together by being consistent in a style.
“Another important thread in the story of Ambient music is the film soundtracks – music made to support something else, an evocation of a psychological space within which something is intended to happen, a sense of music which presented a climate but left out the action.” (Prendergast, 2003, Eno Forward p. xi.)
“Music can be used to produce a necessary distortion of the visual material in the audience’s perception, to make it heavier or lighter, more transparent, subtler, or, on the contrary, coarser.” (Tarkovskij, Hunter-Blair, 1989, ·158)
The distortion that music has on film with the ability to enhance some of the directors aspects to the audience is a good summery to fall on, as Eno wrote, the music and the film support each other and the space that Glitterbug provides helps the audience absorb the music in the same fashion as ‘Furniture music’ or ‘Mazak’, they compliment and enhance the audiences perception.
Music for Airports
With the music for Airports section Eno talked about how he designed music for a set space, the pauses and worked around the other problems like airport announcements and human noise. Ambient music isn’t just a drone in the background. It functions with in the media. Muzak was designed to increase productivity and ‘Music for airports’ was designed to make people feel calm and relaxed. It completed that and fits it’s space.
Music for Microsoft Windows 95
The windows 95 music was designed to make people feel they are entering a space that’s productive and positive. This music is simply sonic and has no visual representation but has a function to play with human interaction. This is clear from the brief the agency gave to Eno for the project. The space for a computer does span a set area but really is the distance where the eye and the screen are. When at a computer you get focused on to the screen and so you stop noticing the setting around you. Starting up a computer in a public space is in contradiction to the area. Rows of computers will look informal but once you sit down your attention is on the monitor and not to the room the computer is housed in, the start up sound is directed at the user of the machine and if it travels beyond that, it is not noticed by the user. The effect of advertising jingles is that its designed to be remembered. The sounds of ambient music are normally designed to be infective, this being a subliminal response to the music rather than a blatant and normally, melodic one.
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Bibliography
PRINTED SOURCES
BODGER, ALAN. GUNNING, TOM. TAYLOR, RICHARD. TSIVIAN, YURI. (Translated by Alan Bodger) (1998)
Early Cinema in Russia and Its Cultural Reception.
University of Chicago Press.
BUHLER, JAMES. FLINN, CARYL. NEUMEYER, DAVID. (2000)
Music and Cinema.
Wesleyan University Press
DREWNIANY, BONNIE L. JEROME JEWLER, A. (2004)
Creative Strategy in Advertising.
Thomson Wadsworth.
HUNTER-BLAIR, KITIY. TARKOVSKIJ, ANDREJ (1987)
Sculpting in Time: Tarkovsky The Great Russian Filmaker Discusses His Art. Reprint edition (1989).
University of Texas Press
MOORE WHITING, STEPHEN (1999)
Satie the Bohemian.
Oxford University Press
PRENDERGAST, MARK. (2000)
The Ambient Century. 2nd Edition 2003
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.
RASMUSSEN, STEEN EILER. (1986)
Experiencing Architecture: 2nd Edition.
MIT Press First MIT Press paperback edition, 1964.
MIELL, DOROTHY. MACDONALD, RAYMOND. HARGREA VES, DA VID J. (2005)
Musical communication.
Oxford University Press
SHUKER, ROY. (2002)
Popular Music: The Key Concepts.
Routledge UK
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ONLINE SOURCES.
ANON, (No Date) Derek Jarman: About
Available at: http://www.slowmotionangel.com/Jarman/about.htm
(14th December 2006)
ANON, (No Date) Film Score
Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_score
(13th December 2006)
ANON, (No Date) Jaws (film)
Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaws %28film%29
(13th December 2006)
ANON, (No Date) Music for Airports
Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbtxhXyniuM
(20th November 2006)
ANON, (No Date) Muzak.com
Available at: http://www.muzak.com
(11th December 2006)
ANON, (No Date) Muzak
Available at: http://media.hyperreal.org/zines/est/articles/muzak.html
(12th December 2006)
ANON, (No Date) Sound Film
Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_film
(15th December 2006)
SCHUTZE, PAUL (1995) Strategies for making sense.
Available at: http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/eno/interviews/wire9S.html
(10th December 2006)
SELVIN, JOEL (1996) Q and A With Brian Eno
Available at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ chronicle/ archive/1996/ 06/02/PK70006.DTL
(15th November 2006)
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MUSICAL SOURCES
ENO, BRIAN (1995)
Spinner. All Saints Records (ASCD23)
ENO, BRIAN (1978)
Music for Airports. Virgin EG Recordings Ltd (EEGCD17)
Microsoft (1995)
Microsoft Windows 95 Cd
Microsoft (1998)
Microsoft Windows 98 Cd
Microsoft (1998)
Microsoft Windows 98SE Cd
Microsoft (2000)
Microsoft Windows 2000 Cd
Microsoft (2001)
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Cd
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VIDEO SOURCES
JARMAN, DEREK (1993)
Blue.
Artificial Eye Film Company Ltd.
JARMAN, DEREK (1994)
Glitterbug.
Dangerous to Know
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