We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience.
I always relish the idea of collaborating with the director on creating the sound world, the sound spectrum, and the sound environment of the film. I use every means at my disposal to create a score that is as strong and powerful to enhance the director's vision for the film.
Ambient means the natural center or atmosphere of a space. All music has that in it- a space or center. I think it just means the atmosphere or what defines the environment of sound and maybe removing the more destructive, harsh elements and harder rhythmic elements and you get down to the stillness that's inherent. There's an ambient quality in every sound. You may have to enhance that to hear it or bring it out in a different way but there is that in every environmental sound.
The atmosphere defines the environment of sound.
You get into an elevator and there's music playing. You hear it, but you're not into it. That is passive.
But when you have to deal with notes, and to be able to make a full definition of what a sound is - if you are not around that environment, then you'll find you lose that feel, that momentum, you lose all that.
I collect songs because I want to control what I - what everybody within earshot - listens to.
R. Murray Shcafer is a Canadian composer with a twist. Aside from writing incredibly ethereal music, he is also an acousitc ecologist, fighting for the sonic space on this planet to be beautiful - a rare and shamefully underrated cause.
What is the ideal audio atmosphere for creativity and it turns out it is not complete silence, and it is not a very loud atmosphere, it's something about 70 decibels.
Yes, I was invited to make the sound environment at a booth of a huge electronic company, during the Hanover Industrial Fair in 1973. It was a job. Slightly good paid. But not as much as my producer then told the press.
