https://reverbmachine.com/blog/deconstructing-brian-eno-music-for-airports/ [png][rm-logo-headi] * Articles * Sounds * Projects * Bundles * Patreon * Free * News * Contact * Articles * Sounds * Projects * Bundles * Patreon * Free * News * Contact $0 0 Cart How Brian Eno Created Ambient 1: Music for Airports [uCAoAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABiCDwABB6LNzQAAAABJRU5ErkJggg] [brian-eno-music-for-airports-1536x512] Brian Eno's Ambient 1: Music for Airports is a landmark album in ambient and electronic music. Although it wasn't the first ambient album, it was the first album to be explicitly labelled as 'ambient music'. Music for Airports was released in 1979, though some sources cite 1978 due to its copyright date. It marked a continuation of Eno's experimentation with the tape machine as a compositional tool, a process he'd begun four years prior with 1975's Discreet Music. Music for Airports also saw Eno's further exploration of generative, systems-created music, whereby Eno would focus on creating a system that would generate ambient music, something he continues to explore in the modern age with his range of iOS apps. In this article, I'll discuss how Music for Airports was created, and I'll deconstruct and recreate the tracks 2/1 and 1/2. Hopefully, the article will demystify some of Brian Eno's techniques, and give you some ideas about how to adopt some of his ambient music techniques yourself. Brian Eno & Ambient Music Brian Eno's experiments with tape loops go as far back as 1973's (No Pussyfooting), a collaborative album with King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp. For the recording of (No Pussyfooting), Eno employed an early experiment in sound-on-sound tape looping, where he would run Robert Fripp's guitar into two tape machines, that were then fed back into each other. Fripp's guitar melodies were recorded and then bounced back and forth between the two tape machines, creating long, fading delays that would build up to create a dense soundscape. The length of the delay was controlled by the physical distance between the two machines. frippertronicsfrippertronics Frippertronics Dual Tape Machines Brian Eno's tape experimentations continued with Discreet Music in 1975. The album's 30-minute long title track was composed by sequencing his EMS Synthi AKS synth and recording it into a similar dual tape machine system, with the simple musical phrases repeating over a long period of time. This system utilised an EQ and delay effect before the tape machines, allowing Eno to subtly change the sounds in real-time. Discreet Music uses two separate loops, one of 63 seconds duration and another of 68 seconds duration. Eno found that using two loops of different lengths created a phasing effect where every repeat would produce different variations as the two loops interlocked in different ways. I wrote a separate article going more in-depth on the recording of Discreet Music, available here. Discreet Music Tape DiagramDiscreet Music Tape Diagram Diagram from the 'Discreet Music' liner notes Recording Music for Airports Music for Airports was released in 1979, though Brian Eno started working on it while working on David Bowie's Low, in 1976. Part of it was recorded at the recording studio of Conny Plank, a legendary Krautrock producer, where he started by recording single notes sung by a trio of female singers, which he would later loop via tape machines. At a 1996 talk, Eno described the recording of Music for Airports: Music for Airports, at least one of the pieces on there, is structurally very, very simple. There are sung notes, sung by three women and myself. One of the notes repeats every 23 1/2 seconds. It is in fact a long loop running around a series of tubular aluminum chairs in Conny Plank's studio. The next lowest loop repeats every 25 7/8 seconds or something like that. The third one every 29 15/16 seconds or something. What I mean is they all repeat in cycles that are called incommensurable -- they are not likely to come back into sync again. Eno had previously recorded Before and After Science and Cluster & Eno at Conny Plank's studio, and would go on to record Devo's Q. Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! there too. brian eno conny plankbrian eno conny plank Brian Eno, Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Conny Plank in Plank's studio, 1977 by Christa Fast To compose the music of Music for Airports, Brian Eno's experiments focused on using small recordings of music - sustained notes or 3-4 note phrases - and looping them at different rates, determined by the length of tape they are recorded on. The difference in tape lengths between loops would cause them to intersect in interesting ways; on each repeat, new phrases and variations on existing themes would emerge. Eno himself puts it best: "The particular piece I'm referring to was done by using a whole series of very long tape loops, like fifty, sixty, seventy feet long. There were twenty-two loops. One loop had just one piano note on it. Another one would have two piano notes. Another one would have a group of girls singing one note, sustaining it for ten seconds. There are eight loops of girls' voices and about fourteen loops of piano. I just set all of these loops running and let them configure in whichever way they wanted to, and in fact the result is very, very nice. The interesting thing is that it doesn't sound at all mechanical or mathematical as you would imagine. It sounds like some guy is sitting there playing the piano with quite intense feeling. The spacing and dynamics of "his" playing sound very well organized. That was an example of hardly interfering at all. " Graphic Score Music for Airports liner notes contain a graphic score designed by Brian Eno himself. Not a trained musician, and unable to read or write sheet music, he instead used graphic symbols to denote each musical phrase or loop. Look closely and you can see individual symbols on each row, each spaced apart differently, reflecting the recording technique used to craft the album. Brian Eno Music for AirportsBrian Eno Music for Airports Brian Eno also designed the cover art for Music for Airports, as well the rest of the ambient series: Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror with Harold Budd, Ambient 3: Day of Radiance with Laraaji and Ambient 4: On Land, each of which has map-like covers. ambient music mapsambient music maps Deconstructing 1/1 Eno Graphic Score 1 1Eno Graphic Score 1 1 The first track on Music for Airports is 1/1, which features a serene sounding piano melody interspersed with ethereal textures. 1/1 has been used in the films 91/2 Weeks and The Lovely Bones. The piano in 1/1 was performed by Robert Wyatt, a prog rock musician who started as the drummer in Soft Machine before pursuing a solo career. The piano recording has been run through an echo unit, looped and then slowed down, a process that Eno would have done by manually joining two ends of a reel of tape, and then playing it back on a reel-to-reel machine at half speed. Slowing down a tape machine causes the pitch of the musical content to drop, with half-speed causing a drop of an octave. The piano loop in 1/1 features interplay between a traditional piano and a Rhodes electric piano. Here is the loop, and then the isolated piano and rhodes parts, it may have sounded at the original speed, before being reverb'd and slowed: 00:00 * 1/1 Original Speed 00:00 * 1/1 Piano 00:00 * 1/1 Rhodes 00:00 Once slowed down, the texture of the instruments change, becoming bassy and less defined. The echo effect gets smeared and stretched, creating an unreal ambience that is emblematic of the sound of Music for Airports. And this was some 45 years before the popularity of reverb and slowed versions on YouTube were a thing. 00:00 * 1/1 Slowed 00:00 * 1/1 Piano Slowed 00:00 * 1/1 Rhodes Slowed 00:00 The performance is mostly in the key of D major, with the Rhodes piano holding down D bass notes throughout. However, the final Rhodes phrase contains a C natural note, leading the music into modal D mixolydian territory. Mixolydian is a mode, or scale, that contains the same notes as the major scale with one difference: it has a minor 7th instead of a major 7th. The Mixolydian mode has a more ambiguous sound than major, as it features a major 3rd and a minor 7th. The sound is still major, but with a less 'sweet' sound than in D major. The use of the Mixolydian mode is another facet that gives 1/1 it's restful, relaxing sound; it sounds emotionally ambiguous. brian eno airports sheet musicbrian eno airports sheet music Deconstructing 2/1 Eno Graphic Score 2 1Eno Graphic Score 2 1 Music for Airports' second track, 2/1 consists of a choir singing shapeless harmonies. There are no real melodies present, and the voices occasionally form chords, but there is no discernible structure. This song is composed of seven loops, all of different lengths, with each loop playing back a single, sung note. In the graphic score, you can see Brian Eno's use of rectangles to represent looped tracks, with the spaces between them varying. These loops have been recreated below, along with the approximate times that each loop repeats. Note that these times aren't perfect, and the timings fluctuate throughout the piece, likely due to the way they were looped (the tapes were wrapped around chair legs). Some things to note here are: * The C and high F loops are very close together to each other in duration (20.1 seconds and 19.6 seconds, respectively). They start out with the notes playing separately, and over time the notes gradually get closer together until they play back at the same time, almost as a chord. * The D loop has the longest length by a significant margin, and D is also the most dissonant of all the notes in the piece, as it creates a semi-tone clash with C every time the two play together. The longer loop length for this note may have been a conscious decision by Eno, or the composition may have just come out this way through experimentation. Click on the play icons below to start each individual loop. The dice button at the bottom randomises the loop times and the reset button reverts the loop times back to the original album times. Choir 1Choir 1 High A, 17.8 second loop Choir 2Choir 2 C, 20.1 second loop Choir 3Choir 3 D, 31.8 second loop Choir 4Choir 4 High F, 19.6 second loop Choir 5Choir 5 E, 16.2 second loop Choir 6Choir 6 Low A, 21.3 second loop Choir 7Choir 7 Low F, 24.7 second loop Start All Stop All Deconstructing 1/2 Eno Graphic Score 1 2Eno Graphic Score 1 2 For the second track on Music for Airports, 1/2, Brian Eno uses eight short piano phrases recorded to tape to create the sense of a bigger composition, one that is again shapeless and without structure, but one that continually evolves as the piece progresses. Some of the loops are just single notes, and others consist of simple 3 or 4-note snippets, with one loop being an arpeggiated chord. These loops overlap in different places upon each repeat, creating the illusion of new phrases and melodies, which are simply different combinations of the eight snippets. Looped for long periods, like the tracks 11:36 running time, allows for many variations and themes to emerge. Click on the play icons below to start each individual loop. The dice button at the bottom randomises the loop times and the reset button reverts the loop times back to the original album times. Piano 1Piano 1 17.1 second loop Piano 3Piano 3 23.2 second loop Piano 5Piano 5 29.5 second loop Piano 7Piano 7 31.1 second loop Piano 2Piano 2 20.8 second loop Piano 4Piano 4 28 second loop Piano 6Piano 6 30 second loop Piano 8Piano 8 38 second loop Start All Stop All Ambient Approach * One way to get into this Music for Airports style of composition is to start using tape. If you can't commit to getting big reel-to-reel machines, you can always start with cheaper cassette players. Some great online resources for cassette tape loops are Amulets, Hainbach, and Gemini Horror. * If you want to work with this style in your DAW, turn off the grid and start creating loops in seconds/milliseconds instead of bars/beats. In Ableton Live you can press [?] + 4 (Ctrl-4 on Windows) to turn off the grid, allowing you to create unquantized loops that work in a similar way to the tape loops described in this article. Create several clips of different lengths, set them all to loop simultaneously, and record the results. * To dig deeper into this style of tape loop ambient music, check out William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops. William Basinski used a similar concept to Brian Eno, only the tapes he used rapidly deteriorated upon playback, causing the musical material to degrade over the length of the recording. Further Reading Below is a list of interviews with Brian Eno as well as external resources for generative music: * Music for Airports Liner Notes * Eric Tamm: Brian Eno His Music And The Vertical Color Of Sound * Brian Eno San Francisco 1986 talk * Tero Parviainen: How Generative Music Works Downloads & Related Thanks for reading! Below you can find the WAV files of all the Music for Airports loops recreated for use in this article to play with at your own leisure. Experiment and enjoy! Download the Loops Article ImageArticle Image Download the audio loops used for the musical examples in this article in WAV format. Each file is the exact length of the loop, including any silence, so you can loop the full audio files without additional editing. Get the Ableton Projects [DLQAAAABJRU5ErkJggg][related-project] Get the Ableton Live Projects for my remakes on the Projects Store. All projects have frozen tracks in case of missing plugins and all downloads include multitracks and MIDI files for use in other DAWs. Discreet Music Article [DLQAAAABJRU5ErkJggg][DiscreetMusic-Dark] To explore an earlier iteration of the techniques explored in this article, take a look at my article on Brian Eno's 1975 song Discreet Music, which uses two loops of different lengths. Thursday Afternoon Article [DLQAAAABJRU5ErkJggg][brian-eno-thursday-evening-email] For a look at some later Brian Eno work, check out my article on 1985's Thursday Afternoon, which combines asynchronous loops with an element of randomisation. Published on July 11, 2019 Article Comments * Comment * * [png][] illlumen says: July 11, 2019 at 6:36 pm For me, Eno is one of the most important producer alive. You explained very well how he was working, some things I knew, others were completely new to me. Its great that you dive into the ambient pool. There is so much to discover. What I love about Enos albums from that time is the special sound they have, which probably owns a lot to the tape machines which where involved. Thanks alot, sir. Reply + [png][4d089ffbe4721] reverbmachine says: July 13, 2019 at 4:06 pm Glad you liked the article, Eno is definitely one of my favourite artists! Reply * [png][8c1a737585576] Zacklur says: July 13, 2019 at 2:30 am This is great, and got me to become a supporter on Patreon! Thanks so much for putting this together. Like your previous commenter, some of this I knew, but not set out so clearly like this in a way that could be easily replicated, So I was messing around with this and tried putting the loops you provided onto different tracks of an Octatrack MkI, setting them to loop and not timestretch, triggered each sample, and I think it worked! Is that really all there is to it? Samples of varying lengths, looping continuously mixed together? Still not entirely sure about the "echo unit" part of Eno's diagram. Is that just to say the original piano samples had a delay effect applied before they were looped? Or was the echo unit set up so that it re-effected the loop every time it looped, with the echo unit being "played" by Eno, manipulating settings slightly over time? Reply + [png][4d089ffbe4721] reverbmachine says: July 13, 2019 at 4:05 pm Yes, as long as your Octatrack isn't quantising anything, that's all there is too it! I only have the Digitone, which doesn't do sampling, but it seems the Elektron sequencers are really good for this kind of music. I think the echo unit in the Discreet Music diagram is more of a reverb effect, to create that big, spacious sound. Reply o [png][a6da7b07bf05d] ben says: July 21, 2019 at 6:46 pm This should all work the same on the Digitakt too. You can also do phase looping by taking the same sample, doubling it up, and then shortening one of the samples. This will move you into more of the Steve Reich types of loops. Reply * [png][965cdde5eb07e] Michael Peters says: July 13, 2019 at 8:58 pm Great article and wonderful to have the loop players to experiment!! Eno continued to use this generative approach I think, his gallery installations during the 1990s, for example, used several minidisc players with different loop lengths, and even his more recent ambient albums (such as Reflection) are still "systems music" based. It would be interesting to analyze in what ways his approach evolved over the years Reply * [png][ec638743f0dc6] Toby says: July 14, 2019 at 10:51 am Thanks for this! Excellent analysis and beautiful samples! Reply * [png][6af7262edb388] Eric T says: July 14, 2019 at 7:50 pm Eno's Oblique Strategies cards have been digitized and posted here: http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html Reply * [png][d488eb03d8ce9] Paul Jorgensen says: July 15, 2019 at 6:56 am Fantastic research. Thanks! Reply * [png][791584034e7b3] Glenn Sogge says: July 18, 2019 at 6:28 am For your listening pleasure. Thanks for the loops. https://rkaicmoderne.bandcamp.com/album/ blooms-engulfing-deconstructed-airports-omaggio-a-brian-eno Reply + [png][4d089ffbe4721] reverbmachine says: July 27, 2019 at 12:04 am Thanks for sharing Glenn, will put a link to this in the next newsletter! Reply * [png][615156d9e8c4a] Ren Kay says: July 22, 2019 at 8:13 pm Begs one to go to Earslap, open Otomata in one window, and Circuli in the other, run a few points and enjoy. https:// earslap.com/ Reply + [png][4d089ffbe4721] reverbmachine says: July 27, 2019 at 12:05 am Circuli brings back memories, I used to put this on in the background a lot! Reply * [png][fa01fd3f9bacf] Sandy says: August 3, 2019 at 10:54 am Wonderful, thank you so much for this. Reply * [png][64213d0e55a3c] Brett S says: August 3, 2019 at 8:42 pm Great article and loops. Thank you! Reply * [png][1f14c4d5e2a41] Sugarsynth says: August 7, 2019 at 2:09 am This gives me a newfound appreciation for Eno. Also, does the 1/2 loop ever end? I feel like it's been playing for 10 minutes now... ;0 Reply + [png][4d089ffbe4721] reverbmachine says: August 8, 2019 at 9:53 am the loop are set to keep going forever, or until you press the "stop all" button Reply * [png][2cac95adda309] stephen spera says: August 9, 2019 at 2:28 pm Thanks so much for the great article!! ss Reply * [png][3e9fc9395beb2] Adam says: August 15, 2019 at 7:25 pm This is so great. Thanks so much for the great breakdown AND for including the loops. Pro move. Reply * [png][314a62bdad123] Leiza Carvalho says: August 20, 2019 at 5:32 pm thanks!! <3 Reply * [png][03c352b5e6902] jake says: May 7, 2020 at 8:30 pm Great read! Reply + [png][4d089ffbe4721] reverbmachine says: May 24, 2020 at 12:19 pm thanks! Reply * [png][32faf917373aa] Diego Lucero says: May 26, 2020 at 1:01 am Hola, excelente articulo. ?Como puedo citarlo? Reply * [png][0956d729be5fe] Josh says: July 30, 2020 at 11:07 am Good article, I combined this technique with Ableton's random follow actions on some synth swells: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3eUYO_iGSCM&t=9s Reply * [png][2434565246bc3] Scot says: September 12, 2020 at 3:05 am Great job here. Such a beautiful record. Reply * [png][906173290e2f1] Dave M says: December 11, 2020 at 12:00 pm Nice read thanks. Love the sample player you set up here, feels like I'm Brian Enough:) Reply + [png][] Anonymous says: July 16, 2022 at 8:12 am Hahahaha Reply * [png][b70b0fc753720] Nicolas Moreno says: June 30, 2021 at 2:46 pm This is outstanding. Thank you very much. Reply + [png][dd25a3352bf6d] Pierluigi Castellano says: July 25, 2022 at 2:25 pm I likes this reflection but don't forget Terry Riley' role thinking repetition: the Revox that used Eno & Fripp was certainly Riley idea! Reply * [png][5d28b22d87d73] Lars Bjerregaard says: September 2, 2021 at 10:13 am Very inspiring article about very inspiring music and techniques. I shall now go and dabble with this in my VCV Rack, where the possibilities for this kind of music are endless. Reply + [png][4d089ffbe4721] Reverb Machine says: September 17, 2021 at 3:28 pm VCV Rack is perfect for these kind of generative unsynced loops, I can also recommend Bitwig's The Grid Reply * [png][843b64fe2f14b] Arthur says: January 11, 2022 at 4:49 pm For the track 2/1, I think you mixed up the visuals for low Ab, Eb and low F. Reply + [png][4d089ffbe4721] Reverb Machine says: January 21, 2022 at 11:45 am I think I did, thanks for the heads up, I've fixed it now! Reply * [png][] electricmusicbox says: March 8, 2022 at 7:58 am I have listened this album over and over since I first heard it in the 90s. This deconstruction is very nice and great and clear explanation what's happening in the song. Thanks you for this. Reply * [png][f0bb869c17ff6] Iskra Johnson says: June 8, 2022 at 5:41 pm I absolutely love this piece. I have linked to it in my most recent blog post about the influence of Brian Eno on my visual art. The chart in the liner notes has a direct connection to my visuals, and blew my mind. Thank you! https://iskrafineart.com/ the-tarmac-residency-airport-landscapes-by-iskra-with-gratitude-to-brian-eno / Reply + [png][4d089ffbe4721] Reverb Machine says: June 14, 2022 at 10:54 am Thanks for sharing! Reply * [png][30d05d65add3e] Sam says: July 5, 2022 at 6:46 pm Huh, I've been kicking around a desire to convince someone to make a perpetual music for airports machine and here I find it's been done for 3 years already. Very grateful that you made this, and I will be adding it to my "adhd-cancelation toolkit" along with HatNote and Rain.Today Reply + [png][4d089ffbe4721] Reverb Machine says: July 19, 2022 at 10:16 pm Great sites - I can recommend Generative.fm too. Reply * [png][e8c9c42733438] Ben Norland says: July 13, 2022 at 9:20 pm Thank you for this Reply + [png][28ff00f43bbe7] Michelle says: July 16, 2022 at 8:10 am Sitting under the fig tree later in this heat.. Not the band.. Will be glorious Thank You Reply * [png][] safds says: July 14, 2022 at 10:01 pm Using b as a flat sign in this day and age is an abomination. and # exist; use them, please. Otherwise, an excellent presentation! Reply + [png][7cce12562e17b] Sg says: August 9, 2022 at 9:29 am Where do these symbols exist, please? (Using mac keyboard) Reply o [png][4b01c4930edea] Bernard says: December 7, 2022 at 4:56 pm Character Viewer and then Music Symbols. is unicode U+266D, # is unicode U+266F Reply + [png][4d089ffbe4721] Reverb Machine says: July 18, 2022 at 10:27 pm Point taken, done! Reply * [png][466b361a38167] Paul White says: July 15, 2022 at 11:00 am Something to do in the airport queue this summer. Reply + [png][4d089ffbe4721] Reverb Machine says: July 19, 2022 at 10:11 pm You might even be able to get through the other Ambient series albums if you get hit with the delays at the moment Reply * [png][dd25a3352bf6d] Pierluigi Castellano says: July 25, 2022 at 2:25 pm I likes this reflection but don't forget Terry Riley' role thinking repetition: the Revox that used Eno & Fripp was certainly Riley idea! Reply * [png][0b813634682fc] Synthman says: July 27, 2022 at 5:28 pm Many thanks for this lucid, thorough and entertaining resource. Reply * [png][92917a64ed7b2] Crowl says: August 4, 2022 at 3:03 am Fantastic article! TU! Reply * [png][477d290590d8a] Rod Stasick says: August 5, 2022 at 3:42 am Hello, It's nice to hear this separated out, so thanks for the work you put into this and especially the audio setup. The piece "1/2" is the first piece on the second side of the LP and so it is actually the third piece on the album. I was going to mention that the arpeggiated chord wouldn't sound for me in the original or the random mode, but it now does. Don't know why that happened earlier. Anyway, good stuff and I enjoy your explorations. Keep it up! Rod Reply + [png][4d089ffbe4721] Reverb Machine says: August 31, 2022 at 6:50 pm Thanks for the heads up, I'll take a look at the player script at some point. Reply * [png][e203dcfad2c4b] Steve says: August 6, 2022 at 7:01 am For a likely influence on the graphic scores, see the early '70s computer-programmed, flatbed-plotter-printed works of Manfred Mohr. https://www.artsy.net/artist/manfred-mohr/works-for-sale?sort= year Reply + [png][fd6b66731890a] Cuthbert says: October 12, 2022 at 6:26 pm Looks like parallel invention to me. Notice that the similarity of both to standard musical notation which is itself inspired by written word and follows the same right to left, top to bottom convention of western books. Music is linear in time and is composed of layered portions. Graphing that information is going to look similar when you plot it left to right. Reply * [png][3983b7f021a83] Robert says: October 14, 2022 at 4:22 pm Another great study on this album: https://teropa.info/blog/2016/ 07/28/javascript-systems-music.html Reply * [png][837d53b5109cc] Sandman says: October 15, 2022 at 10:34 pm Very nice job. The interactivity is brilliant! Reply * [png][96623f74f3f56] Corona says: October 17, 2022 at 4:17 am Airports Forever online. This is too much for free. Love it! Reply * [png][a44f8a19980de] Gail Pickens-Barger says: October 17, 2022 at 4:02 pm I got into this selection of music because of the TV Yoga dude, named Steve Ross. He would play Music for Airports near the end of the yoga class for final relaxation. If I recall 2/2 and FirstLight were also used. Love this stuff. Thanks! Reply * [png][028fe22a6dba9] John McMahon says: February 15, 2025 at 8:44 pm Great piece - thanks! 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