[HN Gopher] A 6-Hour Time-Stretched Version of Brian Eno's Music...
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A 6-Hour Time-Stretched Version of Brian Eno's Music for Airports
Author : vinhnx
Score : 173 points
Date : 2025-03-30 00:50 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.openculture.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.openculture.com)
| tra3 wrote:
| Well I know what I'm listening to at work tomorrow. Wonder if
| this is going to make my code happier or sadder.
|
| Also now wondering if there's any research on how music affects
| (cognitive) performance.
| flowerthoughts wrote:
| I heard of a study many years ago that concluded that listening
| to music you like made you drive your car a bit faster,
| regardless of the pace of your preferred music. Not sure that
| translates to _cognitive_ performance, but might suggest
| listening to music at the gym is useful.
| djmips wrote:
| Your code will no longer be afraid of crashing.
| morsch wrote:
| I'm rather fond of The Black Dog's Music for Real Airports,
| myself. https://ra.co/reviews/7404
| madmoose wrote:
| Music for Real Airports is one of the albums I put on to block
| out the world when I'm trying to get work done.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| The Black Dog's "Music for Photographers" is probably my
| favorite album of all time. Yet it's almost completely unknown.
| Everyone should give it a listen.
| morsch wrote:
| I like that one a lot, too. But it's not the kind of music a
| lot of people like. You'll get mostly blank or concerned
| looks if you make everyone listen to it.
| mrmagpie wrote:
| The High-Rise Living 78-86 mix with Regis is stunning too
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Ah yeah love this album!
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Thanks for introducing me to this. This is the kind of music I
| like and had never heard of it.
| jquaint wrote:
| Great song.
|
| For anyone curious how to produce something that sounds like
| this, paulstretch is the way to do it.
| https://sonosaurus.com/paulxstretch/
|
| My personal favorite use of this:
| https://youtu.be/XiKWfcy-Z70?si=iJTP0XTEAAObI_rU
| barrenko wrote:
| Ah yes, pop some ketamine, turn this one, and never return.
| keyle wrote:
| Mind blown. Thanks!
| pbmahol wrote:
| The paulxstretch completely obliterates phase component of
| audio input. Its not really way to do it if you want real
| output.
| viraptor wrote:
| Doesn't phase only matter if you want to mix it with some
| other sound? If you're editing the final version you're going
| to be playing, what's the point in preserving phase?
| pbmahol wrote:
| You can not just preserve original phase when doing time
| stretching, there are "smarter" algorithms that try to
| derive "correct" phase, while the paulxstretch just make it
| random values, maybe for extreme stretching values it
| doesn't matter for ambient music but for general music and
| sounds its not that trivial.
| itomato wrote:
| There is some signature compression that comes with
| paulstretch that sounds exactly like the output of a
| square wave interpolated to a sine.
|
| You can see, hear and almost taste it if you stretch
| white noise.
|
| Tonality makes no difference.
| colanderman wrote:
| The human ear is sensitive to phase correlation. It stems
| from the physiological fact that our ear is effectively a
| multiresolution filter. So with an overtone-rich tone, the
| time constant with which we perceive the uppermost
| harmonics is significantly less than the period of the base
| harmonic. So if the sonic energy of those harmonics is
| correlated into small "packets", we hear that as a
| "buzzing". This is true of raw synthesis waveforms:
| sawtooth, square, etc. It's also true of any short
| transients: clapping, hi-hats, etc.
|
| If you "mess with" the phase information of the harmonics
| relative to the base harmonic, this is the same thing as
| changing where the sonic energy of those harmonics falls in
| the wavecycle. So notably, in the cases listed above where
| the sonic energy falls into small "packets", if you
| randomize that phase information relative to a much lower
| tone (as Paulstretch does), you now have spread that energy
| throughout the full wavecycle. This eliminates any
| sensation of "buzzing" or "clicking" and makes transients
| "mushy".
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Do you know where someone can read more about how to make
| things "buzzing" , very interested in that kind of sound
| quality
| colanderman wrote:
| I'm not sure any literature on this beyond my own
| experience.
|
| In the context of synthesizers, "buzzing" quality is
| associated with unfiltered basic waveforms: sawtooth,
| square, triangle (to a lesser extent), pulse (notably
| so). A sawtooth wave is used, for example, as the bass
| sound in Gorillaz' "DARE".
|
| More generally, in my personal experiments, "buzzing" is
| associated with the presence of discontinuities in the
| waveform (i.e., the Dirac delta and its antiderivatives).
| Any discontinuity is associated with sonic energy at all
| frequencies, at a highly localised point in time. (See
| the Fourier transform of Dirac delta (anti)derivatives
| here [1].) Higher antiderivatives of the Dirac delta have
| progressively less energy at higher frequencies; beyond
| the 2nd antiderivative buzzing is not really audible.
|
| Aside - a pulse wave is a series of Dirac deltas; a
| sawtooth is the 1st-order antiderivative thereof; a
| square wave is a series of sign-alternating 1st-order
| Dirac delta antiderivatives; and a triangle wave is
| alternating 2nd-order Dirac delta antiderivatives. Hence
| - buzziness in these waveforms.
|
| The human ear has a Q of about 15 (very approximate) -
| meaning its response at any frequency lasts for about 15
| cycles of that frequency. So, when presented with a
| periodic discontinuity (e.g. sawtooth wave), the sonic
| content below about 15 times the base frequency will tend
| to cohere together into a tone, while the sonic content
| above 10 times the base frequency will tend to be
| perceived independently of frequency - as a buzzing. (See
| Bell, "A Resonance Approach to Cochlear Mechanics".)
|
| So, if you want to increase the amount of buzzing in a
| waveform, you can add localized "packets" of high-
| frequency sonic energy up to a rate 1/15 that of the
| lowest frequency content of said packets. You can
| experiment with this in Audacity by generating sawtooth
| waves of various frequencies (between 25-250 Hz, where
| buzzing is easily audible) and low- and high-passing them
| appropriately to separate the "tonal" (low-frequency)
| content from the "buzz" (high-frequency) content. Then
| mix and match the two from different frequency waveforms
| two create a waveform at your desired base frequency with
| your desired rate of buzzing.
|
| Finally, a more pedestrian - and very common - way that
| the above is achieved is the synthesis technique known as
| "supersaw", by which a handful of slightly-detuned
| sawtooth waves are mixed together. Beside giving a
| "shimmering" effect which one gets from mixing any
| slightly-detuned sounds together, this also results in
| increased "buzziness". This effect is very common in pop
| electronic music. E.g. the bass sound in Lady Gaga's
| "Just Dance" is a good example.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_transform#Distr
| ibution...
| jm547ster wrote:
| Phase is relative, you are trying to sound intelligent
| colanderman wrote:
| Of a single sinusoidal component, sure, this is true. But
| phase differences _between_ sonic features are absolutely
| detectable.
|
| The effect is most noticeable on raw synthesized tones:
| sawtooth, square wave, etc. These tones contain sonic
| energy concentrated at discontinuities in the waveforms.
| The ear can hear this, as a "buzzing sound".
|
| Run these tones through Paulstretch (even with 0 stretch),
| and the sonic energy is distributed throughout the
| wavecycle. These tones retain their spectral character, but
| noticeably lose the buzzing character.
|
| I've uploaded a demo here:
| https://chris.pacejo.net/temp/phase.wav It is a 55 Hz
| sawtooth tone, alternating every 2.5 s between the raw
| tone, and the tone fed through Paulstretch with no
| stretching.
|
| There was even a paper written on this. Laitinen, Disch &
| Pulkki, "Sensitivity of Human Hearing to Changes in Phase
| Spectrum". [1]
|
| Paulstretch muddies up percussive transients (like hi hat
| strikes) as well.
|
| Anyway it's the reason things like gammatone filters exist
| for analyzing audio. They reveal phase correlations in the
| same way the ear is able to. Windowed Fourier transforms
| (used by e.g. Paulstretch and Audacity for various
| purposes) obfuscate these relationships.
|
| Aside: please try to avoid snarky armchair dismissals on
| HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "you
| are trying to sound intelligent" does not advance
| discourse.
|
| [1] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ville-
| Pulkki/publicatio...
| jedimastert wrote:
| Define "real" in this instance? We're talking about audio
| manipulation, fiddling with time and frequency domain.
| Something's going to have to give
| pbmahol wrote:
| There are better, pro solutions, but if you want random
| phase what that algorithm actually does I'm not going to
| judge you.
| wiml wrote:
| As long as you match the phase of the positive and negative
| frequency components you'll get real output
| isoprophlex wrote:
| This is just excellent, it works a lot better than I thought it
| would. You can really drown in the song, whoa.
| aaaallllll myyyyyy paaaasssstt
| aaaaaaandd fuuuttuurrreeesss
|
| I'll add that there's a lot of extremely timestretched tracks
| from Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II on youtube as well.
| They all sound glorious, too
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Less distructive, but also -the [vst3] plugin 'valhalla
| supermassive'.
| jedimastert wrote:
| Paulstretch is such an utterly genius algorithm. Ridiculously
| simple solution to a difficult problem but it gets you amazing
| results
| pbronez wrote:
| The algorithm is described at
| https://www.paulnasca.com/algorithms-created-by-me
| jchw wrote:
| And if you happen to already have a copy of Audacity, it has an
| implementation of paulstretch built-in. (Certainly not as nice
| looking as that dedicated tool, though.)
| corry wrote:
| Great share, thank you! Scratches the itch of "I'd love to turn
| some of my beats into ambient soundscapes but don't want to
| spend the time".
| curiousigor wrote:
| It seems like the website is region locked? I haven't seen an 405
| error mentioning a specific country yet though, it seemed
| interesting. https://imgur.com/a/AiY9xMJ
| jvdvegt wrote:
| No problem here from The Netherlands... I wonder what's so
| specific about Slovenia.
|
| But the site is mostly a link to this 6 hour track:
| https://youtu.be/ZWUlLHv7-64
| defrost wrote:
| Might be the Potica
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHEPzEKTcss
| ocal5 wrote:
| In this field : Windows 95 startup sound, from Brian Eno as well
| : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnoX3E2WFcc
| dep_b wrote:
| It has that calming quality, and I would hear it frequently as
| I would still shut down my computer after every session.
| okeuro49 wrote:
| "Sitting among the gleaming steel fixtures and softly glowing
| concrete lines of the modernist Cologne Bonn Airport on a sunny
| Sunday morning in late 1977, en route to his homebase, the
| perennially nervous flier recoiled once again at the canned pop
| pleasantries mindlessly piped into such an inspired space. The
| music was not only an afterthought but also insulting to the idea
| that you would soon climb into a sleek metal tube and be
| propelled by engines through the sky at 40,000 feet. "I started
| thinking, 'What should we be hearing here?' I thought most of all
| you wanted music that didn't try to pretend you weren't going to
| die on the plane, " Eno, laughing but serious."
|
| https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/brian-eno-ambient-1-mus...
| pimeys wrote:
| I never thought to see a link to a Pitchfork Sunday review on
| HN. I've been reading them with my morning coffee every Sunday
| for years.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| It's a ritual of mine to play Eno's Discreet Music during
| takeoff. Something about it is just so enveloping,
| introspective and morose and no other piece of music hits me
| that way. So I figure, if I'm going to die, I want it to be to
| Discreet Music.
| shlant wrote:
| > It's a ritual of mine to play Eno's Discreet Music during
| takeoff.
|
| Mine is Giegling Mix 07. Less ambient and more 4/4 +
| breakbeat but beautifully emotive. Even better during sunset
| latentcall wrote:
| This is mine too. This Is Not is one of if not the best
| mixes I've heard in my entire life. This and Live at Planet
| Uterus.
| qhiliq wrote:
| Thanks for this. I'd heard a few of the tracks on this
| before but the mix was a great way to start the morning.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Thank you for sharing! I'm currently playing Discreet Music
| while there's lightning and thunder outside. My dog shivers
| with fright during bad storms and this is helping me to calm
| down, which in turn helps my pup.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| What a beautiful scene. Something about Discreet Music just
| says.... things aren't perfect, sometimes they're scary or
| confusing, but it's going to be okay. It's like the
| repeating motif acts as a constant reassurance, but from
| many different perspectives over the length of the record.
| Hope the pup's doing okay now :)
| sebmellen wrote:
| Mine is _Burning Airlines Give You So Much More_ , also by
| Eno.
| AdamN wrote:
| Perhaps the uplifting responsorial to this would be "An Ending
| (Ascent)" from his Apollo soundtrack.
| cage433 wrote:
| For those who find this finishes all too quickly, before it
| really gets started, here's Igor Levit's performance of Satie's
| Vexations
|
| https://www.youtube.com/live/Uu_03mUPgHU?si=ggJYSJH8SUy0AcKO
| matteason wrote:
| If anyone would like to play with something more interactive, I'm
| testing out some new effects on Ambiphone, my ambient soundscape
| web app. The test version is at https://test.ambiph.one
|
| There's a basic playback speed control now (basic in as much as
| it doesn't preserve pitch) plus things like reverb and delay
| effects
|
| Here's some slowed-down ambient music:
| https://test.ambiph.one/?m=1-Slow+Realisation-ap50a25c60
|
| And a cat purring at 50% speed makes a pretty convincing lion:
| https://test.ambiph.one/?m=1-Lion's+Den-aa8a34c60e37f100ac50...
|
| (Audio may be a little glitchy on Android Chrome if you have lots
| of sounds playing - I'm debugging that at the moment)
| aloifran wrote:
| Hey thank you for sharing your project! I am really enjoying
| using it while working at home. A quick observation, the link
| to share a mix for the birthday is not clickable cause the save
| menu is clicked instead (yes I'm a QA Engineer). Great feature
| to save mixes!
| gherard5555 wrote:
| Alternative title: Journalist discover the paulstretch software
| bevan wrote:
| Gary Hustwit (Helvetica, Objectified) just made a worthwhile
| documentary about Eno: https://www.hustwit.com/eno
|
| It's only streaming right now and each streamed version is
| unique, riffing off of Eno's "generative" music.
| mykowebhn wrote:
| Or, on Thursday afternoons, you can listen to one of my favorites
|
| https://youtu.be/TTHF2Dfw1Dg?si=PKvJpnG88hjV2-St
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| I'm glad to see that someone finally got the hang of Thursdays.
| I never could.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Not really necessary. So little happens in the original (in a
| good way)
| chaosprint wrote:
| sounds like paulstretch is heavily used. you can get similar
| results when applying this to almost any sont.
| kryptonomist wrote:
| One great musician to listen to during late coding sessions.
| Lutzb wrote:
| Perfect opportunity to point out that there is a 23x slowed down
| version of Brian Enos Windows 95 startup sound
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNIfbdi41ho
| CompoundEyes wrote:
| Interesting bit there about music for facing mortality. An
| ambient classic from that same era is Steve Roach "Structures
| from Silence". He had an NDE and that music is what he heard
| during.
| jqr- wrote:
| > NDE
|
| Near-death experience. For those (like me) unfamiliar with the
| acronym.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| I bought Bang On A Can's version soon after it was released in
| 97, and it remains one of my favourite pieces of music to code
| to. For reasons that I can't adequately explain I prefer it to
| the (itself wonderful) original.
| ddxv wrote:
| For anyone else perusing the comments for more ambient music, I
| recommend Stars of the Lkd for anyone looking for similar feels.
|
| https://youtu.be/c4E6RO4muLU?si=6QbUatQXm0zzWy0N
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| also here to mention stars of the lid. I just found out about
| them and they're great. on the same youtube binge I also
| learned about Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and have become fascinated
| with their work as well
|
| https://music.youtube.com/channel/UCeYcG8gnFjGA5lUShHsz3yQ
| anal_reactor wrote:
| God is this annoying. How can I listen to music where a single
| note stretches longer than my window of attention? My mind
| perceives this the same way as the sound of my fridge working,
| except much louder.
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRLTjESyuQk
|
| Fun fact: it seems to be somewhere around 33 beats per minute
| that people lose the connection between one beat and the next
| and therefore lose the ability to perceive rhythm. Though oddly
| enough this video asserts that and then immediately disproves
| it by having a band play a 33 BPM song while the audience
| counts along.
| tquinn wrote:
| Semi-related in the same vein of background ambient music:
|
| For fans of the film Heat:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHP4qbgAN6s One of my absolute
| favorites to work to.
| zeristor wrote:
| Brian Eno - Alternative 3
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H9AldyuIh5A
|
| I heard this music off on for decades, but couldn't place it. I
| doubled down and only having a memory of it I was certain it was
| by Brian Eno.
|
| It took me a while to stumble upon it, it was music written for
| an ITV Science programme's April Fool's episode; which due to
| strike action was delayed until July.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_3
|
| This comes up repeatedly with regards to conspiracy theories, I
| assume not by people who think the Moon landings are a hoax, that
| would be insane. Erm wait a minute...
| lend000 wrote:
| If you like Brian Eno's music, you might enjoy Hiroshi Yoshimura.
| Wet Land is one of my favorite albums of all time.
| sebmellen wrote:
| Only on HN do we get these great music recommendations.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| great to visit with Eno at his long-time music machine
| installation at the Palace of Fine Arts SF, so long ago.. a real
| artist!
| whalesalad wrote:
| dupe? this was on the homepage 4 days ago
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43520122
| meta-level wrote:
| Not sure anyone posted it already, also great:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hOVdjxtnsH8
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| Deconstructing Brian Eno's _Ambient 1: Music for Airports_ :
|
| https://reverbmachine.com/blog/deconstructing-brian-eno-musi...
|
| It's a must-read! It has analysis of all Eno's tape loops and an
| interactive note randomizer. Mentioned in the article's related
| content but it's worth an extra shout.
|
| Fun to play around with for anyone who likes the album or ambient
| music in general.
| dmazin wrote:
| When the AI songs started happening, I've been hoping someone
| would make a very long version of 1/1 from Music for Airports.
| This is not that. I don't mean stretched out. I just mean that it
| gets interpolated outwards after the original composition ends.
|
| Does anyone know what _can_ make that?
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| The Black Dog have a lovely Patreon where they personally
| answer comments. Have you considered asking them?
| omnimus wrote:
| I would say only Brian Eno can make one.
|
| Maybe he made some other music thats continuation.
| kodomomo wrote:
| Try https://play.generative.fm/browse. The endless aisatsana
| generator is pretty good, I'm sure there's an option that's
| similar to 1/1.
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| I linked this page in another comment:
|
| Deconstructing Brian Eno's _Ambient 1: Music for Airports_
| https://reverbmachine.com/blog/deconstructing-brian-eno-musi...
|
| It's not exactly for 1/1, but scroll down to "Deconstructing
| 2/1" or "Deconstructing 1/2", then down to the music staves
| section - Hit "Start All", then roll the dice, and it will
| randomize the loop times! With a little javascript hacking I'm
| sure you can add more control over the loops and such.
|
| He has some samples for 1/1 tracks too, those could be looped
| or fed to some AI music software I'm sure to come up with some
| interpolated result too.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Listened to a bit of it and it seems like a decent analogue to
| East Forest's Music For Mushrooms which is 5 hours.
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(page generated 2025-04-02 23:01 UTC)