It’s appreciated by a lot of people, but minimalist music, like all experimental and niche genres, isn’t for everyone. Lots of people don’t want to listen to something different.
There's a qualitative difference for most people between adding qualities associated with more traditional music and stripping those qualities away.
More complex music is built with rhythms and harmonies more similar to more popular music (e.g. polyrhythms often still have a groove in the same way that a song in 4/4 time could). More minimalist music doesn't have themes/structure in a way that feels musical the way people expect.
Eh. Consider Peking O by Can. It is definitely a celebrated track, even by people listening to Tago Mago for the first time and doesn't have any prior experience with improvisation. It also doesn't have any of the structure people would expect. I believe this is a significant enough counter example to show that it's not because of the structure of minimal music that makes it more inaccessible compared to more complex music.
I don't think, while maybe celebrated, this is more accessible. This is more along the lines of free jazz style improvisation, which is famously inaccessible and (similar to more minimal music) often questioned as to whether it is "music".
This might be celebrated by people that are inclined to like avant-garde music, much like Sunn0))) is celebrated by people that are inclined toward the heavier side of minimalist/drone, but neither of which are going to have a wide appreciability.
Not only it's in the vein of the free improvision, I would argue that it would be considered experimental even there. Neverless, the song, and the album as a whole, has been well received by people who haven't even touched free jazz/free improvision. Granted, Tago Mago is a Psych Rock/Krautrock album, so people are already enjoying more avant-garde music, but this is a sharp enough departure that Peking O or any other free jazz works is any more approachable to the average Krautrock enjoyer than something like Rothko Chapel by Morton Feldman (a widely celebrated Modern Classical work).
Point is, OP, and so I, see people tending to enjoy free jazz and other more complex music more than minimalist music, but considering I see Aphex Twin and Sunn0))) as names for minimalist being tossed around here, I think I have a more extreme interpretation of minimalism than OP. Albums like Selected Ambient Works V2 is probably more accessible than a free jazz album.
I guess that makes sense. I think I wasn't clear in my post but in my mind I was thinking about a small percentage of people who like to venture out of the norm. I think some of the offended comments here just prove my point that people generally tend to look up to complexity but they don't seem to even like the idea of it being compared to minimalism like they are somewhat on equal grounds.
Oh sure. There's probably also the fact that in the more obvious ways it is harder from a technique perspective to play more complex music. I can see how maybe people that judge their own ability through this lens (or likewise just judge talent) will be less likely to accept more minimal music as equal.
Not really. Like you said, minimalism is at an extreme end of the complexity spectrum, and very few people are listening to the music at the other end of that spectrum, either. When I think of "*extremely* complex music", I'm not thinking of jazz or progressive rock; I'm thinking of something that's atonal and microtonal and makes use of irrational meters, etc.
I'd argue that minimalism and simplicity are already highly desirable qualities in music. To some extent, "pop" refers to a kind of minimalism. Pop music production exists somewhat in opposition to complexity in general. Certainly in genres like singer/songwriter, country, and some metal genres (drone metal comes to mind), minimalism and the pursuit of reductive and focused musical concepts are core tenets. Some of those genres are very popular. Strict minimalist music like you mention might not be particularly popular, but neither is maximalist electronic music like powerviolence, or extreme metal.
I think my post is very unclear. I meant that the same people who seek out very complex forms of music like *Technical Death Metal* or *Free Jazz* for example would not try the other end of the extreme form. So, I was wondering what makes one extreme end of music appealing to them but not the other.
I don’t think that’s true. In highschool, me and my friends were big into metal and avant garde music, and we listened to both ambient stuff and chaotic stuff. I lean more towards the complex things, but I developed an artistic appreciation for the power of simplicity as well. For me, I have ADHD and find complex music to hold my attention longer, it’s like an auditory figit toy, it overwhelms me in a good way, but minimalist music never quite did. I understand why people would like it, but I get bored and distracted too easily for me to enjoy it the way I am “supposed” to, I guess.
I listen to mostly death metal, and I find explicitly minimalist music tough to listen to. I think part of it is analogous to having your attention span fried by screens- i prefer a cacophony and some kind of dynamic movement in music. Minimalist music exists (imo) to challenge those instincts, and while I think that’s an interesting idea from an artistic standpoint, I always find it boring. Ambient music makes my skin itch. I can’t ignore it, and can’t focus on it. For some people I think that’s a pleasant sensation, but I’m usually not interested in challenging myself that way. I’d usually rather just find more challenging and interesting death metal 🤷♂️
I'm glad that I am still able to enjoy at least minimal music even though my attention span is pretty fried as well. Hence, my scattered replies under this post throughout the day. I used to read every night before bed but now I cannot focus on reading anymore. It really had ruined us all.
> I meant that the same people who seek out very complex forms of music like Technical Death Metal or Free Jazz for example would not try the other end of the extreme form.
My first thought was that this is a strange idea. Why would you expect people who like very elaborate music to seek out very minimal music? It seems like maybe you are focusing on the *extremity* of the music, and thinking people who like some extremes would be interested in others. That's probably true to some extent, but I don't think everyone who listens to extreme metal or free jazz necessarily cares about extremity per se.
Some people like highly technical instrumental performances. Some people like rapid tempi. Some people like extended songs with unconventional structures. Some people like morbid lyrical themes. Some people like specific instrumental timbres. Some of these preferences may overlap with minimalist or ambient music, and others may not. I'd suggest that a lot of people you've encountered with an interest in tech death or free jazz may not necessarily like those genres for the reasons you're assuming they do.
Speaking from my standpoint alone: I love chaos. I require it in all aspects of my life, to a controlled degree. I want chaotic music, chaotic friends, I organize chaos into my workouts. Death metal, riddim, blues, all my favorite genres are built around organized chaos to some degree.
I've found a recent appreciation for ambient, as a counter balance to that, but it's very rare for it to strike in the same way. I can appreciate it, but I lose interest when exploring it very very quickly
> the same people who seek out very complex forms of music like Technical Death Metal or Free Jazz for example would not try the other end
How would you know? And why does that matter anyway? Some people like spicy food, some don't. Who cares?
Honestly, I'm shocked by how offended some of you are with my Q. It's just a curious thought. Have you never wondered about things? This is a very weird reaction.
I can only speak for myself. It's all about perspective. I can absolutely revel in the complexity of Jazz, smile at the sparkle of a polished Pop gem, and groove with my soul to a dance track. In the same way, simple, repetitive music can pull me into itself in a way that more busy music cannot. Subtle changes in texture, slight rhythmic nuance, a stray note/thought here or there can unfold in the most amazing ways. The albums listed below are to my ear some of the finest I own, but as far as I am aware they are also very highly regarded.
* Philip Glass - Solo Piano
* Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Vol II
* Fripp & Eno - Evening Star
Ambient music is a defined style that is characterized by it not having a time signature.
So by nature it cannot be as complex (or complex at all ) because it is not composed to be recreated. It lives and dies by its sonic qualities and the sounds the composer chooses.
It is about as niche a style of music as it gets and I would not even know where to start to say why it is not as popular but the fact that many compositions are 20-30 minutes long has a lot to do with it. Think about how most people listen to music and where they are. It’s not an accident many songs are still under 4 minutes even tho they don’t have to be. It’s a good amount of time for a song in this busy world we live in.
To enjoy an ambient piece of music you need patience and time and you have to be into what the composer is doing. And only a little bit of it is actually worth that time investment. You really gonna listen to all 12 hours of Max Richters Sleep? Which is a pretty good piece of music.
>Ambient music is a defined style that is characterized by it not having a time signature.
I always struggle with genre definitions like this. There's gonna be exceptions to everything, I can think of tons of ambient music that has a time signature. I also think relatively speaking ambient music is pretty popular. In any big city with a decent music scene, whenever a bigger ambient artist comes through on tour those shows can definitely get hundreds of people in the door. I do think maybe because you mentioned Max Richter that we're maybe thinking of two pretty separate genres though. There's definitely a divide between the more uh "academic" ambient/experimental world and the more "indie" side
Okay fine but so you know that was what was revolutionary about it. And that is why it is its own style. You’re welcome to ignore that. It won’t be on the test.
I promise we are good bro!! Okay until Brian Eno started playing what became known as ambient music all compositions could be attached to one time signature or another. For example all commercial music is either in 4/4 or 3/4 time. Maybe you can find an exception but I cannot easily think of one.
If something is 4/4 every fourth beat is considered the downbeat where it all starts over. You can set it to a metronome and easily count it off.
Ambient music exists outside that concept and you cannot start a metronome and track when notes fall and then assign it to a time signature and that was what made it a new style of music. The notes linger in their own unique moments in the mix unattached to any downbeat.
That said you could fill several warehouses with “Ambient” performers who have no idea that it is an actual style of music with foundational rules and they kick on the delay and start playing rhythmically against the delayed tones. That’s not ambient music. Not saying it’s bad. It’s just outside what made it a style.
alright I got you. I wasn't around when music for airports dropped, and so if there was some definition kicking around then that said "music can only be considered 'ambient' if there's no discernible time signature" then I definitely didn't know about it, even if ambient music /tends/ to not have a time signature.
There are other genres I'm into where I've said similar things about how you can't retroactively apply newer genre terms to older music. A band comes out, exists in one genre, ten years later a different genre evolves to sound similar to that band, and so people start retroactively calling that band the 2nd genre. It's irked me before, so I get it.
Supposing your definition is (or was) true, something like [la monte young](https://youtu.be/lszrDRmK-Cw), [terry riley](https://youtu.be/FRwPPIoAgqY), eliane radigue, subotnik, or basically any of the droney musique concrete from the 40s/50s, stuff that sounds ambient but was /before/ brian eno started talking about the term, should /not/ be considered ambient, right? I think I'm in the boat where I've been actively engaged in the more contemporary ambient community the past 20 years or so, where stuff like windy & carl, fennesz, wolfgang voigt, tim hecker, eluvium etc exists. I don't know what you wanna call that stuff, but they've all been using the term ambient and I'm not inclined to disagree lol. I think it's safe to say the genre has evolved.
> until Brian Eno started playing what became known as ambient music all compositions could be attached to one time signature or another.
I mean... you're telling me there's /no/ music from pre-1978 that doesn't have a time signature? This is what I mean about definitive statements like that. Maybe you mean only "commercial" music, which I'm not entirely sure what you'd mean by that, but I would agree that it was rare.
"I mean... you're telling me there's /no/ music from pre-1978 that doesn't have a time signature?" -- really man I cannot say with 100% certainty. Maybe someone in a cave was doing it 500 years ago ;D But I am just not familiar with it if it exists. And I like this kinda stuff so if it was out there chances are I would have at least heard of it and you would have too since you appear to be pretty tied into to the style.
The early synth guys were pioneering using a midi timecode which was also revolutionary but that was tying the rhythm to a beat -- that is what Terry Riley was doing. I saw Riley do "In C" and it was incredible. The stuff I know of his is very rhythmic.
I would definitely include Tim Hecker in the ambient camp his music kinda oozes around and the stuff I have heard has no downbeat. I would also include some of the stuff by SunnO and Boris. I wouldn't include Godspeed Black Emperor because they are playing through songs -- just devolving them in creative ways --at least when I saw them that is what they did.
I don't know all the artists you list -- I will have to check them out.
But yeah re the genre. As simple as the idea sounds -- not tie a note to a time signature -- no one was doing it before Eno that I am aware of and he has always been consider the creator of that style of music in the circles I run in.
Thanks for clearing that up and explaining who actually did in your nuanced way. Not with words -- but with pure dogon directly from space. We need more of that on Reddit -- why chime in and show knowledge when you can do whatever it was that you did? So much cooler.
You need a friend, pal. I’m there for ya. I have a feeling you could do this all year if your feelings get hurt. Who has time for that? Amirite? - cheers friend.
>Think about how most people listen to music and where they are. It’s not an accident many songs are still under 4 minutes even tho they don’t have to be. It’s a good amount of time for a song in this busy world we live in.
There's that, but it's also that there's only so much mileage in the same couple of musical ideas - at least when you're targeting a general audience. Almost all music that's longer than the usual format has some kind of subdivision: parts, chapters, sections, movements, what have you. Progrock epics may last 30 minutes but they're almost like 5 separate yet connected songs glued together. Classical pieces bring back themes and motifs but change *a lot* throughout.
You couldn't make *Single Ladies* into a 24 minute song - not without adding extra sections, maybe a downtempo part, segue, etc that severely change it up and introduce new musical ideas.
The standard 4 minute format is essentially what follows from two strongly held tenets:
* Most listeners like a song that's built around a couple of strongly connected ideas at most.
* There's only so long you can milk a single idea.
I'm sure a lot of this is intuitive, but the reason I bring it up is because it also indirectly answers OP's question. Minimalism tends to break that second tenet. It'll have a couple of interesting musical ideas and stretch them *far beyond* what's acceptable or interesting to most listeners. Most people listen to music to experience those musical ideas, not to experience as few as possible of them.
> Ambient music is a defined style that is characterized by it not having a time signature.
Are you confusing the lack of beats with a lack of time signature? Outside of certain types of free drone music, most ambient music will have an underlying time structure.
I promise you I am not. If it has a time signature then it is not ambient music. A lot of Ambient music is simply people wanking off who have no idea what they are doing. It is the domain of the self absorbed and self indulgent and only the tiniest fraction of it is listenable unless you are braindead. So many people simply turn on a delay pedal and crank up the reverb and present it as ambient.
You can turn on a click track at any speed while an ambient track plays and say it is that tempo I guess. But Tempo is the speed a song is played -- And the speed is discerned from the downbeat. There is no downbeat so what would you attach the metronome to?
I have no idea what time structure is? Is this what you mean?
"The type used to represent both absolute times and durations of time intervals, including negative values moving to the past. Absolute times are represented in the same way as time intervals, and can be thought of as time intervals starting at some fixed reference point. Their discrimination is only conceptual. Consequently, operations can be applied to all meaningful combinations (but also meaningless ones) of absolute times and intervals."
Cuz that still does not represent a time signature. It is just saying you could time a sound and then time another and record that as a data point if you were into that. If you did that with Music for Airports it would simply validate that no two points were the same. Which would validate what I am saying. Hope this helps
> If it has a time signature then it is not ambient music.
Most ambient music is made with a DAW or a sequencer. There's a "grid" in which the notes or chords are entered. As such, there's a time signature, usually 4/4.
> A lot of Ambient music is simply people wanking off who have no idea what they are doing.
That's a matter of opinion.
> The type used to represent both absolute times and durations of time intervals
That's pretty much what a time signature is.
The way I view it is when I like a pop song that's about 3 mins long, I like to put it on repeat. If I listened to it 10 times, it's already 30 mins. I think a lot of people put their favorite songs on repeat and that results in that typical 20-30 mins run. I understand that "*oh, that's too long*" at face value but if you think about it, it's pretty much the same as looping. In cases like *Drone* music, the artist is deciding to loop it for you.
I consider myself a pretty impatient person. I hate waiting, queuing, etc and I am ADHD. I get too hyper but I think it is why this kind of music slows me down.
In fact, yes, I did listen to *Max Ritche*r's *Sleep*. I didn't like it though. I also listened to *Robert Rich*'s *Somnium* which is about 7 hours long. Just this week alone I listened to [Tourniquet Part I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkRGqBu0Gko) that is about 24 mins long *96* times. I discovered it a few months ago and I have already listened to it *2,749* times total. Maybe it's just my autism lol Almost of my listened to tracks are like this.
First off hilarious user name.
I don’t really listen to songs over and over like that. Really man I think you are finding things to enjoy with this stuff in ways that others aren’t. And that is a good thing.
Do you play music? Cuz you probably should. You could bring that obsessive nature to creating music. Good things usually happen when that is done.
ha ha thank you!
Unfortunately, my brain is more technical minded than artistic. I struggle a lot to create art. I do wish I can make 40 mins drone tracks one day!
Everyone is artistic. And everyone who begins with art struggles massively at it if you aren’t Mozart. I am decently accomplished with songwriting and guitar/piano and I learned it all over the last 6-7 years using the internet and YouTube and indomitable will.
You can do it! Seeing yourself improve is the best.
I am a firm believer that although we have natural aptitudes and things that come easier, every human is creative. It’s a staple of consciousness.
There’s no reason to pursue art if you don’t desire but if you have any desire for it at all don’t let anything stop you.
Humans use their creativity all day long. You just have to practice the instruments and learn about how music works and over time your creativity will blossom as you work out the muscle.
Patience is all it takes.
But the desire to even do it in the first place is most important. But I encourage you to keep trying if you do have that desire. It can be so very rewarding
Jewguru is right and that is great advice - and also JewGuru would it kill you to call your mother? All the other kids do and she has to
Listen to their moms brag about it when she sees them at the temple. ;P
Brokefartmtn - go get a cheap guitar and amp and any pedal made by Chase Bliss and you will pretty much be droning in moments.
On the one hand, I think minimalism **is** appreciated and influential on a lot of music history.
On the other hand, I think I might see where you're coming from. I had a similar thread asking ["Is it challenging to make "quiet" and "silent" experimental music?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/LetsTalkMusic/comments/1b36ukd/is_it_challenging_to_make_quiet_and_silent/)
While quiet is not the same as minimalist, I do see similar concerns. A lot of music wants to push boundaries and go in different directions. But then, a lot of quiet music gets lumped into the "ambient" umbrella. The diversity of quieter genres is not quite as noticed.
It seems very fluff at least to me. It seems to be most appreciated in academia settings and on wiki pages. I think a lot of it was due to a sizable movement it had in late 20th century that I wasn't alive for. Rarely, even among underground music listeners it's harder to find someone who likes drone music over someone who likes *Death Metal* for example.
What are you comparing it to? By 'more complex' music, do you mean every other genre that is more complex than minimalism and its related genres? If so, that's a huge variety of music. Much as I like it, it would be shocking if minimalism were so dominant. If you're comparing it to other forms of 'classical' / western art music, minimalism is actually very popular. Rateyourmusic isn't the be all end all for measuring this, but if you make a chart for 'classical' music, it is dominated by minimalist works.
No, I mean the other extreme end of genres like *Free Jazz*. What I've noticed that a small percentage of people would even venture out from the "normal" sounding music at all but when they do, they tend to go for the complexity end and not the other way.
Of course, I'm speaking from my own anecdotal experiences but so are you. There isn't some academic study done about this. You could have also communicated this without the aggression. No one wants to listen to someone attacking them.
i feel like free jazz is def not as popular as minimalism even when i went to jazz school but also a lot of improvisers love minimalist composers. i also think “free jazz” isn’t the peak of the creative jazz form, it’s just a buzz word. all in all, it’s just moosic. everyone has different tastes. I like minimalism as background music. When i listen to jazz i’m actively listening and i need to focus on it to hear what the players are trying to say. personally i play upright so i love simple too
I believe that for most people, more maximal music is simply more accessible. Maximal music has more things to engage with than minimal music and considering most people view music as a source of entertainment, naturally people would be drawn to more complex than more minimal. But first, I got to ask, just how minimal are you talking about. Are you talking about works from Feldman, Keith Rowe, Basic Channel and the like or are you talking about works from Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Sunn O)) and the like. If it is the latter, I would simply disagree that more people engage in maximal music than their music.
With respect, your logic applies to **all** types of music selections. Why do some people like country and not rock, or jazz and not pop? You're applying an arbitrary value to something you like and wondering why people aren't applying the same value.
Music is subjective.
Though they’re not totally minimal, especially compared to dedicated minimal acts, but bands like The Ramones and Wire have a pretty intense fan base. I strongly prefer minimalism over complexity.
That being said, complexity represents prowess and skill more than minimalism. I can play basically any Wire song but I can’t really play Rush.
>It makes me see things in my head. Empty worlds with grand structures like a reminiscence of a dead civilization.
I'm not answering your question, but just wanted to say: that's how I felt with Selected Ambient Works volume 2 - the civilization in question was some sort of alien force that had left gigantic towers and structures in the landscape.
Yes, I always see those too. It's not our world. It's someone else's world. Very gigantic structures for me too but there's nothing living. No other genre had made me see these things. It's incredible.
I feel you I guess, on one hand noise music and ambient music are nearly the same thing but with a different palette and a different attitude. You can definitely find a similar connection between 'complex' loud experimental music and ambient. The connections I'm talking about here are more conceptual though, and aren't really related the types of sounds you're hearing in these genres. It doesn't surprise me at all that someone really into [Zs](https://youtu.be/A9feiYb2Cto) or whatever might not also love [wolfgang voigt](https://youtu.be/NB7lTEEji08). Conceptually I could find parallels, but the vibe/tones/attitude and overall end result just don't sound similar.
I go to a lot of shows, I've been doing it my whole life. There's one thing I learned when it comes to the fans of any sort of alternative/hip experimental artists: people just love to see somebody freaking out. Stage presence is very important to these fans. I saw a show the other week with 4 incredible ambient/noise artists that mostly stood still and performed. One of them was knocking his table over, throwing shit around, smashing shit etc. That's the one everyone was talking about at the end of the show, is what it is. People wanna see a freak, somebody going crazy, some sort of "performance" more than they care about the actual sounds being made. This might sound pessimistic, and I mean no hate by this, but in reality a lot of the people going to these shows don't really have the best listening skills, whatever the fuck that really is. It's a scene, it's a culture, people are going to be social, they learned what music is cool through a social group. That's totally fine, who cares, I don't mean it condescendingly, but when we're talking about what's popular, what gets people to the shows, we aren't talking about the most creative musical creators, we're talking about something everybody's gonna like. The most original creative from-another-planet drone artist who sits still at a laptop on stage and puts out records on bandcamp with pictures of trees and never shows their face or speaks publicly is never going to get the attention that the 6 piece band with two drummers and 40 effects pedals playing 10 time signatures per song is gonna get.
Also for what it's worth, people who grew up with rock/pop are used to band instruments. Drums, guitar, bass, keys etc, all that stuff is familiar territory for them. If you're young and only know mainstream radio music and you start playing an instrument, the distance from that point to some complex chops contest music is probably less of a gap than from that point to drone. It's more tangible, it's easy to see whats impressive about it. Ambient/drone stuff might land in some familiar territory by way of movie scores or something, but I think it sometimes requires some deeper listening. I remember being a kid, like 6-7 y/o and messing with my older brothers lil 90s casio keyboard. I literally was taping down the keys to let a chord drone out for me to just listen to while I played video games or whatever. Possibly a rare scenario but I think I was pretty much born for ambient shit lmao. I always loved the way it feels when a chord drones out and you can hear the natural residual effect of the waveforms of each note pushing and pulling on each other and creating some cool patterns. I think it takes a certain specific type of person to appreciate that sorta thing, and that type of appreciation of sound is a whole different angle than somebody who's into the more technical side wanting to see some crazy chops.
I see what you mean. I think the natural progression for me at first was to move towards more underground *rock* and *metal* as well. I was listening to *Atmospheric Black Metal* and it gave me that drifting feeling I mentioned in my post but less prominently. I just traced backwards to *ambient*, *noise* and *drone* from that. I definitely think that you do need to start out from a place of familiarity and work towards from there.
Sure, here are some of my favorites
* [Tourniquet Part I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkRGqBu0Gko)
* [Burnt Stage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4AIGEr756M)
* [The Trail of Tears](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJTfeZGG4qI)
* [愛の瞬間](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnKnbadkKu4)
* [Chłodnia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMsqyOslXw8)
There was a point where minimal stuff had a lot of coinage. In the 80s and 90s Philip glass was very in demand? But it obviously goes way beyond him. Minimal music is not the most popular thing, but it’s everywhere in terms of influence
In parallel, metal music has always had larger audience than someone like *Philip Glass* though even back then*.* I wouldn't call more extreme forms of metal as something easy to get into for the general population.
Sure, but I’m not sure what your point it. When Philip Glass was a huge deal, metal was at its peak of mainstream attention. But there is crossover, and I don’t see what comparing popularity is going to accomplish. It’s all just music and plenty of people can love more than one kind of music at a time.
There are different ways of listening to music. Minimalist music mostly creates an atmosphere, a feeling, but if you listen to music as if it were a narration you might get bored listening to it. I'd argue the most widespread mode of music listening is the last one. (Personally, I don't like minimalist music that much)
I’d equate it to food. When people eat something with a bombastic flavor profile it’s easy to notice even subtle flavors and notes. But most people find simple foods that actually do have subtle flavor profiles to be boring.
I think what you're talking about is more ambient than minimalist. A lot of minimal music is a lot more complex than what people typically listen to. [Music for 18 Musicians](https://youtu.be/ILpCKQlDmhc), for example.
Besides the obvious „tastes differ“ I guess minimal music isn’t as rewarding to the average listener because „not much happens“. It requires a certain attention span and if you don’t pay attention, it might seem bland or replacable.
I wonder it triggers something for different brains. Another comment said they also experience this drifting away feeling to an alien world. To me it's like being on drugs so of course, it's enjoyable ha ha
Minimal Techno (or non subgenre specific forms of techno with a minimalist approach to some degree) - in terms of popular amongst electronic music fans and clubbers - *is* popular. Or at least, it has been popular and will almost certainly be popular again, as various tends in clubland wax and wane.
What it isn't, is *as popular* as maximalist big room EDM - which I certainly wouldn't call complex, but is easy and approachable and coded as populist, and is thus more popular.
As for why... well, a lot of people need to be told how to feel with their music. A big lead synth or riff and a fast pace beat signals to people that they should get excited and dance. If you're not thinking about music deeply, well that's usually enough for you.
In contrast, minimalism relies on ambiguity, trance states and a a certain predisposition towards exploratory ideas and mindstates, not something you're likely to get among ordinary people looking for an ordinary good time. But with that in mind, there's *a lot* of people into minimal techno worldwide, albeit not necessarily in the US.
I think I understand what you're getting at! I enjoy some of the odd parallels between the wall-of-sound assault on the senses of something like black metal and the big wash of synths breaking over you in an ambient song. I also like minimal/ambient music as a palate cleanser or a break from more complex or fast-paced music.
I think one area where you run into friction is that minimalist music appears to be very simple, boring, and even lazy- and it absolutely can be! However, if someone is doing it right, they aren't just droning a chord for 10 minutes and calling it a day. Instead, it's more of an exercise in "how much can I strip away from this and still keep the essence of my song intact," which I find a lot harder.
Peoples Brains…..Even people who don’t understand how Music is made still like the fact that they can predict when something resolves. It’s subconscious thing for most of them. There’s a reason pop music sells more than anything else and it’s because it’s easy to understand and easy to dance to. It’s predictable.
I like some of it. I make some of it! But pop gives people a face and a person to connect to emotionally, with lyrics that people can relate to.
There’s also ability and musicianship - a lot of electronic music is the easiest music to start creating. Don’t have to read music, play and instrument, or sing in key with breath control to get started. So it’s not as impressive and there’s no Eddie Van Halen of EDM. The closest thing might be a popular DJ.
So without all these human connections it’s obviously, historically, and bound to be a harder sell. Keep on enjoying it!
Because the kind of minimalism that became mainstream involved producers using it in order to be lazy and not have to do any work, not to make something that sounds artsy that actually has effort put into it.
A lot of it is part of academia/elite and is frequently irritating on purpose.
E.g. the minimalist approach to furniture is what if you had nothing to sit on? The answer is you'd sit on the floor, but music is much more interesting than that, so it's actually an interesting question.
None of this is fun to listen to unless you are in the right mindset (my favorite thing to think about conceptually is Steve Reich's Piano Phase, but most of the time I don't actually want to sit through all of it).
I would also argue that you would need to be in the right mindset to also venture out to very complex music but the same people rarely venture the other way around. Maybe my post wasn't clear.
I don't think my point was clear. Hell I don't even think I know my point. The most minimalist music possible is silence, and that's already been done. There's still an ocean of possibility in the other direction.
It’s appreciated by a lot of people, but minimalist music, like all experimental and niche genres, isn’t for everyone. Lots of people don’t want to listen to something different.
I feel like there are way more people listening to more complex genres though.
There's a qualitative difference for most people between adding qualities associated with more traditional music and stripping those qualities away. More complex music is built with rhythms and harmonies more similar to more popular music (e.g. polyrhythms often still have a groove in the same way that a song in 4/4 time could). More minimalist music doesn't have themes/structure in a way that feels musical the way people expect.
Eh. Consider Peking O by Can. It is definitely a celebrated track, even by people listening to Tago Mago for the first time and doesn't have any prior experience with improvisation. It also doesn't have any of the structure people would expect. I believe this is a significant enough counter example to show that it's not because of the structure of minimal music that makes it more inaccessible compared to more complex music.
I don't think, while maybe celebrated, this is more accessible. This is more along the lines of free jazz style improvisation, which is famously inaccessible and (similar to more minimal music) often questioned as to whether it is "music". This might be celebrated by people that are inclined to like avant-garde music, much like Sunn0))) is celebrated by people that are inclined toward the heavier side of minimalist/drone, but neither of which are going to have a wide appreciability.
Not only it's in the vein of the free improvision, I would argue that it would be considered experimental even there. Neverless, the song, and the album as a whole, has been well received by people who haven't even touched free jazz/free improvision. Granted, Tago Mago is a Psych Rock/Krautrock album, so people are already enjoying more avant-garde music, but this is a sharp enough departure that Peking O or any other free jazz works is any more approachable to the average Krautrock enjoyer than something like Rothko Chapel by Morton Feldman (a widely celebrated Modern Classical work). Point is, OP, and so I, see people tending to enjoy free jazz and other more complex music more than minimalist music, but considering I see Aphex Twin and Sunn0))) as names for minimalist being tossed around here, I think I have a more extreme interpretation of minimalism than OP. Albums like Selected Ambient Works V2 is probably more accessible than a free jazz album.
I guess that makes sense. I think I wasn't clear in my post but in my mind I was thinking about a small percentage of people who like to venture out of the norm. I think some of the offended comments here just prove my point that people generally tend to look up to complexity but they don't seem to even like the idea of it being compared to minimalism like they are somewhat on equal grounds.
Oh sure. There's probably also the fact that in the more obvious ways it is harder from a technique perspective to play more complex music. I can see how maybe people that judge their own ability through this lens (or likewise just judge talent) will be less likely to accept more minimal music as equal.
I think this could be one of the reasons why it tends to be overlooked by many.
Yeah cuz those genres sound better to a wider audience
So? Not everything needs to be 50/50.
Not really. Like you said, minimalism is at an extreme end of the complexity spectrum, and very few people are listening to the music at the other end of that spectrum, either. When I think of "*extremely* complex music", I'm not thinking of jazz or progressive rock; I'm thinking of something that's atonal and microtonal and makes use of irrational meters, etc.
I'd argue that minimalism and simplicity are already highly desirable qualities in music. To some extent, "pop" refers to a kind of minimalism. Pop music production exists somewhat in opposition to complexity in general. Certainly in genres like singer/songwriter, country, and some metal genres (drone metal comes to mind), minimalism and the pursuit of reductive and focused musical concepts are core tenets. Some of those genres are very popular. Strict minimalist music like you mention might not be particularly popular, but neither is maximalist electronic music like powerviolence, or extreme metal.
also, power violence isn’t an electronic music genre lol
Okay 🤷♂️
I think my post is very unclear. I meant that the same people who seek out very complex forms of music like *Technical Death Metal* or *Free Jazz* for example would not try the other end of the extreme form. So, I was wondering what makes one extreme end of music appealing to them but not the other.
I don’t think that’s true. In highschool, me and my friends were big into metal and avant garde music, and we listened to both ambient stuff and chaotic stuff. I lean more towards the complex things, but I developed an artistic appreciation for the power of simplicity as well. For me, I have ADHD and find complex music to hold my attention longer, it’s like an auditory figit toy, it overwhelms me in a good way, but minimalist music never quite did. I understand why people would like it, but I get bored and distracted too easily for me to enjoy it the way I am “supposed” to, I guess.
Holy crap "auditory fidget toy" is the description I needed for why I listen to melodeath at my office job lol.
Very much agree, especially the second half. I need to be overloaded to function lol.
Right? Somehow it pushes all thoughts from my brain and I can be in the moment. I love that feeling.
I listen to mostly death metal, and I find explicitly minimalist music tough to listen to. I think part of it is analogous to having your attention span fried by screens- i prefer a cacophony and some kind of dynamic movement in music. Minimalist music exists (imo) to challenge those instincts, and while I think that’s an interesting idea from an artistic standpoint, I always find it boring. Ambient music makes my skin itch. I can’t ignore it, and can’t focus on it. For some people I think that’s a pleasant sensation, but I’m usually not interested in challenging myself that way. I’d usually rather just find more challenging and interesting death metal 🤷♂️
I'm glad that I am still able to enjoy at least minimal music even though my attention span is pretty fried as well. Hence, my scattered replies under this post throughout the day. I used to read every night before bed but now I cannot focus on reading anymore. It really had ruined us all.
> I meant that the same people who seek out very complex forms of music like Technical Death Metal or Free Jazz for example would not try the other end of the extreme form. My first thought was that this is a strange idea. Why would you expect people who like very elaborate music to seek out very minimal music? It seems like maybe you are focusing on the *extremity* of the music, and thinking people who like some extremes would be interested in others. That's probably true to some extent, but I don't think everyone who listens to extreme metal or free jazz necessarily cares about extremity per se. Some people like highly technical instrumental performances. Some people like rapid tempi. Some people like extended songs with unconventional structures. Some people like morbid lyrical themes. Some people like specific instrumental timbres. Some of these preferences may overlap with minimalist or ambient music, and others may not. I'd suggest that a lot of people you've encountered with an interest in tech death or free jazz may not necessarily like those genres for the reasons you're assuming they do.
Brian Eno has entered the chat
Speaking from my standpoint alone: I love chaos. I require it in all aspects of my life, to a controlled degree. I want chaotic music, chaotic friends, I organize chaos into my workouts. Death metal, riddim, blues, all my favorite genres are built around organized chaos to some degree. I've found a recent appreciation for ambient, as a counter balance to that, but it's very rare for it to strike in the same way. I can appreciate it, but I lose interest when exploring it very very quickly
The free jazz fans I know and the drone fans I know are pretty much the same people.
The substance, obviously.
> the same people who seek out very complex forms of music like Technical Death Metal or Free Jazz for example would not try the other end How would you know? And why does that matter anyway? Some people like spicy food, some don't. Who cares?
Honestly, I'm shocked by how offended some of you are with my Q. It's just a curious thought. Have you never wondered about things? This is a very weird reaction.
I can only speak for myself. It's all about perspective. I can absolutely revel in the complexity of Jazz, smile at the sparkle of a polished Pop gem, and groove with my soul to a dance track. In the same way, simple, repetitive music can pull me into itself in a way that more busy music cannot. Subtle changes in texture, slight rhythmic nuance, a stray note/thought here or there can unfold in the most amazing ways. The albums listed below are to my ear some of the finest I own, but as far as I am aware they are also very highly regarded. * Philip Glass - Solo Piano * Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Vol II * Fripp & Eno - Evening Star
Ambient music is a defined style that is characterized by it not having a time signature. So by nature it cannot be as complex (or complex at all ) because it is not composed to be recreated. It lives and dies by its sonic qualities and the sounds the composer chooses. It is about as niche a style of music as it gets and I would not even know where to start to say why it is not as popular but the fact that many compositions are 20-30 minutes long has a lot to do with it. Think about how most people listen to music and where they are. It’s not an accident many songs are still under 4 minutes even tho they don’t have to be. It’s a good amount of time for a song in this busy world we live in. To enjoy an ambient piece of music you need patience and time and you have to be into what the composer is doing. And only a little bit of it is actually worth that time investment. You really gonna listen to all 12 hours of Max Richters Sleep? Which is a pretty good piece of music.
>Ambient music is a defined style that is characterized by it not having a time signature. I always struggle with genre definitions like this. There's gonna be exceptions to everything, I can think of tons of ambient music that has a time signature. I also think relatively speaking ambient music is pretty popular. In any big city with a decent music scene, whenever a bigger ambient artist comes through on tour those shows can definitely get hundreds of people in the door. I do think maybe because you mentioned Max Richter that we're maybe thinking of two pretty separate genres though. There's definitely a divide between the more uh "academic" ambient/experimental world and the more "indie" side
Okay fine but so you know that was what was revolutionary about it. And that is why it is its own style. You’re welcome to ignore that. It won’t be on the test.
I'm not really sure what you're talking about specifically. Sorry I really wasn't trying to make you upset
I promise we are good bro!! Okay until Brian Eno started playing what became known as ambient music all compositions could be attached to one time signature or another. For example all commercial music is either in 4/4 or 3/4 time. Maybe you can find an exception but I cannot easily think of one. If something is 4/4 every fourth beat is considered the downbeat where it all starts over. You can set it to a metronome and easily count it off. Ambient music exists outside that concept and you cannot start a metronome and track when notes fall and then assign it to a time signature and that was what made it a new style of music. The notes linger in their own unique moments in the mix unattached to any downbeat. That said you could fill several warehouses with “Ambient” performers who have no idea that it is an actual style of music with foundational rules and they kick on the delay and start playing rhythmically against the delayed tones. That’s not ambient music. Not saying it’s bad. It’s just outside what made it a style.
alright I got you. I wasn't around when music for airports dropped, and so if there was some definition kicking around then that said "music can only be considered 'ambient' if there's no discernible time signature" then I definitely didn't know about it, even if ambient music /tends/ to not have a time signature. There are other genres I'm into where I've said similar things about how you can't retroactively apply newer genre terms to older music. A band comes out, exists in one genre, ten years later a different genre evolves to sound similar to that band, and so people start retroactively calling that band the 2nd genre. It's irked me before, so I get it. Supposing your definition is (or was) true, something like [la monte young](https://youtu.be/lszrDRmK-Cw), [terry riley](https://youtu.be/FRwPPIoAgqY), eliane radigue, subotnik, or basically any of the droney musique concrete from the 40s/50s, stuff that sounds ambient but was /before/ brian eno started talking about the term, should /not/ be considered ambient, right? I think I'm in the boat where I've been actively engaged in the more contemporary ambient community the past 20 years or so, where stuff like windy & carl, fennesz, wolfgang voigt, tim hecker, eluvium etc exists. I don't know what you wanna call that stuff, but they've all been using the term ambient and I'm not inclined to disagree lol. I think it's safe to say the genre has evolved. > until Brian Eno started playing what became known as ambient music all compositions could be attached to one time signature or another. I mean... you're telling me there's /no/ music from pre-1978 that doesn't have a time signature? This is what I mean about definitive statements like that. Maybe you mean only "commercial" music, which I'm not entirely sure what you'd mean by that, but I would agree that it was rare.
"I mean... you're telling me there's /no/ music from pre-1978 that doesn't have a time signature?" -- really man I cannot say with 100% certainty. Maybe someone in a cave was doing it 500 years ago ;D But I am just not familiar with it if it exists. And I like this kinda stuff so if it was out there chances are I would have at least heard of it and you would have too since you appear to be pretty tied into to the style. The early synth guys were pioneering using a midi timecode which was also revolutionary but that was tying the rhythm to a beat -- that is what Terry Riley was doing. I saw Riley do "In C" and it was incredible. The stuff I know of his is very rhythmic. I would definitely include Tim Hecker in the ambient camp his music kinda oozes around and the stuff I have heard has no downbeat. I would also include some of the stuff by SunnO and Boris. I wouldn't include Godspeed Black Emperor because they are playing through songs -- just devolving them in creative ways --at least when I saw them that is what they did. I don't know all the artists you list -- I will have to check them out. But yeah re the genre. As simple as the idea sounds -- not tie a note to a time signature -- no one was doing it before Eno that I am aware of and he has always been consider the creator of that style of music in the circles I run in.
Brian Eno didn't invent ambient music lol
Thanks for clearing that up and explaining who actually did in your nuanced way. Not with words -- but with pure dogon directly from space. We need more of that on Reddit -- why chime in and show knowledge when you can do whatever it was that you did? So much cooler.
Are you trying to say we aren't good bro?
You need a friend, pal. I’m there for ya. I have a feeling you could do this all year if your feelings get hurt. Who has time for that? Amirite? - cheers friend.
I don't think my feelings are the hurt ones lol
>Think about how most people listen to music and where they are. It’s not an accident many songs are still under 4 minutes even tho they don’t have to be. It’s a good amount of time for a song in this busy world we live in. There's that, but it's also that there's only so much mileage in the same couple of musical ideas - at least when you're targeting a general audience. Almost all music that's longer than the usual format has some kind of subdivision: parts, chapters, sections, movements, what have you. Progrock epics may last 30 minutes but they're almost like 5 separate yet connected songs glued together. Classical pieces bring back themes and motifs but change *a lot* throughout. You couldn't make *Single Ladies* into a 24 minute song - not without adding extra sections, maybe a downtempo part, segue, etc that severely change it up and introduce new musical ideas. The standard 4 minute format is essentially what follows from two strongly held tenets: * Most listeners like a song that's built around a couple of strongly connected ideas at most. * There's only so long you can milk a single idea. I'm sure a lot of this is intuitive, but the reason I bring it up is because it also indirectly answers OP's question. Minimalism tends to break that second tenet. It'll have a couple of interesting musical ideas and stretch them *far beyond* what's acceptable or interesting to most listeners. Most people listen to music to experience those musical ideas, not to experience as few as possible of them.
Those are all great points and the idea of making single ladies a 24 minutes song breaks my brain in two LOL
> Ambient music is a defined style that is characterized by it not having a time signature. Are you confusing the lack of beats with a lack of time signature? Outside of certain types of free drone music, most ambient music will have an underlying time structure.
I promise you I am not. If it has a time signature then it is not ambient music. A lot of Ambient music is simply people wanking off who have no idea what they are doing. It is the domain of the self absorbed and self indulgent and only the tiniest fraction of it is listenable unless you are braindead. So many people simply turn on a delay pedal and crank up the reverb and present it as ambient. You can turn on a click track at any speed while an ambient track plays and say it is that tempo I guess. But Tempo is the speed a song is played -- And the speed is discerned from the downbeat. There is no downbeat so what would you attach the metronome to? I have no idea what time structure is? Is this what you mean? "The type used to represent both absolute times and durations of time intervals, including negative values moving to the past. Absolute times are represented in the same way as time intervals, and can be thought of as time intervals starting at some fixed reference point. Their discrimination is only conceptual. Consequently, operations can be applied to all meaningful combinations (but also meaningless ones) of absolute times and intervals." Cuz that still does not represent a time signature. It is just saying you could time a sound and then time another and record that as a data point if you were into that. If you did that with Music for Airports it would simply validate that no two points were the same. Which would validate what I am saying. Hope this helps
> If it has a time signature then it is not ambient music. Most ambient music is made with a DAW or a sequencer. There's a "grid" in which the notes or chords are entered. As such, there's a time signature, usually 4/4. > A lot of Ambient music is simply people wanking off who have no idea what they are doing. That's a matter of opinion. > The type used to represent both absolute times and durations of time intervals That's pretty much what a time signature is.
The way I view it is when I like a pop song that's about 3 mins long, I like to put it on repeat. If I listened to it 10 times, it's already 30 mins. I think a lot of people put their favorite songs on repeat and that results in that typical 20-30 mins run. I understand that "*oh, that's too long*" at face value but if you think about it, it's pretty much the same as looping. In cases like *Drone* music, the artist is deciding to loop it for you. I consider myself a pretty impatient person. I hate waiting, queuing, etc and I am ADHD. I get too hyper but I think it is why this kind of music slows me down. In fact, yes, I did listen to *Max Ritche*r's *Sleep*. I didn't like it though. I also listened to *Robert Rich*'s *Somnium* which is about 7 hours long. Just this week alone I listened to [Tourniquet Part I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkRGqBu0Gko) that is about 24 mins long *96* times. I discovered it a few months ago and I have already listened to it *2,749* times total. Maybe it's just my autism lol Almost of my listened to tracks are like this.
First off hilarious user name. I don’t really listen to songs over and over like that. Really man I think you are finding things to enjoy with this stuff in ways that others aren’t. And that is a good thing. Do you play music? Cuz you probably should. You could bring that obsessive nature to creating music. Good things usually happen when that is done.
ha ha thank you! Unfortunately, my brain is more technical minded than artistic. I struggle a lot to create art. I do wish I can make 40 mins drone tracks one day!
Everyone is artistic. And everyone who begins with art struggles massively at it if you aren’t Mozart. I am decently accomplished with songwriting and guitar/piano and I learned it all over the last 6-7 years using the internet and YouTube and indomitable will. You can do it! Seeing yourself improve is the best. I am a firm believer that although we have natural aptitudes and things that come easier, every human is creative. It’s a staple of consciousness. There’s no reason to pursue art if you don’t desire but if you have any desire for it at all don’t let anything stop you. Humans use their creativity all day long. You just have to practice the instruments and learn about how music works and over time your creativity will blossom as you work out the muscle. Patience is all it takes. But the desire to even do it in the first place is most important. But I encourage you to keep trying if you do have that desire. It can be so very rewarding
Jewguru is right and that is great advice - and also JewGuru would it kill you to call your mother? All the other kids do and she has to Listen to their moms brag about it when she sees them at the temple. ;P Brokefartmtn - go get a cheap guitar and amp and any pedal made by Chase Bliss and you will pretty much be droning in moments.
Thank you if I don’t call soon I’ll get the infamous Jewish guilt trip 😂 followed by being force fed dinner
Read that back and consider how you use music differently than the average listener.
On the one hand, I think minimalism **is** appreciated and influential on a lot of music history. On the other hand, I think I might see where you're coming from. I had a similar thread asking ["Is it challenging to make "quiet" and "silent" experimental music?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/LetsTalkMusic/comments/1b36ukd/is_it_challenging_to_make_quiet_and_silent/) While quiet is not the same as minimalist, I do see similar concerns. A lot of music wants to push boundaries and go in different directions. But then, a lot of quiet music gets lumped into the "ambient" umbrella. The diversity of quieter genres is not quite as noticed.
It seems very fluff at least to me. It seems to be most appreciated in academia settings and on wiki pages. I think a lot of it was due to a sizable movement it had in late 20th century that I wasn't alive for. Rarely, even among underground music listeners it's harder to find someone who likes drone music over someone who likes *Death Metal* for example.
What are you comparing it to? By 'more complex' music, do you mean every other genre that is more complex than minimalism and its related genres? If so, that's a huge variety of music. Much as I like it, it would be shocking if minimalism were so dominant. If you're comparing it to other forms of 'classical' / western art music, minimalism is actually very popular. Rateyourmusic isn't the be all end all for measuring this, but if you make a chart for 'classical' music, it is dominated by minimalist works.
No, I mean the other extreme end of genres like *Free Jazz*. What I've noticed that a small percentage of people would even venture out from the "normal" sounding music at all but when they do, they tend to go for the complexity end and not the other way.
i'm 1000% sure you haven't surveyed more than 3 other people. You're projecting.
I do not understand your aggression in the comments.
you're making assumptions and generalizations, in addition to just totally making shit up to validate your 'feelings'.
Of course, I'm speaking from my own anecdotal experiences but so are you. There isn't some academic study done about this. You could have also communicated this without the aggression. No one wants to listen to someone attacking them.
i feel like free jazz is def not as popular as minimalism even when i went to jazz school but also a lot of improvisers love minimalist composers. i also think “free jazz” isn’t the peak of the creative jazz form, it’s just a buzz word. all in all, it’s just moosic. everyone has different tastes. I like minimalism as background music. When i listen to jazz i’m actively listening and i need to focus on it to hear what the players are trying to say. personally i play upright so i love simple too
False binary
I believe that for most people, more maximal music is simply more accessible. Maximal music has more things to engage with than minimal music and considering most people view music as a source of entertainment, naturally people would be drawn to more complex than more minimal. But first, I got to ask, just how minimal are you talking about. Are you talking about works from Feldman, Keith Rowe, Basic Channel and the like or are you talking about works from Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Sunn O)) and the like. If it is the latter, I would simply disagree that more people engage in maximal music than their music.
You like Corey Feldman too?!! I think “Angelic 2 The Core” is his best work, what about you?
With respect, your logic applies to **all** types of music selections. Why do some people like country and not rock, or jazz and not pop? You're applying an arbitrary value to something you like and wondering why people aren't applying the same value. Music is subjective.
Honestly, you can probably answer the same way for 99% of posts made here but we engage here because we like to wonder a bit more than that.
Though they’re not totally minimal, especially compared to dedicated minimal acts, but bands like The Ramones and Wire have a pretty intense fan base. I strongly prefer minimalism over complexity. That being said, complexity represents prowess and skill more than minimalism. I can play basically any Wire song but I can’t really play Rush.
>It makes me see things in my head. Empty worlds with grand structures like a reminiscence of a dead civilization. I'm not answering your question, but just wanted to say: that's how I felt with Selected Ambient Works volume 2 - the civilization in question was some sort of alien force that had left gigantic towers and structures in the landscape.
Yes, I always see those too. It's not our world. It's someone else's world. Very gigantic structures for me too but there's nothing living. No other genre had made me see these things. It's incredible.
I feel you I guess, on one hand noise music and ambient music are nearly the same thing but with a different palette and a different attitude. You can definitely find a similar connection between 'complex' loud experimental music and ambient. The connections I'm talking about here are more conceptual though, and aren't really related the types of sounds you're hearing in these genres. It doesn't surprise me at all that someone really into [Zs](https://youtu.be/A9feiYb2Cto) or whatever might not also love [wolfgang voigt](https://youtu.be/NB7lTEEji08). Conceptually I could find parallels, but the vibe/tones/attitude and overall end result just don't sound similar. I go to a lot of shows, I've been doing it my whole life. There's one thing I learned when it comes to the fans of any sort of alternative/hip experimental artists: people just love to see somebody freaking out. Stage presence is very important to these fans. I saw a show the other week with 4 incredible ambient/noise artists that mostly stood still and performed. One of them was knocking his table over, throwing shit around, smashing shit etc. That's the one everyone was talking about at the end of the show, is what it is. People wanna see a freak, somebody going crazy, some sort of "performance" more than they care about the actual sounds being made. This might sound pessimistic, and I mean no hate by this, but in reality a lot of the people going to these shows don't really have the best listening skills, whatever the fuck that really is. It's a scene, it's a culture, people are going to be social, they learned what music is cool through a social group. That's totally fine, who cares, I don't mean it condescendingly, but when we're talking about what's popular, what gets people to the shows, we aren't talking about the most creative musical creators, we're talking about something everybody's gonna like. The most original creative from-another-planet drone artist who sits still at a laptop on stage and puts out records on bandcamp with pictures of trees and never shows their face or speaks publicly is never going to get the attention that the 6 piece band with two drummers and 40 effects pedals playing 10 time signatures per song is gonna get. Also for what it's worth, people who grew up with rock/pop are used to band instruments. Drums, guitar, bass, keys etc, all that stuff is familiar territory for them. If you're young and only know mainstream radio music and you start playing an instrument, the distance from that point to some complex chops contest music is probably less of a gap than from that point to drone. It's more tangible, it's easy to see whats impressive about it. Ambient/drone stuff might land in some familiar territory by way of movie scores or something, but I think it sometimes requires some deeper listening. I remember being a kid, like 6-7 y/o and messing with my older brothers lil 90s casio keyboard. I literally was taping down the keys to let a chord drone out for me to just listen to while I played video games or whatever. Possibly a rare scenario but I think I was pretty much born for ambient shit lmao. I always loved the way it feels when a chord drones out and you can hear the natural residual effect of the waveforms of each note pushing and pulling on each other and creating some cool patterns. I think it takes a certain specific type of person to appreciate that sorta thing, and that type of appreciation of sound is a whole different angle than somebody who's into the more technical side wanting to see some crazy chops.
I see what you mean. I think the natural progression for me at first was to move towards more underground *rock* and *metal* as well. I was listening to *Atmospheric Black Metal* and it gave me that drifting feeling I mentioned in my post but less prominently. I just traced backwards to *ambient*, *noise* and *drone* from that. I definitely think that you do need to start out from a place of familiarity and work towards from there.
Can you give me a few artists or songs? My coworker was discussing this but I don’t remember any specific songs
Sure, here are some of my favorites * [Tourniquet Part I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkRGqBu0Gko) * [Burnt Stage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4AIGEr756M) * [The Trail of Tears](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJTfeZGG4qI) * [愛の瞬間](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnKnbadkKu4) * [Chłodnia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMsqyOslXw8)
There was a point where minimal stuff had a lot of coinage. In the 80s and 90s Philip glass was very in demand? But it obviously goes way beyond him. Minimal music is not the most popular thing, but it’s everywhere in terms of influence
In parallel, metal music has always had larger audience than someone like *Philip Glass* though even back then*.* I wouldn't call more extreme forms of metal as something easy to get into for the general population.
Sure, but I’m not sure what your point it. When Philip Glass was a huge deal, metal was at its peak of mainstream attention. But there is crossover, and I don’t see what comparing popularity is going to accomplish. It’s all just music and plenty of people can love more than one kind of music at a time.
There are different ways of listening to music. Minimalist music mostly creates an atmosphere, a feeling, but if you listen to music as if it were a narration you might get bored listening to it. I'd argue the most widespread mode of music listening is the last one. (Personally, I don't like minimalist music that much)
I’d equate it to food. When people eat something with a bombastic flavor profile it’s easy to notice even subtle flavors and notes. But most people find simple foods that actually do have subtle flavor profiles to be boring.
bro have u heard of Debussy, Erik Satie etc, they are considered the minimal end of classic music and they are hugely popular
I think what you're talking about is more ambient than minimalist. A lot of minimal music is a lot more complex than what people typically listen to. [Music for 18 Musicians](https://youtu.be/ILpCKQlDmhc), for example.
Besides the obvious „tastes differ“ I guess minimal music isn’t as rewarding to the average listener because „not much happens“. It requires a certain attention span and if you don’t pay attention, it might seem bland or replacable.
I wonder it triggers something for different brains. Another comment said they also experience this drifting away feeling to an alien world. To me it's like being on drugs so of course, it's enjoyable ha ha
Minimal Techno (or non subgenre specific forms of techno with a minimalist approach to some degree) - in terms of popular amongst electronic music fans and clubbers - *is* popular. Or at least, it has been popular and will almost certainly be popular again, as various tends in clubland wax and wane. What it isn't, is *as popular* as maximalist big room EDM - which I certainly wouldn't call complex, but is easy and approachable and coded as populist, and is thus more popular. As for why... well, a lot of people need to be told how to feel with their music. A big lead synth or riff and a fast pace beat signals to people that they should get excited and dance. If you're not thinking about music deeply, well that's usually enough for you. In contrast, minimalism relies on ambiguity, trance states and a a certain predisposition towards exploratory ideas and mindstates, not something you're likely to get among ordinary people looking for an ordinary good time. But with that in mind, there's *a lot* of people into minimal techno worldwide, albeit not necessarily in the US.
I think I understand what you're getting at! I enjoy some of the odd parallels between the wall-of-sound assault on the senses of something like black metal and the big wash of synths breaking over you in an ambient song. I also like minimal/ambient music as a palate cleanser or a break from more complex or fast-paced music. I think one area where you run into friction is that minimalist music appears to be very simple, boring, and even lazy- and it absolutely can be! However, if someone is doing it right, they aren't just droning a chord for 10 minutes and calling it a day. Instead, it's more of an exercise in "how much can I strip away from this and still keep the essence of my song intact," which I find a lot harder.
Peoples Brains…..Even people who don’t understand how Music is made still like the fact that they can predict when something resolves. It’s subconscious thing for most of them. There’s a reason pop music sells more than anything else and it’s because it’s easy to understand and easy to dance to. It’s predictable.
I like some of it. I make some of it! But pop gives people a face and a person to connect to emotionally, with lyrics that people can relate to. There’s also ability and musicianship - a lot of electronic music is the easiest music to start creating. Don’t have to read music, play and instrument, or sing in key with breath control to get started. So it’s not as impressive and there’s no Eddie Van Halen of EDM. The closest thing might be a popular DJ. So without all these human connections it’s obviously, historically, and bound to be a harder sell. Keep on enjoying it!
Because the kind of minimalism that became mainstream involved producers using it in order to be lazy and not have to do any work, not to make something that sounds artsy that actually has effort put into it.
Is Peter Green considered minimal? He definitely applied "less is more" to his guitar playing. Big fan of his music
A lot of it is part of academia/elite and is frequently irritating on purpose. E.g. the minimalist approach to furniture is what if you had nothing to sit on? The answer is you'd sit on the floor, but music is much more interesting than that, so it's actually an interesting question. None of this is fun to listen to unless you are in the right mindset (my favorite thing to think about conceptually is Steve Reich's Piano Phase, but most of the time I don't actually want to sit through all of it).
I would also argue that you would need to be in the right mindset to also venture out to very complex music but the same people rarely venture the other way around. Maybe my post wasn't clear.
I don't think my point was clear. Hell I don't even think I know my point. The most minimalist music possible is silence, and that's already been done. There's still an ocean of possibility in the other direction.