Scholars Mind

Music Made for Waiting

Some people put on a little music when they’re talking with someone else, or when they’re eating dinner—just to fill the room with a certain kind of background sound. Ambient music is designed to do exactly that, without needing you to focus on it—and it’s a newer genre than you might think. Consider the examples below, beginning with composer Brian Eno’s effort to make airports less stressful, and then discuss with your team: should we be playing more ambient music and fewer pop songs, podcasts, and YouTube videos when the goal is just to keep away the quiet? Or is ambient music best reserved for liminal spaces—is it, in fact, music for airports?

Key concepts

Ambient Music
Music built to sit in a room rather than command it, under Eno's rule that it must be 'as ignorable as it is interesting.' There is no chorus to wait for and no argument to follow, so you can attend to it or forget about it without losing anything.

Every work — at a glance

  • Ambient 1: Music for Airports — Brian Eno (album)

    Eno's 1978 record, and the founding document of the genre. Stuck in Cologne airport and appalled by the cheerful music being played at anxious, exhausted travellers, he decided such a place needed sound that admitted where you were. He built it from tape loops of unequal length, so the phrases drift out of alignment and the piece never quite repeats, and set the rule: 'as ignorable as it is interesting.'

+ 2 more works explained inside

What to know

  1. 01
    Watch what the three records are for and the genre creeps outward. Eno wrote for a terminal, a place you are trying to leave. Music for Nine Postcards was written for a Tokyo museum, a place you chose to go. Richter's eight and a half hours are for sleep, a state you cannot leave at all. In under forty years the music moves from furnishing an in-between space to furnishing the hours you are not conscious for.

Across subjects

An industry was already doing this, and Eno defined himself against it. George Owen Squier, a US Army general who patented sending signals down power lines,

Theme connection

"Are We There Yet?"

This genre was invented for an airport. Should it fill our ordinary silences instead of pop songs and podcasts? It asks nothing of you, which is restful and may also be the problem — a diet of sound designed to be ignorable leaves you with nothing you actually heard. Eno's reply: furniture is respectable.

Practice — a sample

ARTAmbient music, unlike a pop song, is MOST like —

  • A A shouted slogan
  • B A spotlighted guitar solo
  • C Wallpaper for the ears
  • D A loud film climax
  • E A ringing alarm

Sign in to answer and see why each option is right or wrong.

Keep reading the full lesson

The remaining insights, works, and practice come with full access — $9.99/month or $29.99/season.

Unlock full access →

New here? Create a free account to read the free section.