A 6-Hour Time-Stretched Version of Brian Eno's Music for Airports

https://www.openculture.com/2025/03/a-6-hour-time-stretched-version-of-brian-enos-music-for-airports.html

by vinhnx • 1 year ago

199 82 1 year ago

openculture.com

tra3• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

Your code will no longer be afraid of crashing.

morsch2• 1 year ago

I'm rather fond of The Black Dog's Music for Real Airports, myself. https://ra.co/reviews/7404

madmoose• 1 year ago

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.

LeoPanthera2• 1 year ago

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.

morsch2• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

The High-Rise Living 78-86 mix with Regis is stunning too

tomduncalf• 1 year ago

Ah yeah love this album!

Mistletoe• 1 year ago

Thanks for introducing me to this. This is the kind of music I like and had never heard of it.

jquaint• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

Ah yes, pop some ketamine, turn this one, and never return.

keyle• 1 year ago

Mind blown. Thanks!

pbmahol3• 1 year ago

The paulxstretch completely obliterates phase component of audio input. Its not really way to do it if you want real output.

viraptor• 1 year ago

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?

jm547ster• 1 year ago

Phase is relative, you are trying to sound intelligent

jedimastert2• 1 year ago

Define "real" in this instance? We're talking about audio manipulation, fiddling with time and frequency domain. Something's going to have to give

wiml• 1 year ago

As long as you match the phase of the positive and negative frequency components you'll get real output

isoprophlex• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

Less distructive, but also -the [vst3] plugin 'valhalla supermassive'.

jedimastert2• 1 year ago

Paulstretch is such an utterly genius algorithm. Ridiculously simple solution to a difficult problem but it gets you amazing results

pbronez• 1 year ago

The algorithm is described at https://www.paulnasca.com/algorithms-created-by-me

jchw• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

Might be the Potica https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHEPzEKTcss

ocal5• 1 year ago

In this field : Windows 95 startup sound, from Brian Eno as well : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnoX3E2WFcc

dep_b• 1 year ago

It has that calming quality, and I would hear it frequently as I would still shut down my computer after every session.

okeuro49• 1 year ago

"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• 1 year ago

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.

soulofmischief2• 1 year ago

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.

shlant2• 1 year ago

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

bloopernova• 1 year ago

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.

sebmellen2• 1 year ago

Mine is Burning Airlines Give You So Much More, also by Eno.

erictd• 1 year ago

This and Neroli are my favorites to play when I want something that doesn’t take over my attention, but grounds it.

AdamN• 1 year ago

Perhaps the uplifting responsorial to this would be "An Ending (Ascent)" from his Apollo soundtrack.

cage433• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

Alternative title: Journalist discover the paulstretch software

bevan• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

Or, on Thursday afternoons, you can listen to one of my favorites

https://youtu.be/TTHF2Dfw1Dg?si=PKvJpnG88hjV2-St

reverendsteveii3• 1 year ago

I'm glad to see that someone finally got the hang of Thursdays. I never could.

Synaesthesia• 1 year ago

Not really necessary. So little happens in the original (in a good way)

chaosprint• 1 year ago

sounds like paulstretch is heavily used. you can get similar results when applying this to almost any sont.

kryptonomist• 1 year ago

One great musician to listen to during late coding sessions.

Lutzb• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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-• 1 year ago

NDE

Near-death experience. For those (like me) unfamiliar with the acronym.

andyjohnson0• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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

reverendsteveii3• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

reverendsteveii3• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

If you like Brian Eno's music, you might enjoy Hiroshi Yoshimura. Wet Land is one of my favorite albums of all time.

sebmellen2• 1 year ago

Only on HN do we get these great music recommendations.

mistrial9• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

dupe? this was on the homepage 4 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43520122

meta-level• 1 year ago

Not sure anyone posted it already, also great: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hOVdjxtnsH8

cypherpunks012• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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?

LeoPanthera2• 1 year ago

The Black Dog have a lovely Patreon where they personally answer comments. Have you considered asking them?

omnimus• 1 year ago

I would say only Brian Eno can make one.

Maybe he made some other music thats continuation.

kodomomo• 1 year ago

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.

cypherpunks012• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

Listened to a bit of it and it seems like a decent analogue to East Forest's Music For Mushrooms which is 5 hours.

illegitimateegg• 1 year ago

Imagine what this would sound like for Another Green World

A 6-Hour Time-Stretched Version of Brian Eno's Music for Airports

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