Using Distance In Ambient Music

 

Sometimes when I work on mixes I push the louder things to the background. For example, really loud distorted guitars sound like they're two blocks away.

Here is a passage from The Wisdom of Psychopaths (of all places) which I thought was a good metaphor for pushing things to the background and pushing things out of attention:

"The monk who at the moment of the blast had been practicing a technique known as open presence meditation. In that state I was not actively trying to control the startle but the detonation seemed weaker as if I were hearing it from a distance in the distracted state. The explosion suddenly brings you back to the present moment and causes you to jump out of surprise, but while in open presence you are resting in the present moment and the explosion simply occurs and causes only a little disturbance, like a bird crossing the sky."

Also relevant is Eno's application of distance in the sonic field:

"When you sit outside and listen, you hear some things loud 'cause you're close to them. It's just an accident. It's not because they're more important. But if you listen, you hear things that you know are actually loud but they're just on the edge of your earshot...." (Music For Earthquakes, 1988)

(3/30/2021)