Use the free-form tones of atmospheric royalty-free music to spotlight emotion in your scenes.
In 1978, legendary iconoclast Brian Eno released Ambient 1: Music for Airports. With four lengthy tracks of layered tape loops, it’s an experience of sound on sound on sound. Music for Airports is more art installation than album, but it’s exceptionally listenable. In the years that followed its release, Eno put out three more collections of non-songs as part of his Ambient series, essentially establishing a genre of music he called “as ignorable as it is interesting.” His words also describe the atmospheric royalty-free tracks found in the playlist at the end of this post.
Atonal Audio as Tone, or How I Learned to Light Scenes with Music
Artfully speaking, lighting a scene is about invisibly rendering emotion. Filmmakers and videographers wrestle with stands and cords and all manner of hot and heavy gear to create an atmosphere that’s intentional in its look of looking unintentional. They are manufacturing space within space, with shadows and beams as borders and walls that direct attention and communicate feelings of tension, freedom, openness, claustrophobia, warmth, and the lack thereof. Lighting says things that your actors don’t. Atmospheric music exists in the same realm. They both color your scene.
The free-form, meandering sounds of ambient, atmospheric music should be unobtrusive, even if they’re loud and ugly. The sounds are not for your three-point superhero landing, they’re for the first glimpse of an unfamiliar landscape and the cocked eyebrow of an unorganized daydream. (Or, you know, for a mind-warping nightmare from which there is no waking.)
Ambient soundtracks are subtle expressions of mood, magic, and mystery when hooks and melody might pull viewers in the wrong direction. Accordingly, in the liner notes of Music for Airports, Eno wrote that his ambient music was “designed to induce calm and a space to think.” Ultimately, when you need your audience to be all in on a moment, singularly focused on the guts of the feeling you are striving to share on screen, the ethereal nuances and shifting layers of atmospheric ambient music can be the light that (stealthily) illuminates your intentions.
Explore the playlist below to find an atmospheric track that’s perfect for the next time you need your soundtrack to get out of the way. Every song you’ll hear is yours in perpetuity with a simple $49 Standard License.
Cover image via Roberto Vivancos.
Header image via Algol.
Playlist header image via FotoDuets.
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- 2019’s Most Important Film Score Trend: Experimental Ambient Music
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- A Reverie By The Beautiful Dreamer
- Light and flowing, featuring soothing acoustic guitar and strings that create a peaceful mood.
- Soft and Flowing By Viljami Mehto
- Solemn and ambient, featuring Middle Eastern female vocals, strings, and wind instruments that create a gloomy, somber mood.
- Ambient Meditations By Sonny Lauderdale
- Lush and ethereal, featuring soft soprano saxophone, clarinets, and drones creating a peaceful and relaxing mood.
- Elemental Glow By Elliot Middleton
- Mellow and warm, featuring dreamy electric guitar and atmospheric textures that creates a hopeful, sentimental mood.
- Oslo By Remember The Future
- Ambient and angelic, featuring choir, mallets, piano, and atmospheric textures that create a hopeful, passionate mood.
- Goodbye Galaxy By Tea Time
- Floating and atmospheric, featuring moody piano, strings, and synthesizer to create a melancholy and ethereal mood.
- Magnetic Light By Ballian De Moulle
- Shimmering and atmospheric, with electronic ethereal elements featuring celestial synthesizer, strings, and bells to create a magical and dreamy mood.
- Nordic Sunrise By Mattijs Muller
- Introspective and floating, featuring piano, strings, synthesizers, atmospheric pads, and electronic pulses that create a dreamy, reflective mood.
- Floating By Monsieur Seb
- Soft and watery, featuring muffled bass and synthesizers, creating a sensual, subdued, and introspective mood.
- Metamorphis By Joel Martinson
- Gentle and ethereal, featuring light strings, choral textures and underlying pulsing electronic elements that create a heavenly and peaceful mood.
- Interesting Conundrum By K1Woods
- Dreamy and floating, featuring pulsing electronic textures, and smooth synth pads that creates an bold and confident mood.
- A Life in the Stars By Ayden Blackbird
- Solemn and powerful, featuring shimmering, atmospheric drones that create a swelling sense of wonder and terrified awe. These drones are eventually joined by a steady, repeated drum machine beat.
- Arctic Sunset By Evocativ
- Smooth and shimmering, featuring warm drones and pulsing electric guitar textures that create a peaceful and soothing mood.
- ASMR Mars Crater By Yan Perchuk
- Atmospheric and sparse, with electronic drones elements featuring solemn synthesizer and samples to create an ominous and mysterious mood.
- Lightscape By Firefly Music
- Warm and atmospheric, with electronic and new age ambient elements featuring spacious synthesizer and piano to create a serene and euphoric mood.
- Gentle Sky By Simba Music
- Dreamy and floating, with electronic ambient elements featuring blissful synthesizer and bells to create a serene and delicate mood.
- Trost By Presley Productions
- Smooth and dreamy, featuring atmospheric synthesizers and drones that create a peaceful, introspective mood.
- Massein By Presley Productions
- Dreamy and peaceful, featuring floating synthesizers and drones that create a deep, introspective mood.