As I write this, I’m listening to some new music I worked on in January. It’s that kind of slow, relaxed, non-intrusive music that sits nicely in the background and let’s you focus on the task at hand. This is my favorite kind of music to listen to.

Surprisingly, I don’t have a ton of experience producing this kind of relaxed music. I tend to find it more interesting to work with great sounding bass synths and energetic arpeggiations. I do, however, really enjoy interesting textures that evolve slowly, and recently I’ve attempted to produce this sort of ambient music.

January Music

One piece features some light piano, synth bass, and even a sort of gong as well as chimes. It’s not as background as I had intended, but I like how it turned out.

Another piece is a bit more mysterious and features a combination of synth strings and synth pads, plus a slow wash of white noise moving in and out like ocean waves, and there’s also a gentle arp. This one is very meditative but it also feels like there’s a quiet story taking place.

My hope was to polish off a more finished piece of ambient music by the end of the month, but these little rough drafts are all I have to show for January’s new music and the first new music since October, I believe.

Bonus Music

In fact, as a bonus, here’s a 5-minute piece I did back in October. It’s meant to invoke an image of listening to strange noises in deep space. It features a gentle yet pronounced synth bass, what resembles an electric guitar in synthesizer form, some electronic arpeggiation that sounds like it’s coming over a tiny speaker, a little light piano, and strange noises that remind me of a sleeping, breathing entity of unknown classification.

Your input:

What kind of background music do you want to hear me try? Please suggest an instrument type, a stylistic direction, or even an image in your mind that could guide a new piece of music.