Music for waiting rooms
Apr 04, 2021, 09:24 AM
Paris Charles de Gaulle reimagined by Janae Jean.
"Listening to aural ambience of train station at Charles de Gaulle Airport brought me right into the sticky vinyl seats or unfriendly wooden benches of any transport waiting area anywhere on Earth. I had a sense of sentimentality and familiarity with the process of travel, recognizing that even the waiting or stationary times are part of the journey. Even though most of us are not traveling and have not been for more than one year, we are currently in the middle of a journey. We don't need to take off on a plane or hop on a train, we are on the journey right now. There's a beauty in each step.
"Musically, I was originally planning on making an ambient sound collage with analog synthesizers, effects, and the train station ambience recording. I created synth patches that float and morph like clouds and others that buzz like engines. I chose the home tonality of B flat with a lot of suspended ninths because it feels like it's about to "take off" or "land". As I worked on it, I moved away from an ambience-only approach and started playing the 70s-ish piano ballad riff and topped it off with a "flutey," swung lead that feels a bit like "elevator music." This music feels at home in the waiting room."
Part of the Until We Travel project to map and reimagine the sounds of transport and travel in a pre-pandemic and pandemic world. See the whole project at https://www.citiesandmemory.com/travel.
"Listening to aural ambience of train station at Charles de Gaulle Airport brought me right into the sticky vinyl seats or unfriendly wooden benches of any transport waiting area anywhere on Earth. I had a sense of sentimentality and familiarity with the process of travel, recognizing that even the waiting or stationary times are part of the journey. Even though most of us are not traveling and have not been for more than one year, we are currently in the middle of a journey. We don't need to take off on a plane or hop on a train, we are on the journey right now. There's a beauty in each step.
"Musically, I was originally planning on making an ambient sound collage with analog synthesizers, effects, and the train station ambience recording. I created synth patches that float and morph like clouds and others that buzz like engines. I chose the home tonality of B flat with a lot of suspended ninths because it feels like it's about to "take off" or "land". As I worked on it, I moved away from an ambience-only approach and started playing the 70s-ish piano ballad riff and topped it off with a "flutey," swung lead that feels a bit like "elevator music." This music feels at home in the waiting room."
Part of the Until We Travel project to map and reimagine the sounds of transport and travel in a pre-pandemic and pandemic world. See the whole project at https://www.citiesandmemory.com/travel.