June 12, 2000

about us

the [ spheric lounge ] is a [ live ambient music ] project. an open circle of musicians, video artists and dancers meets once a month in munich / germany to do creative sessions. improvised ambient music, creative visuals and improvised dance melt into a dense atmosphere. the style [ live ambient music ] serves as a musical frame. ambient is a strongly sound-oriented music - rhythm, harmony, melody and singing appear secondarily as sound events without being durably dominant - sound remains the main object. it is the nature of ambient music to stay in the background. a detailed audio and video documentation of these events is an important part of the [ spheric lounge concept ]. the [ spheric lounge ] wants to be as transparent as possible for the global [ live ambient scene ]. every session gets recorded, a postproduction process follows and titles are published under a creative commons licence. within 3 years we have published 450 titles - which is approximately 65 hours of music. we do not make money, we enjoy making music. it is all about the fun of common improvisation and to dive into a fascinating, creative flow. but in the long run it is also important to improve every aspect of the project and to do so in an creative excange with other [ live ambient ] projects. competition within the [ live ambient scene ], leeds to ongoing innovation and intense motivation. if you want to contribute from a larger distance, you can participate in the postproduction process, edit the raw audio-material, release and name songs. any questions? enzo answers you!

the [ spheric lounge concept ]
• there are no dominating beats in [ live ambient music ] - subtile percussion textures are welcome - sound is everything
• bring along your own dj mixer to prelisten your sounds before fading into the mainmix
• no open soundcheck - [ already the first note is music ] - clear atmosphere
• don´t expect technical support while the session is going on - appear on time
• mistakes are welcome - when you´re experimenting and learning by playing, mistakes are necessarily part of the process
• everyone should feel responsible to minimize their own noise level which is added to the main mix
• every session has to be recorded in stereo-mp3-192kbit/s or better. after a postproduction process, mp3-tracks are published in the web under a createve commons-licence.
• the less rules, the better !

common improvisation:
the spheric lounge is an open [ live ambient music ] project. in principle it applies that everyone may live it up and play what he / she wants, as long as it does not disturb the others. ambient is a strongly sound-oriented music - melody, rhythm and harmony appear secondarily as sound events without being durably dominant - sound remains the main object. soloists often take their time to get used to it. to play[ live ambient ] means above all that while improvising a majority of your attention is with listening (instead of controllling your fingers f.e.). often it is crucial, which frequency ranges (e.g. bass) are still vacant, if it concerns creating suitable sounds. as it is the case with cooking, the dosage of spice added decides whether it fits the taste of the meal or not. a shrill, sharp impulse in the reverberation chamber can be marvelous as a rare, rhythmic accent - while used too frequently or continuously it can have a destructive effect. it is a lot easier to destroy a current song with expressive sounds than constructively adding to it. it is quite difficult to go into the guiding role and establishing some leading theme that defines the character of the piece. who improvises electronic ambient in a team, acts rather sporadically. anyone who wants to stand in the foreground continuously, takes the room for development from the others. listening to details and selective contributes are the Alpha and Omega. in addition, it is important to create reliability. once a musical foundation is established, one should pull through as long as necessary, in order not to leave the others standing in the empty. it is also important to realise, how much attention is drawn to your contribute. it frequently happens, that someone turns his own signal so loud that the person can hear it clearly - not aware, that the contributed signal draws to much of the general attention, at the same time pushing others off the scene. the art is to hear yourself in the context of the others and permanently adapting the volume relationship. according to experience, good music develops only if all fellow players hear themselves clearly and simultaneously in the context of the others and all together begin to react sensitively and agilely to the impulses and modulations of the others to generate a collective vibration. first we were only able to stabilize this complex process (flow) in private sessions, and often tended to overloading within the more chaotic public sessions. in the meantime the team got into practice and the contrast between public and private sessions became clearly smaller.

please no sound-check:
"the first note is already music". it's unusual, but at the spheric lounge session there are no sound-checks with turned-on amplifiers. everyone can test their own signals via headphones as long as they want. but if everyone tested aloud, all participants would loose their nerves before the very beginning of the session. this specially applies while the session is going on ! that's reason enough to bring a personal mixing device (dj-mixer and headphones). to improvise in a relaxed way it is necessary to have a calm atmosphere. also soloist with acoustic instruments and microphones have to find their way into the established mix step by step. if you want to hear yourself clearly, you have to be able to pre-listen your own signal on your own headphones.

mistakes are allowed:
naturally one is to be considerate of the other, but anyone who wants to learn has to be able to make mistakes, and this is an intended, firm component of the spheric lounge. That's why tolerance is one of the most important social principles when mistakes and errors occur. anyway it's better to take back instead of confronting. a relaxed overall feeling is a lot more important on the long term than momentarily high quality.

pre-listening with dj-mixer:
since the beginning of spheric lounge it is an important goal, to learn to control the chaos emerging from free improvisation. each participant of the session should be able to control the sound, volume, harmony and bpm of their own instrument, in order not to disturb the others. that's why most of us use a small dj-mixer with headphones for pre-listening your own signal before adding it to the overall-mix. since there is no-one controlling the main mix, everyone is responsible for their own volume peak, and this is the most critical and vulnerable point of the project - the self-responsible audio gain control. a person who has few experience with electronic live-jams should begin gently fading into the main mix and rather contribute spheric than dominating sounds. a person who feels secure enough to establish an outstanding sound, should permanently overview to what extent the others are influenced or even limited by his contribute.

12 comments:

Scott Miller said...

I wish you guys would get a media player that doesn't require the browser window to be on top of everything else to hear it. I think you guys have great music, but I cant do anything besides look at that one browser window to hear it. :(

-Scott

Scott Miller
Founder/COO of MojoBaby.com
http://www.mojobaby.com

BDCable said...

Thank you for sharing your wonderful sounds. I find them to be a great way to find that mellow place in my mind, when I need to journey there. Keep up the great work. You inspire me..

~Bruce Cable / Louisville, Kentucky
USA

GeorgeW6 said...

I would like to know how to download to use on my macBook with iMovie 09. I could use some of the ambient music with my movies if I can find out how to download from your site.

Unknown said...

I would like to thank the entire SL team for making such incredible music, and of course sharing it :)

Too bad you guys don't post the songs in flac format, I would gladly pay to get them in a higher bitrate than 192 :)

Anyway, I hope you continue this monthly tradition and feed us your great music :)

Anonymous said...

@ GeorgeW6

You can use the download button in the player. It's left beside the volume gadget. It should be functional in Safari.

Anonymous said...

Hi guys, your doing a great job. Is there any way to download music from the player, through Windows XP..? The button besides the volume gadget is not working for me.

thanks

Hannu said...

I just wanted to let you know that many mp3s are either missing or corrupted. I searched for a couple of hours, and I found at least these missing or corrupted (session number followed by missing/corrupted urls):
74: http://www.liveambient.de/mp3/titles/spheric_lounge_headphones_can_do_this.mp3
78: all
79: all
80: all
81: all
82: http://www.electronicambient.de/mp3/titles/spheric_lounge_intention_decayed.mp3
http://www.electronicambient.de/mp3/titles/spheric_lounge_physical_model.mp3
http://www.electronicambient.de/mp3/titles/spheric_lounge_uncertainty.mp3
http://www.electronicambient.de/mp3/titles/spheric_lounge_glitter.mp3
83: all
84: http://www.electronicambient.de/mp3/titles/spheric_lounge_gullfire.mp3
http://www.electronicambient.de/mp3/titles/spheric_lounge_hauks_tracer.mp3
86: http://www.electronicambient.de/mp3/titles/spheric_lounge_wooden_stairs_intermezzo.mp3
http://www.electronicambient.de/mp3/titles/spheric_lounge_tangine_scales_part2.mp3
89: http://www.electronicambient.de/mp3/titles/spheric_lounge_sprinkling_starry_sky.mp3 (corrupt)

I have followed your endeavour from the start, then after you changed from webpage to blogger, I sort of "dropped out", but have recently tried to catch up on the downloads, only to find that I should have followed the progression without dropping out. Spheric Lounge has been throughout its existence an enormously solid and enjoyable feature, and thus it's a shame that much of it seems to be unavailable. Perhaps your service provider needs a reminder?

Best greetings from Finland
Hannu

Rob said...

I created a Windows 7 / Vista desktop gadget for your TOP 100 player. You can download it from the Microsoft Windows Live gallery site here:

http://gallery.live.com/LiveItemDetail.aspx?li=9ca5cb89-3881-4774-b101-3706bbcfc494

Anonymous said...

i love spheric lounge ,dreamy boy long- way home is my current favorite=] dave

Anonymous said...

Hi guys, tnx for all your creativity. I listen to you when I am at work, and your music is very inspiring and conducing. Rob

Benjamin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
E Alan Meece said...

Can you download any of the sessions? There seems to be no way. All I get is "server failed." I am a host/DJ on stillstream internet radio and some sessions are no longer in our library. I'd like to play sessions 49 through 59 and 75 through 84. Please send them to me or let me know how I can get them. Thanks; Eric Meece, stillstream host
http://stillstream.fm