Daily Ambience

In 2005, inspired by the release of the first iPod Shuffle and the introduction of RSS Enclosures (the technology that made podcasts possible) I began the Daily Ambience project. 

Every single day for a year, I recorded and released a new piece of music. I did this as an exercise to remove some of the mystique from the creative process for myself.  As opposed to waiting for inspiration, I would be ready to take advantage of it when it arrived. Some tracks are great, some no so great, some very silly, but all of them worthwhile.

This was not a simple undertaking. SoundCloud did not exist, YouTube was only a twinkle in the eye of its creators - there was no easy way for an individual to distribute media independently other than self-hosting the files and using a hand-build RSS feed. Ultimately I worked with archive.org as the host of the files, and was able to convince them to make the uploads available immediately. Previously there was a several week waiting period before submission to the site were published.

Structurally, this can be regarded as one of the first podcasts, even though it's not the talk-radio analogue that that term has come to represent.

Below, you will find all 366 tracks, in reverse chronological order (in true blogging fashion.)

If you enjoy listening to them half as much as I enjoyed creating them, then I've enjoyed them twice as much as you!

You can also find them on all the usual streaming services and on BandCamp where you can simply hit play and let them wash over you.  But if you choose to continue on this page, you can find my comments on the creation of each of them.

Enjoy!