New Age music

[Hoàng Long]

New Age music is a style of music originally associated with some New Age beliefs. It has its basis in the work of various 1960s European and American electronic and acoustic musicians, and is generally characterised as being primarily instrumental and repetitively melodic in nature. Recordings of naturally occurring sounds are sometimes used as an introduction to a track or throughout the piece.

Partly due to some artists' open affiliation with various New Age beliefs, other artists and bands have specifically stated that they do not consider their own music to be New Age - although their work may be labelled that way by record labels, music retailers, or radio broadcasters.

New Age music is largely typified by modal and consonant harmonies, usually in conjunction with patches of sound effects or nature samples. New Age music includes both electronic and instrumental forms, frequently relying on sustained pads or long sequencer-based runs; and acoustic forms, featuring instruments such as flutes, piano, acoustic guitar and a wide variety of non-western acoustic instruments. In many cases, high-quality samples are used instead of natural acoustic instruments. Vocal arrangements were initially rare in New Age music but as it has evolved vocals have become more common, especially vocals featuring Sanskrit, Tibetan or Native American-influenced chants, or lyrics based on mythology such as Celtic legends. Very long songs, up to 20 minutes and more, are frequent and generally expected. Some of these characteristics could equally be said to describe the closely related genres of ambient music and space music.

During the 1980s, the term "New Age music" was introduced more widely to the public by radio stations and then by music retailers and some record companies, as a marketing tag applied to a variety of non-mainstream instrumental music styles. Radio stations in major markets (such as "the Wave" in Los Angeles) defined themselves as "New Age", while playing some New Age music and using nature sounds in their station-id's, yet those stations also heavily featured styles musically and philosophically unrelated to New Age music, for example, Smooth Jazz.



And more for definition:

Some listeners consider New Age music to be a branch of electronic music. Others consider New Age music to be defined more by the feeling it produces rather than the devices used in its creation. This is a subtle distinction but needs to be mentioned since while much of the equipment used to produce New Age music is electronic, or computer-based, much New Age music is also produced using purely acoustic instruments. For example notable New Age artists George Winston, Will Ackerman, Suzanne Ciani and many others specialize in both solo and ensemble performances using "western" instruments such as piano, acoustic guitar, flutes, harps and many others, "eastern" instruments such as sitar, tamboura, tabla; and instruments from all other parts of the world, and of course, the human voice singing in languages from all around the world as well.

There is a significant overlap of sectors of New Age music, electronic music (or electronica), Ambient music, World music and in that area there are at least three major groups of fans with varying beliefs as to what New Age music is and which artists should be classified as New Age artists. There are more than three viewpoints on this but as a starting point for understanding the varieties, three main points of view can be seen as follows:

that New Age music is a branch of electronic music that includes melodic, non-dance pieces with miscellaneous kinds of arrangements (as opposed to typical dance styles such as techno and its sub-genres, experimental electronic music that can be non-melodic, noise music, several sub-genres of ambient music, etc). According to this point of view, artists and bands like Michael Cretu's Enigma, Aeoliah, Enya, Clannad, Mike Oldfield, Jean Michel Jarre, Kitaro, Popol Vuh, Steve Roach, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, and Yanni all belong to the New Age category. This is somewhat problematic for two reasons: first, artists like Enya, Vangelis and Tangerine Dream's Edgar Froese stated that they do not consider their music to be New Age, some of them perceiving "New Age music" as a genre necessarily connected with the religious movement. Second, music by artists like Tangerine Dream and Vangelis is stylistically very varied, with many albums that cannot be classified as New Age (for instance, Vangelis' output includes musical collages and experimental electronic music), and so it is unclear whether it would be fair to label the artists New Age.
that New Age music is a branch of electronic music which appears mostly on the meditation or relaxation CDs, which are frequently seen in New Age bookshops and music stores. Artists include Anugama, Cusco, David Arkenstone, Deuter, Gandalf, Karunesh, Kitaro, David and Steve Gordon, Software and Space. This definition's accuracy can be questioned, since virtually all the artists mentioned above have numerous pieces that are stylistically reminiscent of meditation CDs.
that New Age music is electronic music that is melodic, soothing and relatively simple sound-wise, with wide pads, gentle melodies and long tracks. However, since many artists confine themselves to creating only this specific kind of music, it is widely used. According to it, some Vangelis and Tangerine Dream albums can be called New Age music, but their output as a whole cannot be called New Age since it is varied. Similarly, Suzanne Ciani's music is New Age, but Klaus Schulze's and Enya's is probably not, because both have a very distinct style, different from generic melodic, soothing electronic music.