OmniAmbient was created by artist Ryan Hurtgen as site for freely accessible meditative compositions and audio journeys. These omni-directional recordings are soothing safe spaces, where you may forget about time and naturally relax. Feel free to explore the different options in the ‘LISTEN’ tab, where you may support the artist of the work directly if you so choose.
The Omnidirectional sound is captured through different methods. Ryan travels to record natural environments with Omni mics to capture the shifts of the wind and a 360 degrees soundscape of nature. This gives a sense of three dimensional listening. He explores techniques of capturing resonant spaces and recording the echos of the acoustical tones.
I have had a very dedicated life to music. I think it’s perhaps the most important thing we have. It’s the closest thing to magic there is. Music moves our feelings and emotions like nothing else can.
At one period of of my life (in my mid-thirties) I went way back in time, to the Egyptians, the Greeks, and Indians. What did they know? What lost musical knowledge is out there that the sands of time have forgotten and I could discover?
Well, a whole lot of history has survived, and I dug relentlessly into the musical history books and ancient scripts. I started to think about music for meditation and healing purposes. This is when I discovered the term ‘Resonance’. Before this, (and I’ll spare you the stories of my twenties) I had approached musical tuning somewhat naively. All the time I was in bands and touring, working in recording studios and writing songs, I would just tune to standard tuning. Standard tuning worked for rocknroll music, but meditation music was a different game. The secret sauce was in the tuning relationships.
The Indians had a system, so did the Chinese and nearly every other culture had systems through ages for how they tuned their music. I thought, well I’ll just start exploring these tuning relationships and see what happens. The results opened a new door to musical composition. This is how I began making meditation records.
At the time, I was lucky to find The Resonance Center in Pasadena, CA. I met an entire group of artists who developed wild looking instruments for meditative sound therapy. We learned that the psychological impact of acoustic harmonics could be profound.
I was also studying Georgian polyphonic singing and traveled to Tblisi for a singing tour. We had sound meditations on the top floor of the hotel in Yerevan, Armenia; these were incredible experiences. We visited the most amazing Byzantine Monasteries and Cathedrals, where the sound and sonics in these rooms showed us the engineering of sound in spaces.
Music had bloomed for me. It was multi-faceted in so many ways. At a music festival I met Yannis Matagos and he hired me to work for his acoustical engineering firm in Los Angeles. I monitored sound studies for the City of San Diego and we designed and built Lemontree Studios in Highland Park, CA. Life as a musician was busy in L.A. I was still the frontman for the band Perfect Beings, and as soon as I got home from our eastern tour, I left for another eastern tour of meditation events. This led to Dubai and The World Government Summit in 2019, which was a great success for our team.
Since Covid, things have changed. I haven’t been touring but instead traveling and recording the sounds of nature in remote places. My meditation albums for relaxation, for health and well being, all encompass my journeys and various projects I’ve been involved in over the years. OmniAmbient is the result of these pursuits. Music is always about learning and keeping an open mind. I am patiently observing, and quietly creating as I continue searching for the next musical frontier.
Thank you for listening.
– Ryan Hurtgen