Ambient: Good Music, Good Medicine - by James Anthony Walker

COURSE

Ambient: Good Music, Good Medicine

With James Anthony Walker

Throughout this 10-day course, we'll take a close look at the history of ambient music, what is has done to forever change the musical landscape, and how and why it has developed into the unique, dogma-free manifestation of musical thought that it is. We'll look at how the components of ambient music differ from those you'll experience in traditional musical forms and approaches, and what their physical and psychological benefits are. We'll also explore how some of the different styles or subgenres of ambient music have evolved and how each varies from others in terms of heritage.

PerformanceAmbientSoundInstrumentalSpiritualitySpiritualityMusicClaritySecularCreativitySound MeditationSecular MindfulnessMindfulnessNew Age

Meet your Teacher

James Anthony Walker
Santa Barbara, CA

James Anthony Walker is an accomplished and highly in-demand composer of ambient music, founding Director of the Computer Music Studio at The University of Chicago, and an ordained InterFaith/ InterSpiritual Minister. Today, he blends his musical vision and his spirituality into music for a wide variety of mind-body practices. Together with life partner Constance McClain, he is co-founder of Oasis of the Heart, an inclusive InterFaith/ InterSpiritual ministry without walls.

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10 Days

7.7k students

4.9 stars

12 min / day

Performance

English

Lesson 1

The Mindful, Musical Path

Ambient music is a very different animal from most, if not all, of the other styles of music that you will ever encounter. In this session, I'll tell you a little bit about my walk down this road and how as a classically trained composer, it demanded something very profound of me. It has been a message at first hard to accept and absorb, but in the long run, it has helped me, as I know it has many other composers of ambient music to better serve the needs of our listeners. It is a life lesson worth considering by us all.

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Lesson 2

Deceptively Simple, Instantly Approachable: How It Came To Pass

In this session, we'll take a look at the history of ambient music, starting with the surprising notion that it's hardly what you would call a New Age phenomenon. Rather, it's something with its roots in the late 19th century avant-garde, when the notion of simplicity in the midst of the increasingly complexity of new music was not only a novel concept, but one which was academically dismissed by many. What these roots have shown though in the long run is that its approachability has far outweighed its perceived simplicity.

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Lesson 3

The Brilliant Anomaly Of Melody In Ambient Music

In this session, we'll look at the role of melody in ambient music. How it brings an entirely new concept for the word in contrast to its role in more traditional music across all existing mediums. This is a high-level look at how this new concept contributes so significantly to the success of an ambient work. It helps draw us into it as listeners.

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Lesson 4

The Deep, Lush Harmonies Of Ambient Music

In this session, we'll look at the role of harmony in ambient music. How it differs significantly from traditional music and the sense of progression that it offers us as listeners. We are grounded unconsciously in musical forms that start somewhere, go somewhere, and end somewhere. This is not so easily the case with ambient music. It provides us an environment, an enclosure within which we are free to perform tasks, participate in mindful practices, or do nothing at all - without interruption.

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Lesson 5

Internal Beats: Rhythm In Ambient Music

In this session, we'll look at the role of rhythm in ambient music. Inside of an ambient work, we often live in many of its styles, in a state of suspension, where the motion, movement, and rhythm provides is completely missing. Again, this is a way in which we are directed to be present in the moment, and not one in the future. The rhythms inside of an ambient work are there but incredibly, beautifully subtle. They often direct our inner rhythms to come into sync with them without bravado, but with certain outcome of result.

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Lesson 6

Not Your Mother’s Sound Palette: Instrumentation In Ambient Music

In this session, we'll look at a completely unique dimension of ambient music: instrumentation. Ambient music draws has no implicit reference in music history. It exists not as a derivative of its ancestors, but as a clear departure from it. It draws on no instrumental pedagogy or dogma, but rather establishes its own. The instruments of ambient music are self-sustaining and self-sufficient. Each voice capable of being, at the same time, spacious and intimate, large and small, known and unknown. It is a world of dreams with a palette infinitely beyond that of traditional art forms and ensembles.

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Lesson 7

A New Dimension: The Role Of Space In Ambient Music

In this session, we'll look at how ambient music uses the musical dimension of space. While the use of musical space is not unique to ambient music, its ability to define it to psychological and experiential effect is. Space as a dimension of the ambient music palette is expansive, intimate, or anything in between. Its palette can use the traditional x and y axes of traditional music, where we are an audience and in front of us, there is an ensemble. But it can also bring in the z axis - that dimension of above and below. All of these have the potential to involve us, blanket us as we never have been before.

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Lesson 8

But Wait, There's More: Real Benefits Of Ambient Music

In this session, we'll look at the psychological and physical benefits of ambient music. The experiential benefits in the moment, each according to our needs in the moment, are well-documented and often profound. Beyond that, research over the course of the last 30+ years has established a robust set of both psychological and physical benefits that this style offers, and which, as with the practice of meditation itself, can have long-lasting, neuroplastic benefits.

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Lesson 9

There's An Ambient For All of Us: Ambient Styles

In this session, we'll look at the styles of ambient music, and their best suited use. I will offer some examples I've written to briefly demonstrate each of them. Ambient music has and continues to evolve with generations of listeners, just as any other musical art form. Some are best suited for initial listening, some for the deepest of personal practices. It is an embrace waiting to happen.

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Lesson 10

Another Spoke In The Wheel

In our last session, we'll do a little review of what this unique spoke in the musical wheel called ambient is all about. We will take a few moments together to revisit what we’ve learned about all of the musical dimensions which are at play in ambient music and how they combine in their effect for the greater good in support of our spiritual practices. I hope that if you are not already a listener, you give it a try moving forward on your spiritual path. That you will have come to know what kind of ambient music is right for you. That you’ll know first-hand how powerful it is, and what its deep and neuroplasticity-enabling benefits are.

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Ask your teacher

This course includes 50 community questions and 6 audio replies from James Anthony Walker. The community classroom and teacher audio replies are only available via the app.

50

4.9 (214)

Recent Reviews

Jenny

January 30, 2026

So interesting and applicable. I really appreciate the thoroughness and personal insights. Thank you.

Gail

November 19, 2025

Excellent course and Ambient Music is now a playlist for my practice! ✨🙏✨

KWCarrie

September 19, 2025

Fascinating course by an excellent teacher and composer/musician! Very grateful for IT for bringing it into my world🙏🏼✨🎶💖

Cream

March 27, 2025

This is my second time taking the course. I enjoyed it just as much as I did the first time!

Scarlett

March 4, 2025

Thank you so much! I loved learning so much about ambient music ❤️

Michael

October 28, 2024

James provides a excellent overview of Ambient music, its history, its makeup, and the differing styles that are all rooted in music as pure presence. Wonderful!

Karen

October 27, 2024

Excellent course!

Markel

September 15, 2024

Very thorough, both technically and sensitively. Much gratitude for this course!

Shirley

July 31, 2024

Wonderful! I learned so much and now understand how ambient music affects me so profoundly. Thank you James!

Arcadian

July 18, 2024

Thanks James this is very educational and informative. It truly helped me to open my mind to ambient music.

Barbara

June 17, 2024

So loved this course! It brought back happy memories of music theory classes in college over 50 years ago. And the connection between ambient music and Erik Satie was both interesting and made perfect sense. Thank you for sharing your talent and expertise here for those of us who deeply appreciate the value of music in our spiritual and meditation practices.

Ginny

February 21, 2024

I enjoyed learning about all the different types of ambient music. I never knew that it began in the 19th century in France!! Thank you for sharing your music with us here on Insight Timer 🙏💗🦋

Carla

January 16, 2024

Learned something new. Thank you

Shannon

January 10, 2024

Such an amazing course! This class gives a foundational understanding of not only ambient music, but music in general. It renewed my internal instinct to allow my own art to develop in ways that are not traditional, as well. Truly inspirational!

Heather

December 14, 2023

This was an amazing course - it opened something up for me And I also got the old family piano tuned and am starting to explore I am so appreciative of the quality and value of Anthony’s course!

Kas

December 10, 2023

Learning about the history, elements and purposeful composition of ambient music has given me a deeper appreciation .

Llum

December 6, 2023

Thank you, James Anthony. I liked it very much.

Chuck

August 22, 2023

Excellent course! I have enjoyed James' music, and had a deeper look into the roots and practice of ambient music.

Ginny

June 12, 2023

As a non-musician, I found this course full of terrific information about the origins and composition of Ambient music. Thank you, James. Ginny 🌞🙏

Per

May 17, 2023

What a beautiful and inspiring guidance into Ambient Music - Thank You 🙏🏻❤️

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