Music like Robert Rich

Robert Rich (born 23 August 1963) is an ambient musician and composer based in California, United States. With a discography spanning over 30 years, he has been called a figure whose sound has greatly influenced today's ambient music, New-age music, and even IDM.

At an early age, Rich thought he disliked music. Around age 12, he began growing succulent plants as a hobby. He would leave a radio tuned to classical music for his plants. This experience influenced his interest in avant-garde and minimal composition.

In the 5th grade, he began studying viola and voice. He never completed his formal training because he became uncomfortable with reading musical notation. He began looking for ways to generate sounds similar to those he heard in his mind. He started improvising on his parents' piano to hear the sound of the sustained strings droning in tonal combinations, in the style of Charlemagne Palestine. He began building his own synthesizer in 1976 when he was 13 years old. In the years that followed, he adopted several musical influences ranging from John Cage and Terry Riley to Cluster and Klaus Schulze.