What a great thread!
I'm trying to find my sound, or perhaps I should call it style, wrt Ambient music. It's been elusive though at times I feel I get a glimpse of it. Part of it is because I am trying to mostly use Chapman Stick to create it...and I've only been playing Stick a relatively short while compared to other instruments I play. The mechanics are a bottleneck that I am getting thru, albeit not as fast as I would like. With keyboards/synths the mechanics are not as much an issue.
I recently have been able to get the actual sounds I'm looking for but it's the compositional aspect that is eluding me: what chord progressions...if any...should I use. Stuff along those lines. I feel I'm over-thinking it perhaps. A recent 'breakthrough' for me was sitting down and figuring out the chords for Eno's 'An Ending (Ascent), which I find to be a very beautiful song. Basically three or four chords. But the way they're played...Brilliant! Interestingly enough, for many years I played cover material in rock bands...you learned the chords for the songs and took it from there. However for some reason I avoided learning any electronic music, not even the chord progressions. Oh you might spend hours trying to create the sound patch, but never took it further. That's going to change. Just the few songs I've worked on have pointed me down a path that I'm really looking forward to taking...
I'm trying to find my sound, or perhaps I should call it style, wrt Ambient music. It's been elusive though at times I feel I get a glimpse of it. Part of it is because I am trying to mostly use Chapman Stick to create it...and I've only been playing Stick a relatively short while compared to other instruments I play. The mechanics are a bottleneck that I am getting thru, albeit not as fast as I would like. With keyboards/synths the mechanics are not as much an issue.
I recently have been able to get the actual sounds I'm looking for but it's the compositional aspect that is eluding me: what chord progressions...if any...should I use. Stuff along those lines. I feel I'm over-thinking it perhaps. A recent 'breakthrough' for me was sitting down and figuring out the chords for Eno's 'An Ending (Ascent), which I find to be a very beautiful song. Basically three or four chords. But the way they're played...Brilliant! Interestingly enough, for many years I played cover material in rock bands...you learned the chords for the songs and took it from there. However for some reason I avoided learning any electronic music, not even the chord progressions. Oh you might spend hours trying to create the sound patch, but never took it further. That's going to change. Just the few songs I've worked on have pointed me down a path that I'm really looking forward to taking...
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