Ambient music has a very different approach because it places an emphasis on textural diversity and transparency, rather than on the musical characteristics such as melody, harmony and rhythm. I decided to include voice as the main instrument to create a texture, layering it, adding breaths and, overall, went extreme with processors’ settings (e.g. huge reverb to create a virtual acoustic space, delays with different feedback settings, etc). I also played an extra attention to the stereo field and use creative and extreme panning. Harmonies of the instruments (including voice) were used to create a smooth transition from one instrument to another by continuing the previous instrument’s melody. The ambient music is far more complex than it looks like because although it has to be ‘ignorable’, it still has to be interesting to listen to and all the elements of it have to be perfectly balanced and mixed. I like this style because it is highly experimental and leave plenty of space for improvisation.

Burn (Ambient Piece)

Kristina CMT