Exploring Is the Whole Set

Hey friends,

For a very long time, I played melodic techno live sets that were very structured at their core. They had finished songs with a clear structure and order, and I played those songs one after another in a certain order. A classic setlist, really. I could remix the songs into each other, but the structure was still there.

A different approach

Playing ambient live had been a big wish of mine for a long time, and it was clear to me that it had to be a different approach. So I chose exploration. I wanted to build a set that invites you to explore, where you ask yourself: what happens if I play a piano on channel three now, fade in a generative resonant pad sound and maybe let both of them run through a phaser with the feedback turned all the way up?

These things build on each other, and the deeper I go into this rabbit hole of discoveries, the more it swallows me and takes me with it. And that creates a live set with an incredible flow. It’s something the artist tries out in the moment, and it just flows, with dynamic highs and calmer moments, until at some point it ends. For ambient live sets I find that incredibly intense, and it lets people really immerse themselves. I noticed that especially when I played a live set in a church together with Fabian Laute: we both just let go and explored our setups together. That was so much fun, and I think it went down really well with the audience too.

Not every place you find is beautiful

Of course, when you explore, you also find places that aren’t so beautiful. Places where the sounds just don’t harmonize the way you imagined. But if you know your setup well and know how it’s built, you can use these places to create tension, or to move from a bit of dissonance towards something beautiful again and resolve that tension.

And if you practice and practice with your setup, at some point you really have a setup that can grow with your own possibilities. Because the more you try, the more you notice what you’re missing or where you still need things. Then the setup grows with you, and you change the sounds in the direction you need right now.

That’s exactly what happened with this setup, which is why I’m so incredibly proud to show it in my new video, explain the philosophy behind it and offer the whole setup as a download on Patreon.

Get the template on Patreon (Studio Access and up): https://www.patreon.com/kvndra/posts/kvndra-ambient-172237159

Stay creative,
Milan (KVNDRA)