The room plays too

Hey friends,

When I prepare a set, I usually start with the music: what goes where, how the energy moves, what I want people to feel. This time I keep thinking about the room instead.

Four hours in a church

On Friday I'm playing St. Engelbert in Mülheim an der Ruhr, together with my friend Fabian Laute. It's part of an art project called großARTig, so there will be artworks standing all over the space and seating spread through it. People will sit for a while, get up, look at something, come back. And we're playing for four hours. That's by far the longest set I've ever played.

Long pads, atmosphere, a guitar, a microphone for sounds we make in the room itself. Four hours needs a lot of material.

And I still don't know about the kick

The latest Melodic Minute brought drums back after a long stretch of pure ambient, and parts of that jam are going into Friday. The kick is the part I keep going back and forth on. A church has an enormous natural reverb. That can turn a kick into mush, or it can be the best thing in the room. I really don't know yet.

By the time you read this, I will.

A room is not just where you play

I don't think a room is the container your set happens in. It's part of the set. The reverb, the seats, the artworks, the energy, and this time the fact that people are looking at something while they listen: all of it changes what the music should be. And you can hear a lot of that before you play a single note, if you let yourself think about it that way.

I hope you can take something away for your next one.

If you want to support Melodic Minute and help keep the series going, you can find me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/kvndra

And thanks to Fabian for doing this one with me. <3

Stay creative,
Milan (KVNDRA)