- Minimal techno or minimal house — how do I tell?
- Minimal house keeps swing and fragments of chords, so it reads warmer. Minimal techno plays straight and cold, often compressing harmony down to a single filtered ghost note. Set swing to zero, remove the chord progression and keep a monophonic bass, and the result lands firmly on the techno side.
- How do I keep sparse from becoming empty?
- Sparse is not static. Spell out the parameter motion: “filter cutoff moves every 16 bars, delay feedback rises slowly, hat velocity drifts.” Ask for a kick with a sharp transient and a small room reverb. Those details are what make a thin arrangement worth ten minutes of listening.
- Generations always come back too busy. What controls density?
- Cap the track count in the prompt — “no more than six elements: kick, bass, two percussion, one filtered pad, one noise layer” — and add explicit exclusions such as “no melody, no chord progression, no vocals.” Negative constraints control density far better than adjectives like sparse or minimal.
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