- What is the line between new age and ambient?
- Melody draws it. New age always carries a theme you could hum, with warm harmony, a clear direction and a return to the tonic. Ambient can have no melody whatsoever, existing through layers and space, and it tolerates dissonance. Use new age when the content should relax someone; use ambient when it should absorb them.
- New age or nature ambient — how do I choose?
- Ask what is in front. In new age the instrumental melody leads and nature sounds are decoration; in nature ambient the field recording leads and instruments merely underlay. Pick new age when you need emotional direction and an arc, nature ambient when you need the feeling of a real place and want the music itself to go unnoticed.
- How do I avoid results that sound like a keyboard demo?
- Cheapness usually comes from three things: plastic timbres, unvarying dynamics and a static chord bed. Name acoustic sources in the prompt — "acoustic piano, harp, wooden flute, string quartet" — ask for "playing with dynamic variation and breath," and specify "accompaniment as flowing arpeggios rather than a sustained chord pad" and "no drum-machine rhythm." Those three conditions remove most of the problem.
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