Spend time with what you have...
-- Dub007
This is always a very good suggestion. In my experience, if I want to make pop-techno-trance-EBM-ambient, I can do it with the same setup. That's 7U 104 + 6U 84hp. It's a matter of getting to know your gear.
Instead of waste your bucks to sequencers, envelopers, oscillators and clocks you don't need.
With respect, I read Pamela NW and René, what are they for dark-ambient?
Probably someone are convinced that's sh*t like Board of Canada or Aphex Twin....
-- RossMotus669
Rhythm may be of lesser importance in (dark) ambient but that doesn't mean it's entirely incompatible. For example, Atrium Carceri has plenty of tracks with implicit, or even subtly explicit, rhythm. A clock can be used to clock effects as well. You don't need to use it as a 4/4 beat only. For example, try an irregular Euclidean (e.g. 17/32) with some serious trigger dropping to get very irregular movement that doesn't seem completely out of place. I have PNW and just worked on a dark ambient track. For my previous track, I think I could've used a second one. But for this dark ambient one, I'm still using over half the outputs. As for sequencer - depends on what you want. Plenty of dark ambient uses plain piano melodies - nothing wrong with that. And don't forget the output of a sequencer is just a voltage. It's up to you if you use it for V/Oct, or filter cutoff, or delay times, or whatever you want. Add slew for fun and games.