As a composer I try to change it up all the time. If you go check out my recordings and click on more than just one, you'll hear some really different sounds on almost every recording. Some of it is ambient and peaceful, some of it is avant garde, some of it is even kinda pop. I have a new project in the works where I am fusing traditional Brazilian sounds and rhythms with modern electronic, experimental and even a little dance music. I'm really excited about it and I have found some really great vocalists and collaborators that are going to make the album something very special indeed.
While I've been working on the Brazilian project I was talking about above, I picked up an old Casio CZ-3000 synthesizer and fell in love with the sounds on it. It uses something called Phase Distortion to create sounds. This system is quite unique and sounds very rich. You take a base waveform then offset the phase read angle to mangle to waveform into something else. You can also use envelopes to make them morph over time. Once I figured out how to program it, I created some patches that sounded very oldschool ambient, like vintage Steve Roach or Klaus Schulze recordings. I spaced out for hours until 4 in the morning playing the awesome sounding patches then woke up the next day and recorded about 80 minutes worth, probably producing one of the most pure ambient recordings I have ever done. All of the audio on "1986" is the CZ-3000 with no external fx or overdubs, its pure synthesizer music. Get it here. http://justinrobert.bandcamp.com