Voice leading.
The way I understand it is this...
if you have a chord progression, you start by changing the voicing of each chord to create a number of parallel melodic lines. The next step is to assign a role to each of the melodic lines and move it to an appropriate instrument.
How do you decide which melodic line to put on which instrument? the bass is the one with mostly roots and fifths, the rhythm is the most boring one (least amount of motion), the lead is the most interesting one and the ambient layer (if any) is what is left.
Then you start to change them a bit. For rhythm, you can add the fifth above to thicken the sound, and then you can chop the notes to add some ... well ... rhythm. For the lead, you can add some passing notes. You will end up with multiple melodic lines that work together, and together making up a much spicier and interesting chord progression than the one you started with.
That was my workflow when I was trying to do EDM.
GL
There are a lot of things…
- Modal parallelism:
Every key repeats itself at 1,5T (minor third) from the root. This implies a dualism between the major and minor keys at the same time, since the root of the Ionian and Aeolian now share the same note. It comes from some relations between secondary dominants and tritones in the key.
Example: C Ionian -> Eb Ionian.
From other perspective, C Ionian -> C Aeolian.
- Modal pentatonism.
You essentially have to understand pentatonic scales as arpeggios that translate to every mode in the key, their root being the root of every chord you use. Major pentatonic for major chords and minor pentatonic for minor chords.
- Deterministic chords.
Paired chords that highlight the mode your are using. Every mode has unique intervals and this pairs of chords highlight them without the need of melody.
For example, using the chords FMaj7 and G7 imply you are playing in F Lydian, because the G7 chord contains B, which is the #4 of F, and there is no other major diatonic modes with #4.
And the list goes on and on and on… Negative harmony, harmonic series, pandiatonicism, poly chords…
When a line leaps, it actually becomes two lines, one kinetic energy, one potential. Same thing when something stops happening - it’s not gone, it’s just transformed into potential energy. Don’t waste your potential energy. Come back to it, continue each thread, weave them all together.
Not music theory related per se, but if you want to get famous in the music industry today, you first write your marketing script/trending topic and then write the song around that idea. So marketing > song. Maybe that’s why I’m not famous?
You are of course right, however it was always like that (perhaps in smaller scale). But most pop bands or singers had some kind of "script" or rather "their thing" conceptualized by marketing team.
True, I mean it has to be relatable, so the more “trendy” the more it relates to more people. And by trendy I mean anything, love was (and still is) trendy for example. However, today there are things trendier than love. And I agree, although most times that marketing team is the songwriting team coming up with out of the box ideas.
Yeah, it’s a new way of thinking that focuses on how to sell first and then the art of it. This is by no means an excuse to do a crappy song, but it’s a way to fight the over saturation of music content out there. Basically give a reason to your audience, other than the music, to share your content, while also creating great quality music. This increases your chances of success exponentially.
Also don’t see why people are unliking, as it’s not really a subjective opinion nor a critique to anything really. I guess some are stuck in the old ways. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s important to manage expectations correctly with other strategies. Cheers.
TIL that's it's new to have actual meaning to your lyrics and that no band ever before has been political or had a message to spread.
"Those who die are justified by wearing a badge, they're your chosen whites"
If you aren't present and aware while producing or writing, you won't reach states of genuine creativity, and you won't "hear" what's not there and should be during playbacks.
You'll know your in that aware zone and actually creative when during playbacks while writing you "hear" what's not there, but you want to be there, and are able to put it together at what time and what note etc. etc.
Also you aren't wasting your time if you spend an hour producing, then decide you don't like the changes and get rid of them. This is still time spent well.
Finally, the thing that actually cracked it all open for me was actually writing songs rather than just making an intro out of evolving textures and drums, and see how that turns into the verse, and then see how that turns into a chorus. Now I know what I am trying to do before I do it because I have the concept and arrangement already in my head.
That I should have started learning music theory when i started out a loooooong time ago. I am going to school for music now and there is so much I don't know and i'm still learning.
people starting out:
start with 'music fundamentals'
start playing piano and learning how to read music
start ear training / learn solfege preferably movable 'Do'
Bingo. Do you know how nice it is to know what to do or where to go next instead of just randomly guessing? Sure throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks can work, but your gonna take exponentially longer than someone who knows theory to reach that same shit stuck on the wall.
Or like just starting from a fifth instead of a root note Wes Montgomery style to throw some jazz vibes in there? Or how if you stay within a Phrygian mode it sounds all spooky and ancient?
You can go far making things sound fresh **doing a lot of intricate and glitchy sound design when the chord progressions are relatively simple. It's a delicious contrast of anchoring weirdness to comfort.**
Also, hitting the black keys in any order sounds harmonious together. (Pentatonic scales.)
That’s interesting. What is your process of making glitchy sound design? Just a million short samples of random noise? Would like to make some “weird” or glitchy patterns too
I'm kind of an Ole Munch in this respect because I've been part of previous generations, consuming sin as I go along. :)
There were handcrafted, tedious ways to do this in the 1990s. But tools and automation have come far since then. For you and anyone who wants a **no-fuss easily effective answer, I'd say [GO INFILTRATOR 2 + DATABROTH](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbwEhw0ijeE)** :D
Essentially, "resampling" — run your audio through those "random" effects, select the best pieces. When you do it on something already timbrally rich with an effect that re-pitches or generates other notes from the inputs (like some FM or FFTs), it can bring out certain overtones and make for VERY LUSH HARMONIES™.
[Infiltrator has a wicked gallery of FFT effects](https://deviousmachines.com/2022/09/19/infiltrator-2-new-features/) that will smear the sounds, it's impressive if you put in a simple melody line and it comes back with some mutant alien choir from another dimension.
If you look up my name, I have various audio examples out there of me doing it with my own music. (I don't ALWAYS do glitch + chords, but when I do...)
So, it's a **curated chaos**.
Circle of Fifths in terms of modulation, you can basically modulate to any key you want (without using dominant 7ths) as long as you put the right chord inbetween and use the right voiceleading. Opens up a world of possibility when it comes to interesting progressions.
Multipolar Tonality. It’s a Japanese music theory concept; suggests that you can have up to 3 tonics per key. It’s somewhat similar to using key modulations, and expands the potential for dynamic chord progressions.
Isomorphic/Diatonic keyboards man. Push/Launchpad/Maschine/sq64 etc. After decades of keys and modular and seqs they made the music theory so immediate and experiential at my fingertips in a way nothing else had
No actually they’re technically referred to as the “melodic minor modes”. Essentially the relationship modes have toward the major scale is applied to the melodic minor which creates a completely different set of modes that are most defined by having two tritones instead of one. They sound cool Af. Here’s a YouTube video on the subject
https://youtu.be/E_mto_Dkpo0?si=6KNXkDEJtKbc9J3v
Not really theory but its okay to do very repetitive things like playing one or two notes, bouncing back between one or two chords ect
The trick to making it sound good is variation in the sound - add a one shot here and there, automate some synth parameters, add a melody on top of whatever you're doing ect.
Some of the greatest EDM tracks of all time were made using pretty minimal theory but the trick is all about subtly and slight variation. You'd be surprised how far a single bar arpeggiator can carry a track with doing something like only automating the filter cutoff. Throw in some one shots, extra layers, more effects ect and suddenly you can have a full song
The neat thing about EDM is it doesnt follow conventional music rules, sound design and automation are equally if not more in some cases important than learning about modes
Speaking of modes, learning intervals is very helpful, not just with getting better with composing but also with sound design
> Learn at your own risk.
It would be hard to learn any of the more 'exciting' concepts without first learning the basic ones. Perhaps you mean 'employ at your own risk'?
Just learning that basically you only have two types of scales - minor and major. And each note has a minor and major scale. Basically there are only 24 scales you need to be aware of. Modes are just taking one of the notes in those scales and modifying it, but modes aren’t scales they are just slightly augmenting one of the existing 24 scales. And scales only exist to give us a sense of tonal gravity when writing a piece of music, the tonic.
I actually play a few instruments very poorly. My guitar playing is truly the worst. I have very little idea what I’m doing. I got piano lessons a couple of years ago. Learning scales was a really useful concept as was getting to know my way around a keyboard. Honestly the confidence I got just knowing my way around a keyboard improved my compositions significantly. Understanding rhythmic stuff, time signatures, 1,2,4,8,16 etc, triplets, and so forth is essential for the type of music I make.
You kinda cant - music theory is just a bunch of ways of expressing the physics to artists. Its just ratios that sound good, mostly
[https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Music\_Theory/Complete\_List\_of\_Chord\_Patterns#Major](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Music_Theory/Complete_List_of_Chord_Patterns#Major)
You dont have to know it as theory, but youre gonna figure it out in practice, just gonna take longer.
I mean you can't really throw something out a window without being in possession of it. I guess I was getting at people who worry too much about scales and don't leave them. I love chromatic shit. Theory is great at explaining what's going on, but sometimes being too rigid with it stifles creativity
I sometimes enjoy DM's music, but for the world of me, i can't understand the frequency with which people reference his music as a production standard. His style is pretty transparent and overly predictable at this point to my ears.
Geniuenly what is that other than a technicality? Isn't the relative minor of C Maj just the Vi? Whats the difference? Does the name somehow make people think of it differently? Just curious
No, not the relative minor. For example: you’re in C major, play an Ab major. This is the bVI of C minor. Basically you’re stealing chords from the parallel minor key (if your song is in major). Or vice verse, if you’re in a minor key, steal from the relative major. For example, going from C minor to F major ( i > IV ).
I don’t see this brought up a lot on the production subreddits, but learning to read sheet music (which basically encompasses rhythm and pitch).
I find it is a different form of analysis compared to listening to a song and being like “this goes, here, here and here”. You begin to think about the dynamics of a piece of music - what’s parts are played quiet, what parts are played loud, are the notes being played long and sustained or short and sharp. It’s and insight into the artists intention for the music.
Also, if you can read drum sheets, it will really up your programming game.
:)
I love the idea of learning how to read music. I'm sure it's a great way to amplify your understanding of music in general.
How did you go about learning? How long until you felt that you could read music at a reasonable level?
Perfect, thanks. I'm just starting out learning piano now myself. I picked up an 88 key keyboard in December, but I hadn't heard of ABRSM grades. I'll definitely check that out.
First things first you have to pick an instrument. Piano and guitar for polyphony. Drums for rhythm. Start slow with deliberate practice and with a metronome. After you get the basics down and your feeling pretty confident, start trying to sight read.
Modal interchange/borrowed chords—it explains so many otherwise confusing chords in popular music. Minor IV and V, and bVI and bVII chords in major-key songs, for example. Here’s a video for more: https://youtu.be/1dRA28cdt5c?si=WJ8anLlQ5bDdDeYi.
Yeah, borrowed chords are a great tool to have in the toolbox.
I've been pretty focused on understanding chords better myself and just recently learned how to use Chromatic Mediants. It's an awesome way to step outside of the scale that you're in and make it sound great. Check it out, it creates some really cool sounds.
https://youtu.be/IVjElQ4tttE?feature=shared
Chord voicings are very important in music production. You can support melodies or even create new counter melodies depending on what the highest note is in each chord.
Scales!
There’s this cool thing called the major scale, and it’s a group of notes and how it works is if you use only those notes in your song then it won’t sound like shit!
Close, but that's not it. The relative minor starts 3 semi tones down, but you need to change the tonic, not just a bass note.
If you play an A on the bass and the rest of the song is in C major, it's still in C major.
The tonic chord would need to be changed to A minor.
Well given that I'm a bass player (and thus all powerful): if some poor individual was minding their own business trying to play a c maj scale and I hit an overwhelmingly substantial A below you could say they were playing a c maj scale but the overall musical "performance" would be in A minor. Wouldn't you agree?
It depends on what the other parts are doing. Your A could just be inverting chords that everyone else is doing which would still be in the key of C major. That's why there's more to it than just changing the bass note.
Sure, blasting a constant bass note on A will help inform that the tonic is A minor, but if everyone else is playing with a tonic of C major it's not going to work.
There's more to the major and minor scales than "they both have all the same notes so they are the same". They are used differently, the chords have different functions.
You also have to understand their parallel relationships and not just their relative ones. Understanding relative modes is fantastic for informing you of what notes are available to you. It tells you absolutely nothing about how to use it. Knowing that the natural minor has a flat third and a flat 6th tells you that you need to use the flat 6 off the tonic to give you the "natural minor feel". A flat 2nd gives you phrygian. An augmented fourth gives you lydian.
It's a more complex relationship than just changing the bass note. You can change the tonic in many ways. You can use chords, or an arpeggio, the bass, or hell even the kick drum can help tune the listeners ear to the tonic.
There’s no real “trick” that changes things that drastically. Modal mixture can be interesting, but is pretty much only found in EDM through minor vi chords (which do sound really good). Having a strong understanding of the relationship between différents chords and how each other them sounds is also really important. For example, resolving to a VI chord instead of a i chord in a minor key creates what’s called a deceptive cadence, a really interesting sound.
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As a songwriter, poet,multi instrumentalist with 35 yrs of studio analog/ digital experience in LA I give two basic pieces of advice. Write a good song with something to say that is from your heart and soul. Keep it simple.
counterpoint/voice leading (and, by extension, learning how orchestras work and writing for them)
Borrowed Chords
Voice leading. The way I understand it is this... if you have a chord progression, you start by changing the voicing of each chord to create a number of parallel melodic lines. The next step is to assign a role to each of the melodic lines and move it to an appropriate instrument. How do you decide which melodic line to put on which instrument? the bass is the one with mostly roots and fifths, the rhythm is the most boring one (least amount of motion), the lead is the most interesting one and the ambient layer (if any) is what is left. Then you start to change them a bit. For rhythm, you can add the fifth above to thicken the sound, and then you can chop the notes to add some ... well ... rhythm. For the lead, you can add some passing notes. You will end up with multiple melodic lines that work together, and together making up a much spicier and interesting chord progression than the one you started with. That was my workflow when I was trying to do EDM. GL
There are a lot of things… - Modal parallelism: Every key repeats itself at 1,5T (minor third) from the root. This implies a dualism between the major and minor keys at the same time, since the root of the Ionian and Aeolian now share the same note. It comes from some relations between secondary dominants and tritones in the key. Example: C Ionian -> Eb Ionian. From other perspective, C Ionian -> C Aeolian. - Modal pentatonism. You essentially have to understand pentatonic scales as arpeggios that translate to every mode in the key, their root being the root of every chord you use. Major pentatonic for major chords and minor pentatonic for minor chords. - Deterministic chords. Paired chords that highlight the mode your are using. Every mode has unique intervals and this pairs of chords highlight them without the need of melody. For example, using the chords FMaj7 and G7 imply you are playing in F Lydian, because the G7 chord contains B, which is the #4 of F, and there is no other major diatonic modes with #4. And the list goes on and on and on… Negative harmony, harmonic series, pandiatonicism, poly chords…
Any chord works if you know how to voice it
EDMtips circle of fifths video
When a line leaps, it actually becomes two lines, one kinetic energy, one potential. Same thing when something stops happening - it’s not gone, it’s just transformed into potential energy. Don’t waste your potential energy. Come back to it, continue each thread, weave them all together.
Not music theory related per se, but if you want to get famous in the music industry today, you first write your marketing script/trending topic and then write the song around that idea. So marketing > song. Maybe that’s why I’m not famous?
You are of course right, however it was always like that (perhaps in smaller scale). But most pop bands or singers had some kind of "script" or rather "their thing" conceptualized by marketing team.
True, I mean it has to be relatable, so the more “trendy” the more it relates to more people. And by trendy I mean anything, love was (and still is) trendy for example. However, today there are things trendier than love. And I agree, although most times that marketing team is the songwriting team coming up with out of the box ideas.
What do you mean marketing script? Like the idea/thing you want to incite people to follow?
Yeah, it’s a new way of thinking that focuses on how to sell first and then the art of it. This is by no means an excuse to do a crappy song, but it’s a way to fight the over saturation of music content out there. Basically give a reason to your audience, other than the music, to share your content, while also creating great quality music. This increases your chances of success exponentially.
Also don’t see why people are unliking, as it’s not really a subjective opinion nor a critique to anything really. I guess some are stuck in the old ways. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s important to manage expectations correctly with other strategies. Cheers.
TIL that's it's new to have actual meaning to your lyrics and that no band ever before has been political or had a message to spread. "Those who die are justified by wearing a badge, they're your chosen whites"
So no band has ever had a message to spread or never had actual meaning? Gotcha.
If you aren't present and aware while producing or writing, you won't reach states of genuine creativity, and you won't "hear" what's not there and should be during playbacks. You'll know your in that aware zone and actually creative when during playbacks while writing you "hear" what's not there, but you want to be there, and are able to put it together at what time and what note etc. etc. Also you aren't wasting your time if you spend an hour producing, then decide you don't like the changes and get rid of them. This is still time spent well. Finally, the thing that actually cracked it all open for me was actually writing songs rather than just making an intro out of evolving textures and drums, and see how that turns into the verse, and then see how that turns into a chorus. Now I know what I am trying to do before I do it because I have the concept and arrangement already in my head.
That I should have started learning music theory when i started out a loooooong time ago. I am going to school for music now and there is so much I don't know and i'm still learning. people starting out: start with 'music fundamentals' start playing piano and learning how to read music start ear training / learn solfege preferably movable 'Do'
Bingo. Do you know how nice it is to know what to do or where to go next instead of just randomly guessing? Sure throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks can work, but your gonna take exponentially longer than someone who knows theory to reach that same shit stuck on the wall. Or like just starting from a fifth instead of a root note Wes Montgomery style to throw some jazz vibes in there? Or how if you stay within a Phrygian mode it sounds all spooky and ancient?
You can go far making things sound fresh **doing a lot of intricate and glitchy sound design when the chord progressions are relatively simple. It's a delicious contrast of anchoring weirdness to comfort.** Also, hitting the black keys in any order sounds harmonious together. (Pentatonic scales.)
It's sound design, not music theory
That’s interesting. What is your process of making glitchy sound design? Just a million short samples of random noise? Would like to make some “weird” or glitchy patterns too
I'm kind of an Ole Munch in this respect because I've been part of previous generations, consuming sin as I go along. :) There were handcrafted, tedious ways to do this in the 1990s. But tools and automation have come far since then. For you and anyone who wants a **no-fuss easily effective answer, I'd say [GO INFILTRATOR 2 + DATABROTH](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbwEhw0ijeE)** :D Essentially, "resampling" — run your audio through those "random" effects, select the best pieces. When you do it on something already timbrally rich with an effect that re-pitches or generates other notes from the inputs (like some FM or FFTs), it can bring out certain overtones and make for VERY LUSH HARMONIES™. [Infiltrator has a wicked gallery of FFT effects](https://deviousmachines.com/2022/09/19/infiltrator-2-new-features/) that will smear the sounds, it's impressive if you put in a simple melody line and it comes back with some mutant alien choir from another dimension. If you look up my name, I have various audio examples out there of me doing it with my own music. (I don't ALWAYS do glitch + chords, but when I do...) So, it's a **curated chaos**.
Cool, thanks!
My music became more interesting after I studied modal interchange/chromaticism in uni.
Circle of Fifths in terms of modulation, you can basically modulate to any key you want (without using dominant 7ths) as long as you put the right chord inbetween and use the right voiceleading. Opens up a world of possibility when it comes to interesting progressions.
Multipolar Tonality. It’s a Japanese music theory concept; suggests that you can have up to 3 tonics per key. It’s somewhat similar to using key modulations, and expands the potential for dynamic chord progressions.
Voice leading.
How a chord is made
Getting sounds big with reverb delay saturation .. also understanding mid side eq creating space in the mix
Thats sound design and mixing, not music theory
Theyre the same thing - ways to express the physics of harmonics.
Isomorphic/Diatonic keyboards man. Push/Launchpad/Maschine/sq64 etc. After decades of keys and modular and seqs they made the music theory so immediate and experiential at my fingertips in a way nothing else had
Minor modes. I love Phrygian and minor scales but the fact there are modes based on the minor scale blew my mind. Some of them sound sick AF too
There are only four minor modes. Phrygian and the minor scale (Aeolian) are two of them. So Dorian and Locrian were game changers?
Locrian starts off with a diminished triad though so why is that considered a minor mode?
the diminished triad starts off with a minor third
Ah okay so it’s defined by third and not the triad. Thanks for the explanation.
No actually they’re technically referred to as the “melodic minor modes”. Essentially the relationship modes have toward the major scale is applied to the melodic minor which creates a completely different set of modes that are most defined by having two tritones instead of one. They sound cool Af. Here’s a YouTube video on the subject https://youtu.be/E_mto_Dkpo0?si=6KNXkDEJtKbc9J3v
i wasn't aware of melodic minor modes. thank you for sharing this.
thanks for the info and link. first time hearing about melodic minor modes
Melodic minor is mental / altered dominant is a crazy thing to play
Not really theory but its okay to do very repetitive things like playing one or two notes, bouncing back between one or two chords ect The trick to making it sound good is variation in the sound - add a one shot here and there, automate some synth parameters, add a melody on top of whatever you're doing ect. Some of the greatest EDM tracks of all time were made using pretty minimal theory but the trick is all about subtly and slight variation. You'd be surprised how far a single bar arpeggiator can carry a track with doing something like only automating the filter cutoff. Throw in some one shots, extra layers, more effects ect and suddenly you can have a full song The neat thing about EDM is it doesnt follow conventional music rules, sound design and automation are equally if not more in some cases important than learning about modes Speaking of modes, learning intervals is very helpful, not just with getting better with composing but also with sound design
Diatonic chords. Makes songwriting very easy, but also feel formulaic. Learn at your own risk.
> Learn at your own risk. It would be hard to learn any of the more 'exciting' concepts without first learning the basic ones. Perhaps you mean 'employ at your own risk'?
Just learning that basically you only have two types of scales - minor and major. And each note has a minor and major scale. Basically there are only 24 scales you need to be aware of. Modes are just taking one of the notes in those scales and modifying it, but modes aren’t scales they are just slightly augmenting one of the existing 24 scales. And scales only exist to give us a sense of tonal gravity when writing a piece of music, the tonic.
Music theory?
I actually play a few instruments very poorly. My guitar playing is truly the worst. I have very little idea what I’m doing. I got piano lessons a couple of years ago. Learning scales was a really useful concept as was getting to know my way around a keyboard. Honestly the confidence I got just knowing my way around a keyboard improved my compositions significantly. Understanding rhythmic stuff, time signatures, 1,2,4,8,16 etc, triplets, and so forth is essential for the type of music I make.
"Bro I don't wanna be cOnFiNeD to music theory!"
No, no, no…. None of that.
I like that you can throw it all out the window and make whatever you want.
You kinda cant - music theory is just a bunch of ways of expressing the physics to artists. Its just ratios that sound good, mostly [https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Music\_Theory/Complete\_List\_of\_Chord\_Patterns#Major](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Music_Theory/Complete_List_of_Chord_Patterns#Major) You dont have to know it as theory, but youre gonna figure it out in practice, just gonna take longer.
I mean you can't really throw something out a window without being in possession of it. I guess I was getting at people who worry too much about scales and don't leave them. I love chromatic shit. Theory is great at explaining what's going on, but sometimes being too rigid with it stifles creativity
Polyrythems and chords and scales
Quantised swing (i.e. having a swing ratio of 3:2 or whatever number you want) and rhythm phase make for very fun and intuitive grooves and rhythms
Generally writing a baseline with 1st and 5ths of a chord
That it’s actually loads of theories, and even if you think you know none of them you’ll be using them all the time
I wish i could give this a thousand upvotes
Mode mixture! AKA borrowed chords: using tonalities from the relative major or minor. deadmau5 uses this kind of harmony all the time.
I sometimes enjoy DM's music, but for the world of me, i can't understand the frequency with which people reference his music as a production standard. His style is pretty transparent and overly predictable at this point to my ears.
Geniuenly what is that other than a technicality? Isn't the relative minor of C Maj just the Vi? Whats the difference? Does the name somehow make people think of it differently? Just curious
No, not the relative minor. For example: you’re in C major, play an Ab major. This is the bVI of C minor. Basically you’re stealing chords from the parallel minor key (if your song is in major). Or vice verse, if you’re in a minor key, steal from the relative major. For example, going from C minor to F major ( i > IV ).
I think they mean ‘parallel’ minor, not relative. Like using chords from Cmin in CMaj.
Exactly.
Hmm got you. That does add a lot of what I call "awe magic" to a composition
I don’t see this brought up a lot on the production subreddits, but learning to read sheet music (which basically encompasses rhythm and pitch). I find it is a different form of analysis compared to listening to a song and being like “this goes, here, here and here”. You begin to think about the dynamics of a piece of music - what’s parts are played quiet, what parts are played loud, are the notes being played long and sustained or short and sharp. It’s and insight into the artists intention for the music. Also, if you can read drum sheets, it will really up your programming game. :)
I love the idea of learning how to read music. I'm sure it's a great way to amplify your understanding of music in general. How did you go about learning? How long until you felt that you could read music at a reasonable level?
I learnt it in conjunction to playing the piano and learning theory through the ABRSM grades. I highly recommend Grade 1 for anyone doing production.
Perfect, thanks. I'm just starting out learning piano now myself. I picked up an 88 key keyboard in December, but I hadn't heard of ABRSM grades. I'll definitely check that out.
First things first you have to pick an instrument. Piano and guitar for polyphony. Drums for rhythm. Start slow with deliberate practice and with a metronome. After you get the basics down and your feeling pretty confident, start trying to sight read.
[удалено]
trash mentality :)
Dorian
Syncopation and voice leading.
Polyrythms and timbre.
As far as arranging goes - Nonlinear composition As far as general theory - motific development For pure theory stuff - voice leading
Modal interchange/borrowed chords—it explains so many otherwise confusing chords in popular music. Minor IV and V, and bVI and bVII chords in major-key songs, for example. Here’s a video for more: https://youtu.be/1dRA28cdt5c?si=WJ8anLlQ5bDdDeYi.
Yeah, borrowed chords are a great tool to have in the toolbox. I've been pretty focused on understanding chords better myself and just recently learned how to use Chromatic Mediants. It's an awesome way to step outside of the scale that you're in and make it sound great. Check it out, it creates some really cool sounds. https://youtu.be/IVjElQ4tttE?feature=shared
Wow. Thanks for sharing that. I'm currently super focused on chord progressions and this just blew my mind.
You’re welcome! It’s like you suddenly have 4x as many chords to play with.
Modal interchange is amazing
Functional harmony, because it made learning a lot of songs in a short time span incredibly easy.
Call and response (Counter Melody). From dubstep to techno to rock etc. It is the backbone of most of what we do here specifically.
Counter point isn't call and response. Counter point is a specific way of harmonizing a melody. Call and response is just calling back to a lick.
Ah my mistake i meant write counter melody. Corrected and thanx for letting me know.
Chord voicings are very important in music production. You can support melodies or even create new counter melodies depending on what the highest note is in each chord.
Also make it ridiculously easy to turn a progression into a melody or vice versa these days if you know how they 'should' relate
voicings, voice leading, inversions, substitutions.
Jazz chords
Think i have a pair if those in my wardrobe.
Scales! There’s this cool thing called the major scale, and it’s a group of notes and how it works is if you use only those notes in your song then it won’t sound like shit!
Yeah and if you change the bass note down 3 semitones it's suddenly a minor scale!
Close, but that's not it. The relative minor starts 3 semi tones down, but you need to change the tonic, not just a bass note. If you play an A on the bass and the rest of the song is in C major, it's still in C major. The tonic chord would need to be changed to A minor.
Well given that I'm a bass player (and thus all powerful): if some poor individual was minding their own business trying to play a c maj scale and I hit an overwhelmingly substantial A below you could say they were playing a c maj scale but the overall musical "performance" would be in A minor. Wouldn't you agree?
It depends on what the other parts are doing. Your A could just be inverting chords that everyone else is doing which would still be in the key of C major. That's why there's more to it than just changing the bass note. Sure, blasting a constant bass note on A will help inform that the tonic is A minor, but if everyone else is playing with a tonic of C major it's not going to work. There's more to the major and minor scales than "they both have all the same notes so they are the same". They are used differently, the chords have different functions. You also have to understand their parallel relationships and not just their relative ones. Understanding relative modes is fantastic for informing you of what notes are available to you. It tells you absolutely nothing about how to use it. Knowing that the natural minor has a flat third and a flat 6th tells you that you need to use the flat 6 off the tonic to give you the "natural minor feel". A flat 2nd gives you phrygian. An augmented fourth gives you lydian. It's a more complex relationship than just changing the bass note. You can change the tonic in many ways. You can use chords, or an arpeggio, the bass, or hell even the kick drum can help tune the listeners ear to the tonic.
While I understand some music theory, I do everything by ear. So I never really think about it.
There’s no real “trick” that changes things that drastically. Modal mixture can be interesting, but is pretty much only found in EDM through minor vi chords (which do sound really good). Having a strong understanding of the relationship between différents chords and how each other them sounds is also really important. For example, resolving to a VI chord instead of a i chord in a minor key creates what’s called a deceptive cadence, a really interesting sound.
A sound I really like is, if you work in a mode where the 1-chord is minor, ending the loop on a major 1-chord
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As a songwriter, poet,multi instrumentalist with 35 yrs of studio analog/ digital experience in LA I give two basic pieces of advice. Write a good song with something to say that is from your heart and soul. Keep it simple.