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krispy wrote:I don't even know what the different musical notes mean, what difference does it make when you use what note and where?

I don't understand scales or anything like that... When someone is saying they did something in C# that means nothing to me! So what if you did it in a certain note because I don't have a clue how that affects anything.

I wish I had a better understanding of musical theory, chords etc...

These questions can be answered both simply and/or with great complexity...

For instance - a lot of harmonic movement (ie - which chords to follow other chords) come from hundreds of years of tradition. It doesn't mean it is a hard & fast RULE... it is just reflects the taste over hundreds of years. So while certain types of chord progressions are in no way required, the reason why people still use them hundreds of years later, is because they still sound good to our ears today.

I really wish I had the time to write my tutorial, but I really am swamped these days... and will be for a long time. However, to get you started, I would not worry about chords & keys for right now, but rather single notes & intervals. I might have time to write a mini tutorial on intervals later tonight if my exporting takes a long time.

wirez wrote:

krispy wrote:I don't even know what the different musical notes mean, what difference does it make when you use what note and where?

I don't understand scales or anything like that... When someone is saying they did something in C# that means nothing to me! So what if you did it in a certain note because I don't have a clue how that affects anything.

I wish I had a better understanding of musical theory, chords etc...

Hhmm I can see how this could confuse you actually! I'll do my best to explain it but if I'm not clear enough, I'm sure others can pick up where I left off

When people say they're writing music in a certain key (not note, key) for example C#, this means they're writing in the scale C# major. - But I figure this means very little to you also!

A scale is a group of intervals between each notes over an octave. Intervals are the gaps between notes defined by tones or semi tones (or whole and half tones respectively if you're American) for example C to C# is one semitone and C to D is one tone.

The major scale is made up of these intervals. (T representing tone, S representing semitone)

T-T-S-T-T-T-S

Now if you look at your piano keyboard you will see that making these jumps consecutively starting on the C note, you will hit all of the white notes and no black ones! This is the C major scale.

Now if you do the same starting with another note, you will get the major scale for that note you started with!

Just remember for a tone, you move up 2 notes at a time (including black and white) and for a semi tone you move up 1 note (including black and white notes, again)!

When you learn all of your major scales, you will need to learn the intervals between notes on other scales, not to feed too much information at once but the natural minor scale has intervals T-S-T-T-S-T-T. (If you looked hard enough you will see that it is the major scale 'pushed along' slightly, this is because all major scales have relative minors!)

Confusing I know, but keep reading it and you'll get it eventually!

THank you for that bit of musical effort up there, I do understand what you mean! I guess I learnt something today

Mad EP wrote:

krispy wrote:I don't even know what the different musical notes mean, what difference does it make when you use what note and where?

I don't understand scales or anything like that... When someone is saying they did something in C# that means nothing to me! So what if you did it in a certain note because I don't have a clue how that affects anything.

I wish I had a better understanding of musical theory, chords etc...

These questions can be answered both simply and/or with great complexity...

For instance - a lot of harmonic movement (ie - which chords to follow other chords) come from hundreds of years of tradition. It doesn't mean it is a hard & fast RULE... it is just reflects the taste over hundreds of years. So while certain types of chord progressions are in no way required, the reason why people still use them hundreds of years later, is because they still sound good to our ears today.

I really wish I had the time to write my tutorial, but I really am swamped these days... and will be for a long time. However, to get you started, I would not worry about chords & keys for right now, but rather single notes & intervals. I might have time to write a mini tutorial on intervals later tonight if my exporting takes a long time.

I'm sure I already did :/

jolly wailer wrote:key changes are almost a total mystery

key changes are almost definitely a total shit way of repeating something without doing any more work


the biggest struggle is writing in minor keys to sound invigorating or mystical, while still maintaining some sort of progression that isnt just droning the root note or severely depressing

IMO a lot of this deep music theory is not relevant to most dance orientated music (I'm not saying it shouldn't be learnt, it's all amazing stuff, and if you want to look outside the genres then it will be incredibly useful plus making you a better all round musician, and Bach and Mozart and everything is amazing) but if you pick most of the songs that you love it will (in general) be no more than about 4 different notes for the bass line plus a couple of chords that tie the bass to the melody/pads etc. repeated, with tone varying mostly, and the drumming, effects, processing, giving life to what would generally sound quite boring on a piano. Most of this can be discovered through experimentation in your DAW.

What I'm saying is by no means hard and fast, please prove me wrong with some amazing music

Personally, I think drums are both amazingly simple but amazingly hard to get right - finding the part that just *fits* is so difficult - and I'm gonna go extract Kryptic Minds rhythm part of his brain...

changing scales naturally is something i struggle with a lot, and changing key effectively without needing to resolve back to the last one.

i also would like to be more proficient at actually playing the piano, but thats more down to practice (or lack of) than anything else i guess.

gravity wrote:i also would like to be more proficient at actually playing the piano, but thats more down to practice (or lack of) than anything else i guess.

Absolutely 2nd this one!

i wish i knw hw to mke dastick bas

Arrangement and Instrumentation, I can't figure how to structure my tracks and having enough stuff playing at once without it sounding cluttered, I never have enough going on (imo) and then when I add something there's suddenly too much going on.

Oh and I have little to no grasp of how time sigs affect music, really it just seems confusing and unnecessary to me

I cant play a single instrument

really i cant.
But i can knock a nice melodic track out. I know what sounds right, and my music theory is ok... but literally cant play an instrument. not even piano or guitar.

Makes me sad

back2onett wrote:Arrangement and Instrumentation, I can't figure how to structure my tracks and having enough stuff playing at once without it sounding cluttered, I never have enough going on (imo) and then when I add something there's suddenly too much going on.

Oh and I have little to no grasp of how time sigs affect music, really it just seems confusing and unnecessary to me

yeah id love to see some1 or a collective offer ideas on arrangement especially...experimenting with different arrangement ideas how they effect the feel of a track...and the building of instrumentation as well as like good stages in the track to introduce more challenging chord progressions over keeping it simple...for overall effect...i suppose i should really go through my library and get out a pen and paper. Also if some1 could point me in the direction of a solid music theory book it would be much appreciated im not a total novice and i like something really thorough...bit of a one stop shop for all my questions.

wish i knew more about drum programming, syncopation, etc....

I started with music by playing bass in bands, picked up some guitar along the way, got into synths and programming eventually leading to production and djing. Everything I know is self taught but I know practically nothing on music theory, espicially chords and scales, I'd love to expand my knowledge because sometimes when I write something, it's just me experimenting until I get something good, but I don't actually understand the theory behind it all

I did musical theory for 4 years but I don't have the balls/creativity to produce.

Wirez- that explanation of scales has just instantly helped me to understand so much more thank you

If you have a grasp on the concept of a key, chords (and their notation I, IV, vi etc...) a good way to get a deeper understanding of progressions, structure, and just the idea of tonality is to read Alan W. Pollack's Notes on.... series. He's basically done a fairly comprehensive analysis of every Beatles song. So if you're a fan of the Beatles, it really helps to follow along with his analysis, while listening to the songs and perhaps playing along with a generic piano patch or something.

http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DAT ... s_on.shtml

It's probably more appropriate if you wanna write pop songs, but if you're interested in this sort of thing, it's worthwhile.

With regards to progression/arrangement I think a big part of it is how you do it, not just what the song changes into. Little fills, lead ups, risers, drop outs, FX hits, fading the next melody in slowly over the last four bars, reversing the old melody for the last bar, all these things make the brain go oh shit there is going to be a change what will happen next. Then when something comes in the listener is ready. But, still hard as to make the next part. Struggle with making it the same song but the next bit in it - all of the tracks of my favourite artists seem to have a direction, like they knew where they were going and aimed at it. Mine seem to wander a bit. Argh just hard work and practice I guess.

I saw some posts about key changes and people saying they didn't get them. So ima just throw out some basics for people.

Easiest way to move to a new key is to know before hand that that is what you want to do. If you're writing a track and you've got a 32 bar loop and you decide to change key after having written your 32 bar loop it'll be much harder to do it than it would be if you had decided you wanted a key change before hand. Deciding before hand gives you a chance to write a 32 bar phrase that will move gently into a new key, rather than awkwardly forcing its way into a new one.

One of the most standard key changes is moving to the 5th of whatever key you're in. In C Major this is moving to G. Personally I'm not a fan of moving to the 5th. But it's a strong key change.

Problems you might find that arise in doing this will probably be the large jump that will immediately hit you when you enter G major. You'll feel like "wtf, that melody just went way up out of nowhere". Using chord inversions to keep everything around the same octave will help reduce that feeling greatly.

Another simple and really commonly used key change is moving to the minor third of whatever major you're in (if you're not sure what the minor third is, just count down 3 semitones from your root note, so the minor third of C would be A) This one's used a lot in breakdowns. The thing about key changes is you need to know where to put them really. The hardest part about moving to a new key is knowing when to do it and for how long to keep it up.

Equally if you're in a minor key you can move to the major third. So the major third of A would be C (just count up 3 semitones)

Making a key change actually work a lot of the time is based on not over using it, you need the majority of your track to sit on the root, you only want a brief deviation to a new key but equally if you don't stay in your new key long enough it will sound out of place. So you have to use your ear to decide really.

Also moving from the root to the 4th is used sometimes to create an airy feeling. I really like that key change.

Anyway, I'd go more in depth but I don't really use key changes often enough to be able to give any really good advice on them.

kaori just broke down alot of great ideas. try 'em out w/ basslines against melodies-- see how things change in texture. if you always had the bassline just playing the root, try pushing it up to the 4th or 5th every 4th bar-- see what it does.

alot of this comes down to taste--like, Kaori, from what you're describing, I know the B in Gmaj would drive me NUTS unless i had some sort of maj7 thing happening in the melody, which i rarely like. and if i'm working in a minor key, jumping up to the major 3rd is always way to obvious a shift in tonality for me.. but i hear tunes that do it well all the time. just not a movement i gravitate to.

I'm really interested in the fact that there's very few replies about rhythm here.

I practice dancing to a tune while i work on it, to make sure you can get down to it. Is that what you mean by rhythm?

I have a specific question re chords:
Having only used arp melodies so far, chord progressions are easy to maintain through all the instruments. So far I have only been using the chords (diminished, minor 7th etc.) of the root note.
But if your hook was chorded, do you actually play the chords of the different keys in the scale? eg. in E minor the II would be the F minor 5th chord? IE F#, A, C# i think it is


Can anyone shed some light please?