yeah definitely useful i try with other genres too i try to dabble in many as i can but dubstep i find easier because its more simple, even though its my favourite genre.
i’m going to mess around with just piano to see what i can do personally so i understand better
Yeah, the composing part is more about structure, I usually do it with some placeholder sound first, to develop the (musical) idea. Then sound design. It doesn’t matter how good your sound design skills are, if the musical idea in itself sucks.
I recommend to try to compose at least 8 bars of variations of a theme, then you already have enough material for a full song.
i usually start with drums lol yeah i feel like thats next step for me thanks for advice and help. this is what i working on few hours ago bit complex but i think it works?
its G hirajoshi
its like that medieval song you got i wanted to do that few years ago but gave up on it due too not enough knowledge. maybe one day
That clip sounds great dude. Don’t be afraid to stay on one pattern / theme for longer, then switch it up after like 8 bars or so. Make the listener familiar with it. The silence is also part of the music. Patience etc. You could simplify that theme a lot, for an intro or outro, then go into that main synth riff. Also, you can let things stretch out over several bars instead of looping it too fast, the rhythm of the theme becomes much more interesting then. Repetition is good, but the part you’re repeating should not be too short, imo.
With that said, here’s a pretty short melodic loop I made, which loops after 36 steps. With added drums, it sounds pretty repetitive immediately.
But if you add drums that loop in 4/4, and a bassline that takes much longer before it loops back, you kinda change the harmonic context of the melody notes, making it much less repetitive, even if it’s exactly the same pattern.
I made these more as a proof of concept of a polymeter, that is when the meters / bars loop unevenly, since they overlap, and don’t loop back at the same time each time. You probably know about this concept.
That one was also an exercise for myself, just sticking to one key and roll with it. Not made for the purpose of “making a song”, but for learning how to work within the set boundaries.
yeah polymeter i’ve never heard of the term but i have been sub consciously doing this alot for ages. but sometimes i do use the wrong note and after a while im not sure if i like it or not because im worried if my ears have got used too it lol but i dont listen too it for another 8 hours or so then my ears have reset.
my basslines are usually 8bars rarely 16 i’ll keep that in mind and do longer bass sections if the style suits it.
yeah i am guilty of looping stuff too short, you’re like a musical guru lol. i’ll be sure too keep this in mind and be conscious of it. brilliant stuff
I would not call myself a guru lol, but I’ll take the compliment. I’m a musician primarily, producer and DJ in addition to that. I can play piano/keys, perc, bass and drums on a bit-over-amateur level, but my main instrument is definitely the guitar. My sense of relative pitch is very high, so I can usually just pick up almost any instrument and play along to things more or less instantly. That’s kinda my main skill.
I’ve always been very interested in music in general, so I’ve spent the last few years deep-diving into the (Western) theory side of things. Advanced jazz harmony, complex rhythm programming, and also lately, microtonal / polychromatic / xenharmonic stuff. I’m far from an expert, but a lot of concepts has started making a lot more sense lately.
It’s very easy to get discouraged and feel like you’re “stuck”, but I’ve found it’s mostly because it’s hard to know what parts of the theory to look at, and in which order. You can basically go as deep and far out as you want. There really is no “end goal” with music, you can always get better at things, regardless of what level you’re at.
It’s also important to remember that a lot of the modern Western theory is descriptive, in the sense that it was structured after musicians had already played it, as a way to try to explain things academically, primarily to other musicians. You can of course also use the theory stuff in a prescriptive way, as a kind of recipe. This is useful if you want to score films, video games, or work with more “commercial” music, for advertisements or similar things. A lot of this part of the “business” will probably be outsourced to AI & machine learning algoritms pretty soon though, because most of it is so incredibly formulaic, and the bar for creativity is very low.
@Sac Here’s another nice video, covering how to inverse simple triads, and add some bonus spice.
When he talks about “chord functions”, he means how the chords would function in a progression along with other chords within the key. This is where chord symbols and Roman numerals come in. Every scale/key (the terms are basically interchangeable) has a number of chords associated with it, labeled 1 through 7; these are the scale degrees. Each of these has a specific function within the scale, and are called a bunch of different names. Here’s a chart for the C major scale.
Here, you can also see the Roman numerals (at the bottom) associated with the different degrees of the scale. It might seem confusing, but it’s actually pretty logical. The capitalised letters mean that the triad is a major one, and the lowercase ones indicate that the triad is a minor one. The last one with the small circle, vii°, indicates a minor triad, that is also diminished. Diminished chords sound “unresolved” and can be used to create tension in a progression. The reason it’s called the “leading tone” is because it resolves nicely back to the tonic, or 1 chord. Every major key will have the same Roman numerals, regardless of which key you’re in, and the functions within a chord progression remains the same. This is a bit more advanced stuff, since you of course have to know how to create the chords, but it’s incredibly useful for musicians who know this, because then, you can write down a whole chord progression for a song, without specifying the key. You’ve probably heard a “2-5-1” progression being mentioned, a common thing in jazz music; this is what they’re refering to.
There are a bunch of other symbols you can add too, to specify which type of chord you mean, if it’s not a regular major or minor triad.
Here’s a list of a few common chord progressions, with their associated Roman numerals.
And here’s a list of songs that use the I–V–vi–IV progression, one of the most common ones in pop music. Some of the songs modify this progression slightly (mainly by starting at a different position in it), as indicated in the chart, but they still mostly sound the same. So, people saying that “all pop music sounds the same” are not very far off from the truth.
I’m sorry for the onslaught of information, but here’s another wall of text.
I haven’t really gone into it in this thread yet, but the whole Western system and its 12 notes, is explained by the Circle of (Fourths and) Fifths. It is really the basis of everything mentioned above, and I should probably have started with this. One of my personal goals is to be able to memorise it, to be able to draw it out on paper at any time for reference, but I’m not really that skilled yet. I work most things out by ear, and I haven’t spent much time trying to learn how to read or write sheet music, because it’s not really a useful skill, unless you want to play music others have written, or want to write music for others to play.
It is constructed by starting with a note (it’s all based around the note C), then stacking 5th intervals until you get back to the same note again, or stacking 4th intervals until you get back to the same starting note. You end up with the same notes (12 in total) either way, but in different order. The notes you end up with are all the 12 chromatic notes we use in the Western system, but spread out over several octaves.
Here is an audio example I made. The first ascending line is the stacked 5th intervals, going from C (octave 0) to C (octave 7). The last C is hard to hear. It then descends using only Cs back to the low C.
The second ascending line is doing the same thing, but instead of going up in 5th intervals, it uses 4th intervals. It also descends in Cs afterwards.
The last ascending line is all the 12 chromatic notes included in one octave, starting from C (octave 1).
Here is the circle. It describes more or less everything about the system, and it is really mind-blowingly logical, once you grasp the basic concept. As you can see, it corresponds to my screenshot above; going clockwise, you get the notes that are separated by 5ths, where going counter-clockwise, you get the notes separated by 4ths.
I should make more use of it than I have, but as I’ve mentioned above, I do things more by ear, so I don’t care which notes are written as flats (b) or sharps (#). Though, if I want to actually write down correct notation for someone else to play, this becomes important.
I will elaborate a bit further on this later.
So buy the dip?
its ok man i find it interesting and very useful i havent read it yet im quite busy today will definitely later
this is going to take me a while to get my head around i watched a few videos yesterday on circle of fifths and have known about it for a while and the roman numerals but i truly dont understand it yet. ive read this but it hasnt sunk in i figure because its 6am for me lol. i will re read what you posted and learn about it later today more in depth.
just a quick loop i made excercising what ive learnt so far nothing special just an excercise, but improving. but maybe increase the length of the bass loop which i forgot too do
Thread should be stickied tbh
Yeah, might make it easier to find for people interested in the topic. I plan on making more posts, with more explanations of concepts.
Waiting for this in the mail, it’s an academic book covering most of the techniques used in 20th century music composition (at least the first half of the century). Widely used in music education on higher levels.
I have Schoenberg’s “Theory”. Dude’s a curmudgeon.
This was kinda funny.
The single thread I’m actually serious in, smh…
