How To Use Music Theory To Help You Make Better Electronic Music
As an electronic musician, it's important to be able to create and perfect the sounds you create. Creating unique synth patches, shaping and sequencing unique beats, layering, mixing and balancing track elements are essential things to add to your arc. But these skills are of little use if they are not applied to a good song. No matter what genre you work in, the success of your track depends on the quality of the original idea.
Working with beats and being a great sound designer is great, but you need to know how these elements come together to make a great track. Understand how notes, melodies, and bass lines come together and how a central melody engages the listener.
At the most basic level, all songs boil down to a "melody," a series of notes played in sequence. When several of these notes are played simultaneously, a chord is formed. Sequencing chords creates a progression, layering melodies and basslines creates a song. Some songs may be four chords repeated in a loop, others are complex sequences that never repeat, but if chord after chord follows, it all becomes music.
Many electronic musicians routinely experiment with complex musical concepts without fully exploring the theory behind them.
This is all basic music theory, and of course music theory can be more complicated than that. As an electronic musician, how deep to go is debatable. The best dance, pop, and rock music is created by self-taught musicians with limited knowledge of the theory behind their work. For example, you can create melodies or songs based on sounds that catch your ear without realizing which key you're playing or why certain combinations work and others don't.
Many electronic musicians routinely experiment with more complex musical concepts like microtonality or polyrhythm without fully exploring the theory behind them (or realizing they're doing so).
Of course, rules are made to be broken, and there are many amazing atmospheric, minimalist, generic electronic tracks that rely solely on textures and modulations to evoke emotion, as well as the use of certain conventions. Music descriptions. Following the "rules" of music does not always result in a good song, and vice versa. However, when you put what you're hearing and doing into the framework of music theory, you gain a valuable new perspective on whether you're creating three-minute pop songs or fifteen-minute monotonous ambient textures.
Why are keys important?
Choosing the right key is often overlooked when making music, but it can have a huge impact on your track. why? Well, first of all, the key of your song sets the overall feel and mood. If you have a problem or make a change for efficiency, the happy melody can be dark or vice versa and you will never be able to digest it for some reason, it will never be right.
Also note that there is some bass, and if you focus on it, you'll "hear" it more than "hear" it. For example, G has a lot of drum and bass music.
Fortunately, modern manufacturing facilities make it incredibly easy to experiment with different switches
Each key has its own character and feel. D major (for example) is completely different from A major. More offers to follow. Second, different singers and instruments are better in certain keys and registers. Pressing a key too high or too low on a keyboard will affect your pitch range. Similarly, filters or oscillators in synthesizers often respond to different frequencies at different frequencies, so turning the volume of a track up or down can dramatically change the sound of the instrument.
Fortunately, modern manufacturing facilities make it incredibly easy to experiment with different switches. Many series, both hardware and software, offer a conversion tool that lets you transfer melodies and progressions to different keys, but many DAWs include MIDI tools, which means you'll be fine. The base you're working on might be worth trying out a few options quickly just for practice.
Major and minor chords
Chords are, as they say, notes played together. These are note stacks of notes taken from the key (or "scale") of your track. They also act as an important "harmonic glue" by providing the structure that binds your bass and lead elements together. Think of bass and beats as the main unifying force of music, melody lines as the icing on the cake, and harmonies as the body and soul of your music.
You are probably familiar with major and minor chords. Each of the major chords has a different tonal quality that makes them more "happy" and therefore ideal for upbeat, upbeat, upbeat tunes, but minor chords are best when you want something softer or minimal.
The transition from major to minor chords is one of the most powerful harmonic tools you can use
As a general rule, three note chords are defined as major or minor chords starting from the middle note of the chord. You can tell if the chord is major or minor when the middle note of a three-part chord is four notes higher than the root (ie, the lowest note). But if the middle note is three notes above the root, it's a minor chord.
Take the G major chord (GBD) for example. Press these keys and you will hear a strong, resonant and powerful chord. Now move the middle note one key from Bb to Bb to make G minor. It's just a tonal change, but a completely different vibe.
The transition from major to minor chords is one of the most powerful harmonic tools you can use and helps take the listener on a fun journey. Try holding any three-note chord and then move one finger at a time. Modules between major and minor chords on demand.
Edit the writing guide
What would you like to do for the melody of your next song? What should the listener feel? Euphoria? sad Feeling impatient? Compassion? Should I help the listener fall in love? Or do you want it to have a different quality?
Since this is a broad topic, we're going to start being a little more tactical with the notes we write to create a greater emotional arc for our melodies. Because that's the tune. A song that encourages the listener to feel the emotions they want to touch. The melodies we forget leave us untouched; We stop to listen to them again and again because we want to relive the emotions they evoke.
In general, great music requires tension and relaxation
But how this process works isn't an exact science, and it's true that one person's great melodic idea will trump another's, which is why most of us are still writing new music. Despite all the tunes that have come before, there are still plenty of tunes that haven't been recorded yet.
The quickest way to create a melody or chorus is to simply look at the notes in the chord progression to keep your melody (or baseline) dynamic. You can use top notes in chord progressions as well as notes in three or four part form to create your own melody.
In general, great music requires tension and relaxation. Tension builds when the melody line plays with the harmony in a way that creates a "shocking" musical moment. Salvation occurs when the moment melts and the rhythm changes to maintain harmony, or vice versa. Melodies that only use the notes of backing vocals often lack musical depth, and it is often difficult to connect or interpret human emotions with "watery" and often unresolvable melodies.
We hope that some of the examples we will consider in the instructions below will help you balance these terms...
Violation of the terms of the contract
For every key you can play, there is a set of "expected" chords that sound "correct". Sometimes breaking that expectation leads to an unforgettable song.
In the first step of the guide below, we explored the C minor scale and noted all the harmonic chords associated with each root.
If you use one of the bass notes and write a melody using the harmonic accompaniment next to that note, you are writing a melody that "makes perfect sense to the music." But it might just be the catchiest tune in the world. For the third clip, we changed the fourth chord to F major instead of bold F minor (as in step 1) and changed the background note to A.
In C minor, it gives the scale (lowest note) of each chord and the corresponding "third" note. If you write a harmony using one of these bass notes and a melody line from the notes above, you'll find that you can't go far wrong.
This tune is a good example. We call this a "safe tune" because all the minor notes and chords come from variations listed on the first step chord. The song is a bit bland and unremarkable. Very comfortable and somewhat predictable.
Here we go one step further. Most of the chords are from the chosen collection, but our chosen chord is the one playing the F bass to bend and change the "guess" G# above to A major. A sudden agreement creates a "surge".
Power of inversions and chords
By transposing notes in a chord, you can "dub" them to add punch to a track.
We wanted to write a euphoric synth sequence that felt like a real elevator, and we had some chords with potential: Minor, J major, C major, D minor, C major, F major. Here the individual chords are listed one by one.
There is still no rhythm in the sequence, which does not help the feeling, but the "dropping" of some chords in the voice also causes a loss of energy. Look at the second chord after the first. As we play the "G" in the second chord bass, all three notes are raised.
By tuning the notes, we can invert the second chord. This will still be a G major chord, but if we put the higher note in the bass, we'll create an inversion. An inversion occurs when the root changes to a note other than that chord.
This allows us to play again and pick up the remaining notes of the chord and then the notes of the C major chord. We can do the same with the second three chords so that the C major chord in line 6 is inverted so that it is E in the bass.
Now we can add a "thrill" to the rhythm to emphasize the upward movement. We record each note to create the same sync pattern on each line. This allows you to better hear the impact of each noise.
Let's add the trap and base classes. In the first clip, we only play the "root" versions of each chord. Although the synth sequence continues to rise, it "falls down" in the bass and snare sections. We can reinforce the upward movement by repeating the upward movement to two new tools (the second clip).
Use pass notes to create bass lines
While in theory different notes can underlie each chord in your track, in most cases the root of your chorus or another note directly related to that root will sound more "comfortable". In other words, if your title is G minor, the bass note playing the G note will play below the "root" chord, and even Bb or D might work perfectly.
When you have the chance to add color between chords using passing notes, it's worth checking that your baseline is rich enough for that extra color.
This is where it gets tricky because sometimes other notes can be effective too, especially when you want to write a bass line that flows from chord to chord. Let's say the second chord in your track is an E flat major chord. When the bass note descends from G to Eb to reflect this change, you'll find the middle note of F (also known as the transition note) musical and natural, helping to emphasize the lowering of the bass peak.
Of course, this doesn't exactly correspond to an FG or Eb chord, so neither chord is directly "proportional". That's not to say it doesn't sound good, it's not that surprising since many genres of music rely on amazing harmonies instead of hitting every chord over and over again.
When you have the chance to add color between chords using passing notes, it's worth checking that your baseline is rich enough for that extra color. The notes may not always work, but when they do, they sound musical and thoughtful. But as always, don't be afraid to try. Skipping notes is one way to add melodic interest to your composition, but don't be afraid to try other things. There are no fixed rules. If you like it, go for it.
Works with music blocks
Delaying the resolution of notes in rhythms creates a powerful musical technique we call blocking.
We start with a simple melody. We're in C minor, and the bass line descends as the melody rises three bars. Both fall to the last rope. Then the bass moves from C to B and Ab to G in the last bar.
There is no tension in the melody because each phrase of the melody is "absolutely" resolved on each beat. Then the melody is B over D (the B chord part) and Ab over Eb, and so on.
We extend the length of previous records before resolving them, so each new line starts with "excellent". We call it dangling because it suspends explanation until it has a solution. This tension and attachment is strong.
Let's take our piano melody and arrange it for strings. We start with the bass part on the cello and the melody on the violin. Each sustained note uses MIDI controls to select the pitch, while each bar is held before resolving.
Expanding our rhythm and synthesis. Repeating notes is boring, so create a new four-bar pattern with C - Bb - Ab - F minor. Now the end of our sentence can be resolved in two steps to get to C, further increasing the tension.
Here the same title is adapted as a dance title. We start with the same chord progression and then move to new chords, but the idea is the same. By extracting the resolution of each melodic note from the chord, the melody becomes more interesting.