Taking it deeper...

My partner in crime and I have been trying to cobble techno together for a couple of years now, and we've just about got the hang of the basics.

I want to expand our horizons and try making some more electronica / ambient stuff. This scares us though as it seems a bit more complex and well, musical. We then wanna take what we learn and put that back into the techno stuff.

Our musical knowledge in terms of the basics is pretty limited. I can just about grasp the concepts of intervals, scales, chords and all that but it's hard to understand (for me) how it all hangs together.

My mate was saying that a way to write a track is to define a chord you like the sound of, then write down what notes it contains (say for example it has four notes). You can then use these four notes to make everything else with. I thought this sounded pretty limited, but then he explained that you have 4 notes x 8 octaves which gives you 32 notes to play with.

So what I'm asking really is does this sound right and a valid way to do it? There must be more to it but is this a good way to start of learning the basics? It's well difficult trying to figure this stuff out on your own, and the books and stuff on the subject (ie music theory books) don't seem to answer my questions…

Thanks for any advice...

Hmm...

You know you can change chords if you want, right?

There's all sorts of music theory involving complementary chords, scales, tonics etc.

You could just bury yourself in all that for a bit and then try to write music.

Or you could just play with patterns in a sequencer and see what sounds good.

I'm sure either way yields good results if you're willing to put in the time & effort... though I know which one seems more fun to me!

yeh that's cool, though i really want to get to a point where i understand what sounds good and why, you know what i mean?

the way i understand it, if you have a chord sustaining for a length of time, say 4 bars, then in those 4 bars all the notes have to fit within the chord (ok maybe when you are more advanced you can use notes that don't fit, but for my understanding at the moment they do!)

but then if you have another chord play after, then you'd need a whole lot of new notes that would fit with the new chord. yeh there might be some notes that overlap...but man it just seems a lot of hard work and pretty confusing!

and scales, man what are they all about??? how many scales can you use in the one track? is it just the one, or can you combine them? if you combine then, can you overlap them etc - see it's these kind of questions, slightly out of the box, that the books and stuff don't tell you.

at the moment my brain just sees the infinite in it - you know, it seems unbounded. but there must be limits on what you can do - when i know those limits, i can start to understand how to work with them

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Originally Posted by auditory hallucinations

yeh that's cool, though i really want to get to a point where i understand what sounds good and why, you know what i mean?

the way i understand it, if you have a chord sustaining for a length of time, say 4 bars, then in those 4 bars all the notes have to fit within the chord (ok maybe when you are more advanced you can use notes that don't fit, but for my understanding at the moment they do!)

but then if you have another chord play after, then you'd need a whole lot of new notes that would fit with the new chord. yeh there might be some notes that overlap...but man it just seems a lot of hard work and pretty confusing!

and scales, man what are they all about??? how many scales can you use in the one track? is it just the one, or can you combine them? if you combine then, can you overlap them etc - see it's these kind of questions, slightly out of the box, that the books and stuff don't tell you.

at the moment my brain just sees the infinite in it - you know, it seems unbounded. but there must be limits on what you can do - when i know those limits, i can start to understand how to work with them

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It's not just about chords.

For example... the chord of C Major is just three notes (C, E, G), but there are 8 notes in the key of C (C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C - no sharps or flats)... all of which form the scale of C Major, so you can play any of these notes and they will sound ok next to a C Major chord. But you can break these rules to dramatic effect.

However, it would be a boring piece of music that only used C Major, so you need chord changes. Changes sound more natual from certain chords to their "tonics", but again you can break these rules for effect.

This is all just what I remember from learning instruments when I was younger. I haven't really looked at Music Theory in ages. IMHO Electronica and Techno are much more interesting when rules are broken, if not downright ignored!

To expand a little:

If you have a good sense of what sounds good musically, chances are you already know a lot of music theory - you just don't know the terminology... and I would argue that you don't really need to, in the same way that a rock guitarist doesn't need to know how to read music.

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Originally Posted by TechMouse

To expand a little:

If you have a good sense of what sounds good musically, chances are you already know a lot of music theory - you just don't know the terminology... and I would argue that you don't really need to, in the same way that a rock guitarist doesn't need to know how to read music.

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i'd agree with this, i learnt some music theory at college, and to be honest, ii already knew what sounded right and what didnt.

plus some of the best tunes out there have parts thats out of key, and that what makes them so special

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Originally Posted by dan the acid man

plus some of the best tunes out there have parts thats out of key, and that what makes them so special

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The magic in music happens when it becomes more than the sum of it's parts.

Or something...

One more question which I hope will make things clearer for me…

Scales - you can obviously have different ones. I get that a track written in say C Maj is gonna sound pretty upfront and well maybe cheesy

So you could decide say on using something more subtle - eg A min

That then gives you access to 7 / 8 notes right? I also understand how to apply to major or minor pattern of intervals to work out the corresponding notes in the scale

I even know how to work out the triad from the scale (yep, it ain't difficult) to give you the chord of that scale.

But what I do not understand is how this relates into chord changes. Say I used the scale of A min, say I worked out the chord to be consisting of A, Cb, E (for example) - when I wanna progress the chord to another, doesn't that throw the A min scale outa the window?

Or, if you work out work the next "proper" chord is, because it "works" does that mean it still fits with the scale you use?

I suppose what I'm asking is how many scales do you use in one piece of music? Is it just the one???

This is hard for me, my brain is frantically trying to forge new neural pathways but hell there is a lot of resistance!

Use as many scales as you need.

Try and find something that shows you a map of chord progressions. Im not very good at music theory so i just use them. I am learning tho.. (i work in music tech, not music theory)

A music lecturer friend of mine who played the sax for some major artists once told me that he learnt the rules, then learnt how to break em.

If it sounds good, then it is good.

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Originally Posted by dodgyedgy

If it sounds good, then it is good.

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Ill go along with that one

I think I got a better understanding of it all last night…

Basically, you've got your different modes (major, minor, mixolydian etc) - these all have a differing pattern of intervals ie t t s t t t s

You choose which mode you wanna use (these can help define the emotional content of the music - major happy, minor sad etc) - you can apply any mode to any key (using the right interval pattern) and that then gives you the scale (7/8 notes)

From the scale you can build your chord (major & minor), plus work out a chord progression

Next wanna learn more about melody, but I reckon I understand the absolute basics now, which is a big improvement

So yeh thanks for all your help, and I hope someone else can get some useful stuff from this (assuming that it's right, of course!)

but after all that, yep if it sounds good... :lol:

Hi

I Also appear to be at the same musical level, just about understand chords and scales but do not understand chord progression, dodgyedgy says in this thread "Try and find something that shows you a map of chord progressions". Does any one have a link to an example of any of these for techno, as this would be of great help to me as I am having problems getting the hang of this.

i don't understand how a tune can be deemed cheesy just because of its chords and scale. i'd assume it would only be so if it was composed and arranged in a cheesey way

A good way to find progressions I think is just to work out all your chords in the scale, program them into the sequencer and mess around - you'll soon find combinations you like

There is a great website though with progression maps - can't find it at the moment, will have a look at the print out I've got at home

http://chordmaps.com/mapEb.htm

a chord map for the scale of e flat

start at the home chord , jump to anywhere and make your way back to the home chord .
voila , a chord progression

there are chord maps and a very good explanation of scales , chords , modes and stuff here

http://chordmaps.com/

that is the one i was trying to find - excellent stuff in there...

cheers FILTERZ

excelent stuff on this site, just decided what i will be doing with my time this evening ( and prob many other evenings to come)

This link has defo talt me a lot. spent this evening playing chord progressions on my keyboard in the scale of C.

was there any reason that a link was included to e flat, if that a good scale to use for techno

still learning, but I am getting a lot of help from people on this forum,

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Originally Posted by curly polymorphic

This link has defo talt me a lot. spent this evening playing chord progressions on my keyboard in the scale of C.

was there any reason that a link was included to e flat, if that a good scale to use for techno

still learning, but I am getting a lot of help from people on this forum,

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nah i was just being obtuse and didnt want to print the map for c major
allthough the scale of e flat may be great for techno.

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Originally Posted by mattboyslim

i don't understand how a tune can be deemed cheesy just because of its chords and scale. i'd assume it would only be so if it was composed and arranged in a cheesey way

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that isnt how it works.

some keys have an emotion attatched to them

E - The happy Key
D - the "Cure" key
Cant remember the others

Anyway, sit and listne to them. Try out all the chords, how do they make you FEEL?