Zero knowledge of Music Theory

The Lounge General Discussion
#25

If you knew some theory your hammering and knob turning would be more efficient :smiley:

You don’t necessarily need to know too much, just enough to know which notes go well together in order to convey the mood you’re trying to achieve. Even if you’re just trying to make minimal techno bangers you’ll benefit from this, and your music will be more expressive/interesting as a result.

Also, don’t be afraid to analyse other people’s music, and even try to replicate it. If you can find some MIDI files or even guitar tabs/keyboard notation of some songs you like, it’ll help you in more ways than you’d expect. I learned a lot through imitation!

btw, this thread explains why you asked for the notes of the arp that I posted that one time :stuck_out_tongue:
[/quote]
did you give me the notes ? (i remember , and still waiting for a reddit / youtube queston regarding arps … was that it? )

#26

I’m sure I did, but I can’t find the thread!

#27

The advantage of a Keyboard is that it shows everything. I tried for years to remember all this different chords etc… I got crazy that’s all.

UNTIL a real good musician and a friend explained and showed me some chords on a keyboard and HOW TO SHIFT AND TRANSPOSE

suddenly the light went on ! And at thesame time I saw the Genius of a keyboard ! It just shows everything .

By transposing and shifting you can find everything yourself ( build chords etc… ) it’s pure logic !

I still have to count tho if you ask me a note :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

It takes me more time than for people who know the theory I can now find all this myself - it’s like in mathematics - ones u know how to subtrakt - add - multiply and devide - u can deduce allmost everythig yourself.

I’ll be greatfull to this guy for the rest of my life -
If you want to learn about - intervals - chords etc… try to have someone to sit at your side who knows and shows you on the spot on a keyboard and,
ask him or her to show u some Shifts and Transpositions of chords.
Starting from these 2 everything else you can find yourself…

I don’t know the names but it’s the insight that counts for me.

1 Like
#28

^ yeah that’s very true.

Even just having a keyboard to control gear in the first place is a big advantage. Programming the kind of melodic content I tend to write on the Monomachine without one is a pain in the butt! With a midi keyboard attached it seems more like a tracker interface, which is what I essentially grew up with.

#29

thanks for the suggestions… I must admit, I had done all that --> s e v e r a l times… and now I am at this point where I say… start again at the very beginning, just to find myself re repeating the same lesson in another 4 days?
I actually found a few nice handy low tec software programs, which send midi chord progressions in a logic esthetically pleasing way to my gear … but then, I have to use ableton all the time :frowning:
.
.
.had a midi keyboard hooked up to both A4 and MM … immediately changed my workflow to the better … but still, it bums me out big time. …
here is my analogy: draw one circle, draw the other circle, draw the rest of the owl …

.
.
which translates to: plays the first note, play the second note, play beethovens 7th symphony …
…seriously… I wanna bite the fucking plastic out of midikeyboards when doing music theory… reminds me of the good old days sitting in school class with my adhd trying to fit in. … luckily elektron delivered a solution: monkey style pushing buttons and turning knobs and at the same time feeling extremely artistically talented and useful :stuck_out_tongue:
cheers guys…

final note: anybody with nice note progression is welcomed to … I start another thread !!!

EDIT: just found this: http://www.mucoder.net/en/tonespace/

#30

time. …
here is my analogy: draw one circle, draw the other circle, draw the rest of the owl …

.
.
which translates to: plays the first note, play the second note, play beethovens 7th symphony …
…seriously… I wanna bite the fucking plastic out of midikeyboards when doing music theory… reminds me of the good old days sitting in school class with my adhd trying to fit in. … luckily elektron delivered a solution: monkey style pushing buttons and turning knobs and at the same time feeling extremely artistically talented and useful :stuck_out_tongue:
cheers guys…

final note: anybody with nice note progression is welcomed to … I start another thread !!!

EDIT: just found this: http://www.mucoder.net/en/tonespace/

WHOUHAAAA HA HA !! :joy: :+1: :slight_smile:

#31

thanks… but this with the words and all that is like me having the hardest time distinguishing between bacteria, virus, and patagones … I know they make you shit vomit or die… just like the fancy other words make tunes sound good… but your apporach is right… little by little, anc continuously repeating… guess it is time again to revise and review and not throw in the towel (again) …thanks [/quote]

  • u Fuckeduppian
    * z Idiotian
    * x Giveuppian
#32

I was also thinking about buying a keyboard and learning some music theory, but I decided to get a push after watching these videos. Some online stores are selling them new for $419, not sure if this is a permanent price drop.
#33

I find chord progressions with decent voice leading to be quite beautiful. Obviously you don’t need to have these skills for every style of music, but they are pretty powerful. Often when I hear a particularly moving song, it is based on some version of the i-VI-i progression. For example:

Bush - Synapse
Zella Day - High
Silverchair - Steam Will Rise
Portishead - Roads
Mars Volta - Televators
Glassjaw - Daytona White

I could make a much longer list because you can create a lot of variations of this progression, but it has a recognizable feeling. Chord progressions create sensations that most people enjoy quite a bit, and personally I enjoy creating them. They expand your range of musical expression a great deal, which is why I would kind of like to stick up for them here.

I’m not saying everyone must learn these things to be a musician, just that I think they have quite a bit of value. That value is important to weigh against the challenge of learning new skills. Looking back I can easily say it was worth the effort in my case.

#34

I was also thinking about buying a keyboard and learning some music theory, but I decided to get a push after watching these videos. Some online stores are selling them new for $419, not sure if this is a permanent price drop.[/quote]
I appreciate the video … again, yet again… head banging against the wall… I end up, putting a finger on a note ( after counting to the note from C) then from C counting up to find the second note, then again , then again , and fucking again… so for 1 goddamn fucking chord, I am busy for 30 seconds … everybody else seems to know this off by heart. … when it comes to chord progression,… and this is no joke, I am busy for prox 3 min, to find 4 chords on the most basic scale, no big transpositions and what not … then in this video he says after a cadence you end with a period somethign something… and I am like, what the fuck… really… no , not today … I am getting angry while writing this … honestly 3 min for 3 chords… not a joke! my success rate is about 80 %… so after I am done there is a good chance all this was for fuck nothing … thanks for posing the vid tho!

#35

thanks for the suggestions… I must admit, I had done all that --> s e v e r a l times… and now I am at this point where I say… start again at the very beginning, just to find myself re repeating the same lesson in another 4 days?
I actually found a few nice handy low tec software programs, which send midi chord progressions in a logic esthetically pleasing way to my gear … but then, I have to use ableton all the time :frowning:
.
.
.had a midi keyboard hooked up to both A4 and MM … immediately changed my workflow to the better … but still, it bums me out big time. …
here is my analogy: draw one circle, draw the other circle, draw the rest of the owl …

.
.
which translates to: plays the first note, play the second note, play beethovens 7th symphony …
…seriously… I wanna bite the fucking plastic out of midikeyboards when doing music theory… reminds me of the good old days sitting in school class with my adhd trying to fit in. … luckily elektron delivered a solution: monkey style pushing buttons and turning knobs and at the same time feeling extremely artistically talented and useful :stuck_out_tongue:
cheers guys…

final note: anybody with nice note progression is welcomed to … I start another thread !!!

EDIT: just found this: http://www.mucoder.net/en/tonespace/
[/quote]
This makes my day! Love your posts TrabanT. I can relate.

#36

Hello. I’ll just leave this here:
http://openmusictheory.com/

1 Like
#37

Except for all the missing frequencies between the keys…

#38

I was also thinking about buying a keyboard and learning some music theory, but I decided to get a push after watching these videos. Some online stores are selling them new for $419, not sure if this is a permanent price drop.[/quote]
I appreciate the video … again, yet again… head banging against the wall… I end up, putting a finger on a note ( after counting to the note from C) then from C counting up to find the second note, then again , then again , and fucking again… so for 1 goddamn fucking chord, I am busy for 30 seconds … everybody else seems to know this off by heart. … when it comes to chord progression,… and this is no joke, I am busy for prox 3 min, to find 4 chords on the most basic scale, no big transpositions and what not … then in this video he says after a cadence you end with a period somethign something… and I am like, what the fuck… really… no , not today … I am getting angry while writing this … honestly 3 min for 3 chords… not a joke! my success rate is about 80 %… so after I am done there is a good chance all this was for fuck nothing … thanks for posing the vid tho![/quote]
No problem. I meant to provide a better description in my post, but I was pressed for time. What really stood out to me in the video was the fact that chords, such as the triad, always have the same shape in terms of the pattern of buttons that you press. I think this makes playing the push similar to playing a guitar in the sense you can get a lot of mileage out of simply knowing how to play a power chord and moving it around the fretboard without knowing any music theory.

Instead of learning music theory, I really just learned some button patterns that correspond to the basic chords - it’s always the same pattern for every scale, and that pattern sounds good just about anywhere you play it on the push. I also remember a few chord progressions from the videos, they also remain the same for every scale, e.g., the i-iv-v progression always starts on a blue button, moves to the button above it and then moves to the button to the right. I find it much more intuitive to think about chords and chord progressions as geometric patterns on the push instead of notes in a scale. This makes it easy to explore and write melodies on the push without ever knowing what notes I’m actually playing.

Best of luck.

#39

Why are you counting from C every time?

With all due respect, if you spent some time learning which notes are which on a keyboard, you’ll probably have much less of a hard time figuring out chords. It’s really not that hard when you only have essentially 8 different notes (ie. the white keys—CDEFGABC) in an octave. I always remember it as C being the one with the two sharps (ie. black keys) to the right of it. Then F is the one with three sharps to the right of it.

If you stop trying to count every time and just try to learn some basic chord shapes you might find it a little easier. Once you get a basic major chord (try C, it’s the easiest to remember because it’s all white notes), then you should be able to figure out how to make it a minor, and from there you can develop variations/inversions and other chord patterns… but start simple.

Music is mathematical but it shouldn’t really be approached as such, unless you’re getting into advanced synthesis or composition.

#40

Bookmarked, thanks.

Just to +1 the push for this. I have a reasonable grounding in basic theory - I learned guitar to a reasonable level before not playing any instruments for years while doing a lot of djing.

When I started with production, for some reason I’ve never been able to warm to the piano keyboard, I find push works much better for me as an instrument. I guess as a guitarist, I was trained to figure out what scales might work for a particular progression and improvise using these, so setting push to an appropriate scale and jamming just makes sense to me.

Granted, it definitely takes some practice to get better, just like any other instrument, but in the short time since I’ve gotten it I’ve found myself getting back into exploring modes and interesting chord voicing that just weren’t happening for me with a keyboard controller. Maybe I should’ve practiced more…

Pity that it doesn’t operate as a standalone midi controller, but I suppose that wouldn’t really suit Ableton’s sales model. But if you do use a computer, I’d highly recommend it.

#41

This is certainly a way to go. Having said that, I wish I could be comfortable with doing that sometimes; a lot of my soloing relies on weird off-scale notes to build tension and I think I’d just miss that if I were to snap everything to a scale :smiley:

#42

Pitch bend is your friend - suppose that’s my inner guitarist speaking. And you can always switch off in-key mode and have the black keys available, which is how I use it most of the time.

The real winner about it is that you can think in terms of intervals rather than having to additionally think about the scale you’re in, if that makes sense.

#43

True! I’m a guitarist too so I should know this :smiley:

#44

this is exactly why … can do that, just cant, it is like I try to find a needle in a needle stack… gets blurry … eye hand coordination goes out the window also pretty quickly … tolerance of frustration generally pretty low … etc… thanks for suggestion though…