Every ingredient in the cake matters but the context here is "a guy who's essentialy trying to learn about music theory/composition" after an initial phase of installing a bunch of VST instruments and fx's and toying around with them.

Let's just not send him right back to the "How to mix/Which is the best DAW/What interface should I get/Dither/etc.." part of the world.

 

I thought this discussion was about arranging?

In that case, just install ChordPulse and play around with that

 

Better yet, just listen to someone else's music.

 

Trouble is, the division of labor is a prevalent structure within the music industry. Trying to master every aspect of the process may be a false economy. If you want to learn basic music theory/composition, then ChordPulse seems like a quick and easy way to get the hang of things, without having to worry about the DAW/VST etc. This part of the equation should be inside the head.

http://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab is also worth a visit.

 

Last edited: Nov 9, 2015

Of course it somewhat depends on how you listen to a piece of music. But I think that carefully listening to a certain song, actually analyzing it inside my DAW or with a pen and piece of paper helped enormously in actually understanding structure and arrangement, as well as harmony and melody within songs. I think it accounted for about 50% of my understanding on this stuff along with actually reading about music theory and fiddling around with that stuff inside my DAW.

Thing is, there are no better examples on how to do certain things then how great minds before you did these things within their music. Especially considering you like the songs you actually listen to and you could very well have gotten into music production just because the artists who made it inspired you and you are seeking to emulate his or her style somewhat. Although I do always think that you shouldn't limit yourself to just the genre of music you are looking to produce yourself. Personally, I have a very broad taste in music even when just casually listening so it may not be as much of an issue. But many awesome ideas and innovations within known genres come from incorporating elements that are very normal in other genres and never or hardly used within your particular genre.

Kind of curious about this ChordPulse thing, is it any good for workflow even when you have a better grasp on song structure, arrangement and individual components? I'm always looking to improve my workflow so it might be something worth looking into.

 

ChordPulse is cool but here are the scenarios:

1 - You don't know and don't want to know anything about theory, you just want to come up with something that will go togheter nicely.

2 - You already know about theory (progressions, voice leading) so you look at ChordPulse and input exactly what you want, to try out different possibilities for your thing.


At the moment, foster911 is trying to avoid nr.1 and is far from nr.2

Anyways, at this point the thing that will answer most of foster911's basic questions and troubles will get easily solved when he goes deeper into the relationship between diatonic progressions and melodic lines so.. ChordPulse would be just another toy anyway.

I think he's already looking into that stuff, I told him to do that so many times that eventually he got a "video method" that I don't remember the title (he posted two videos from that one) but I know that it covers the materials I told him to look at.

 

Last edited: Nov 9, 2015

It was a joke.

I meant that I don't agree with "software shortcuts" as an advice for someone who wants to learn how music works.

 

All the discussions that began within foster911's topics remind me of a common theme among guitar players.

GP - "I don't know what can I do to improve my compositions, the content of my solos and much less how to think out the parts for the other instruments. Any help?"

Me - "Well, what have you done about it?"

GP - "I practice all the scales/jazz chords/techniques/speed drills everyday, bought new pickups, got a new amp that sounds AMAZING and I spend most of the time listening to music."

Me - " Yeah but.. what have you done regarding composition, melodic content and arranging?"

GP - "Uh... is there anything to do about that?"

Me - "Sure, like anything else.. it's a craft, you learn it, you develop it, you analyse it... and that practice is what makes you grow.."

GP - "NAH BRO, I JUST PLAY WHAT I FEEL... WHAT I HEAR IN MY HEAD!!"


I am sure many of you will recognize this type of dialogue and, like me, you know the frustration.

 

Just replace guitar player with dance music producer, practicing how to use their DAW, VSTs and all kinds of effects and how they are used. They will also mention they made some SICK GROWLS inside their synths lately and don't understand how they don't make it all work inside their song. Then the last comment is literally the same.

 

Has been my never being solved problem for a long time because I have not been fully conscious of what I am doing. I have not been able to harmonically put the elements next to each other to form a whole. Thinking of me being in perfection has always frightened me to create something.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Nov 10, 2015

The last comment is what kills me everytime. It's that moment when I have to decide between 'Oh boy here we go..' and 'It's not worth it, I'll leave the discussion as is".

In the GP case, they assume that people who "study/practice" anything regarding music is just acquiring recipes. Even if they see you analyse/transcribe a song by hear, they think it's only useful if you're actually going to play a cover of that song... it's so dumb..

...but when a few finally see the light, they realize how stupid they were for thinking like that.

If untrained people were actually playing what they hear, holy shit... the world would be full of top notch transcribers.

Well... even if they actually played whatever they heard in their heads, how's that enough for actually making something interesting?


It's like calling yourself a poet just because you have the ability to imagine and speak words...

 

Yeah.. as you can see, I got that immediately just by reading your initial posts. It's not magic, I am just good at recognizing patterns.

That too, that's why I kept recommending the same stuff for you to practice/pay attention to. Don't worry about studying form and development until you can make a few bars of melody and chords. Keep it all diatonic, preferably major and minor scale (not both at the same time). Once you get that down and understand how it works (your ear, not your brain), you'll pickup on anything else much faster and everything will make much more sense.

 

1. Stems are good for studying the deconstructed elements. Somebody recently made a great post that included links.

2. ChordPulse is good for experimenting with various chord progressions and structures. Save to MIDI and your idea is up and running in a few minutes. I even use it to work out ideas guitar parts.

 

No doubt about that, but try to remember of the time you knew nothing about the little building blocks of music... would you be able to get much out of "deconstructed elements"? Would "experimenting with various chord progressions and structures" give you that much insight on how they are actually built?

Every bit of info or technology can be useful but it depends on who's using it and how. If you don't have some basics down, you won't able to build upon it.. basically you'll keep just trying out stuff until it sounds cool and that is not the point.

Eventually you'll get to know those basics anyway, even if you follow a more convuluted/less straight path... and then you'll think "wow, why did I skip that? This is so simple and it all makes sense"

 

Last edited: Nov 10, 2015

When I got into music for the second time, the first thing I did was read a book on music theory, and then I studied tabs to see how other people made music. Stems are an extension of tabs IMO.

The first time around when I got into music, I soon hit a brick-wall and gave up

 

Last edited: Nov 10, 2015

That's understandable, specially when your sources or teacher isn't in agreement with the genres that you're into. But, after you get past the building blocks, you'll realize you've been kinda shooting in the dark when everything was already laid out for you to use.

 

Yep, and I'm self-taught the first time, and the second time, I just chose a different way

 

Sorry guys, this is not related to this thread but is so useful.
As you know copying and pasting the texts into a document is so boring. After joining this forum, I have been faced with so invaluable contexts that worth reading more than 10 times. I have searched the web for clipboard organizers since then, below one is excellent. It allows copying everything in its original format like RTF files without needing to save it anywhere as many times as you'd like just by hitting Ctrl+C (I doped the shortcut). It's also free. Other ones have problems in acquiring and saving in RTF format. Finally you can save all of them into a word file:

Btw, If you'd be in rush and don't have time to select the text by mouse clicks, you can press the "print screen" button for capturing the whole screen as an image:
http://www.sundrytools.com/free-software/pastecopy-net/

 

Last edited by a moderator: Nov 10, 2015

Subtractive method also can work and can be more creative than the additive one

http://edmprod.com/subtractive-music-production/

 

I have been thinking electronically for a long time and still I am but unfortunately I have not seen or been able to put the vivacity and sprightliness in the electronic musics not like the below one. Does anyone have the same feelings? I don't want to speak generally.

By listening to the below music you'd discover the "song form" (Verse, Chorus, ...) have mentioned in my first post to this thread. By arrangement I mean considering the structural aspects (Bar by Bar) like reading a story of course. I can say most Rock songs pay strong heed to this, but in the electronic musics everything is on the air.
http://www.mediafire.com/watch/ddrk4b3yo2pb6jl/JML.mp4

Mirror:
http://uploaded.net/file/o5gdob44

 

Last edited by a moderator: Nov 10, 2015