Hey foster911,

To Begin the Phrase ● Do you know how to use chords to establish a tonality?
To Extend the Phrase I ● Does your progression have a direction—linear or sequential—and a clear arc?
To Extend the Phrase II ● Do you know all the sequential progressions? Do you know how to tonicize?
To End the Phrase ● Do you know what chords are used in cadences? Do you know how to extend them?

● You do not understand harmony; you must start anew and assume you know nothing.
— First, do not think of chords by Letter/Quality/Number (Amaj7) but Scale Degree/Position (V6).

● The problem is the perceived incompatibility of the genre with your aim.
— By way of example I wrote you a piece of music which you may consider a 'long progression'.

— As you can hear, the progression is not 'characteristic of electronic genres'.

● The graph below is a complete list of the top chord progressions employed in Mozart's Piano Sonatas:

● His longest progression is six chords and most popular a mere two chords!
— I wrote you a fugue with two countersubjects so you can hear unity in variety.

(The voices drop off mid-episode because I just stopped writing it. My point: think control instead of 'more different')

MY ADVICE
Use your intellectual curiosity to focus solely upon your studies.
● Learn to read and write music.
— Sheet music condenses a piano roll in a way that makes writing easier and more efficient
and as you are obviously a systematic thinker, you will benefit from such organization immensely.

START-WITH STUDY LIST
● Counterpoint in Composition by Salzer
● Harmony and Voice-Leading by Aldwell
● Fundamentals of Musical Composition by Schoenberg
● Don't just read, study the material by writing practice pieces and always analyze!

I have hundreds of pages of studies, spanning years, all preserved in notebooks:
1 · Small chord progressions.
2 · Small phrases with voice-leading chords and non-harmonic notes.
3 · Small phrases fully formed.

 

Thank you guy! Will be commented so soon.
Please listen:

I counted the number of chords. Totally 73 different ones. No wonder why they're legend forever. Better to measure the composers against their used chords and harmony.

 

"Better to use a singular metric for evaluating an artform". Thats basically what your conclusion is every time you create a post like this. I just dont know what to say. If you cant point out the fault in my generic quote then that is where the problem lies. Toccato gave some sound advice with the composition tips. There isnt much more to say tbh...

 

This song seems a simple one:
Planet Caravan - Black Sabbath
(Released:1970)

But it used 6 distinct chords (Gmaj7 G6add9 C6 Emadd9 E5 Dadd9) in the key of G + 50 implied ones ("Bass+riff+voice" all in all as the independent melodic lines constituting chords).

Art without harmony is not art at all. It's just repetitive patterns.

 

3 pages of waffle, countless other threads and you haven't managed to create one track yet, just a few phrases that sound like they were made with a 70's game console chip.

Don't mean to be harsh but how about you stop talking and actually make a complete track. It might not turn out brilliant but you will learn far more by doing than talking. All this in-depth theory means nothing if you can't put together something basic to begin with.

 

Nice try but that progression only used four chords if you want to be technical. But what he said...

 

That is all wrong though.

This is the official score:

It's hard to see so I transcribed & analyzed it myself here:

The song is actually an expanded tonic minor—ONE CHORD!—with some passing notes (i-III-i or i-v7-i)

Your lack of self-awareness is verging on spambot territory. I'm on your side but you
gotta stop sticking your tongue out and get to work to learn music theory properly.

 

No. Better to measure composers by their finished pieces of work. The used chords and harmony are irrelevant if it's not complete.

 

Anyway, foster, keep it up - u always make me smile. Hope the music doesn't become incidental?

U say that like it's a negative thing!

 

If your'e so obsessed with this genre of music, it might be an idea for you to buy a violin or something and lean to play this genre. Then you can leave the electronic genres to those that love to make them.

Mods! Can you add a classical sub forum to the specific genres for Foster911 please? Cheers.

 

I would rather name the thread More overthinking and learning, zero producing.

 

I am reposting in the hopes that you reply to this idea of melody as keystone, without it, emotive music falls from above us, fails and is forever fleeting in falsity.

My dear Foster911, I have held my tongue for a long time now, but will keep it short in trying to help you . Great music is not created from intellectualizing chord theory, it never was, is not and will never be. At the root of every great and memorable piece of music is a melody, a string of single notes that convey beauty, ugliness, happiness or sadness, all emotions steep and storming, or conversly, emptiness and lack. Chords are supportive and are empty vessels waiting for and existing only to be led by the animating breath of a pure and simple melody. The melody is the core and the chords help convey and lend support to the central idea, the theme. Chord theory can help you express yourself in novel and unique ways but all is built around a melody, not vise-a-versa. It is exactly like putting the cart before the horse, impossible to steer and cruel for the horse. I explore you to try to turn it around, lead with your heart and not your mind and so enable you to write the music from your soul.

 

Here is the solution to all your problems. Just play random notes all over the place and Reason will fix them for you, in the end you will get so much note changes as much as you want!