hi ,
my knowledge about music theory is not very big unfortunately .
I am just learning something so that I can produce music more freely and easily.

I was just building a beat and thought a few chords under a melody will sound good.

I came across a video from Busy works Beats, he has a chord cheat code sheet on his internet site:


Here in this video he also explains how to apply these so called "Chord Codes" .

The whole thing is supposed to work like this, if you have a note, you should take this alt top note.
If you want to create a minor chord from this note, you should put the other notes on the third and on the last note.
For example: top note is F# =7, middle note is D=3, bottom note is B=0.

I now have a small melody or chord progression and I want to have all the chords in minor.
My selected scale is F#m, but Cubase tells me that according to the scale some notes are wrong, even though I followed the chord codes.



What is wrong now , are these chords then really not in the F#m scale or does the chord code just not work.....im confused....

Kind regards

 

So it’s not wrong, but you should have your F# as 0, A as 3 and C#/Db as 7. From what I see there, 0 is the root, but rather than working in intervals (halftone or tone), you count up chromatically from 0-11.

for example, for A

0 = A
1 = A#
2 = B
3 = C
4 = C#
5 = D
6 = D#
7 = E
8 = F
9 = F#
10 = G
11 = G#
12 = A
13 = A#

etc….

 

I see what you mean, so you're saying that instead of counting down, you should count up.

In the video of busy works Beats he says you should count down in any case.

 

They are not. F# minor has three sharps F#, G# and C# and the red notes are C and F (instead of C#, F#)

If you move a minor chord in parallel up and down (like you are doing), you will be out of scale immediately.

Even the guy in the vid is saying "if it doesn't sound good, let's try major/minor..". Not really a scientific approach, but still.. ;)

 

Using my notes in my picture from the piano roll in Cubase , what chords did I create there then.

The red "wrong chords" which are they now and which should they be ?

That would be very helpful to know.

Kind regards

 

You have really helped me a lot, thank you so much!

is it musically wrong to play these chords because they are not actually in the F#m scale ?

 

Absolutely NOT <- remember this more than anything else!

In fact, it can be very boring staying in one scale. hth, but I'll give this another look..

 

Also it can get very boring if all the melodic notes fit the chords. (Like with hymn tunes!)

You can use "passing notes" in your melody; for example if you're holding a C chord (C, E, G) there's no reason why your melody can't go G-F-E-D-C. Here the F and D are passing notes.

So you don't have to fit a chord to every melody note. As always in music, if it sounds right it is right.

 

If you are playing keys to write your chords; it can sometimes help you out if you think about the chord being formed with only your thumb and your pinky. 5 keys apart, and that C# Perfect Fifth, would be the most natural key to place the middle finger. Try playing it without the middle finger down, when you put it into the minor it feels like such a deliberate action. The pinky rotates back inward to the thumb.