@foster911

I can somewhat understand you pain, it has been around since tonality, and temperance. You wish to fix tonality and stay within a scale and extend a sympathetic progression within that tonality past 8 chords. The issue in a tempered scale there are only 7 sympathetic to the root chords from 12 notes. From those 7 triads you can derive some sympathetic neighbors, but you are going to run into the same problem that was first run into by Greek and Arab musicians first (even though they did fixed tonality, they were not constrained by temperance.) You only have a fixed number or harmonically sympathetic notes in a fixed scale so repetition is unavoidable unless you change key, or purposefully introduce dissonant passages into your composition. This is the same problem that composed in the Baroque area tried to formulate and formalize, after the introduction of temperance in the Renaissance music became even more constrained and repetition became an even bigger problem....

This lead to the all the flourishes and virtuosity of the Baroque area, which was the same mechanism the Arabs had used in Hawazi and Malouf in Spain and Northern Africa. Play it faster, jump around a lot and make it fancy. However, as it has been said before, Virtuosity is not a replacement for inspiration, it just masks the lack of it (hence why minimalist genres are harder to compose for.) The repetition of the Baroque musical type gave way to classical music where Beethoven, Mozart et Al, loosened the rules of tonality and composed with duration and meter as an added dimension. Though temperance has remained a part of Western music ever since, maybe it's time to look at some of the Oriental scales that offer more than 12 tones and can extend sympathetic harmonic chords up to 9; two more chords doesn't seem like much but hey 9 > 7.

There has been some introduction of Oriental scales in electronic music, I've never considered them as intellectual supersizes but this post kind of makes me rethink that. I just though those guys were sampling something they head during a haze of hashish and coffee while on holiday.

It is a tough nut to crack, and people have been working on it for a long time.

 

@foster911 I was reading some lyrics and I remembered this post. Think your music as a poem (because this is actually music): you must have a rhythm, rhyme and a story to tell. (Play that Mozart file again if you're doubting my words - or play Moby). And think how many poems do you know with VERY LONG verse lines. Probably none. And this should answer your musical quest. You will find out that all the memorable poems are decent in lyrics' length. Not necessarily to be easy to remember, but to be, for a human being, actually possible to memorise. Go to big lengths and your poetry becomes a novel.

 

i wrote the lyrics for that song. they blatantly plagiarized me.

Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world

Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world

Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world

Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world

Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world

Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world

Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world

Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world

Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world

Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world

Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world

Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world

Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world

Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world

Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world

Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world

Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world

Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world
Around the world, around the world.

 

@jayxflash I agree with the sentiment, why I deleted earlier post; just the expression of it was astonishingly bad. I dunno if ur hating on Moby or foster w/ "cookie-cutter" comment, but beneath us all if u mean latter. I agree as well, w/ "until one rly try". It takes real balls (imo) 2 write "simple" (aka effective) music. As far as "over-knowledge" goes, well u gotta know teh rules b4 u break 'em.

 

Or better yet, pass to the microtonal scale, where you have from 12 to 96 tones per octave! I have always though that this will be the next step in music, but that needs a lot of years to happen.
Here is an interesting article talking about this: http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/archives/microtones1intro.html

 

I just wrote a song that contained the following chords:
B/E F#m7 E/A C#m11 Bsus13 Eadd2add4 G#m7 E6 Asus2#11 Bsus9 Aadd2 E/F# Amaj13 F#sus13
The song was basically 6 minutes & 23 seconds long.
That's quite a few different chords. I think it's pretty catchy. But I haven't recorded it yet.

 

hey man, i know we got in some shit in the past, but i have to say, i really like this track. make more stuff like this! you are getting there!

 

remember to be patient with the process, give yourself time, and know to be humble regardless of the progressions that you make each year. i became stagnant when i went to school for music, because i thought i knew everything, and my music suffered greatly. i over-analyzed things and thought i was a king among men. as soon as i released the mentality of elitism, and recognized there are many great musicians and genres, better than myself, i started making the best music of my life thus far.

 

On the other hand, a much more simpler song by me. Very short. It's rather repetitive. Same chord progression all the way thru:
Bb Fm11 Ab Eb - Bb Fm11 Cm Eb
Very short, very mellow, quite repetitive, same drums all the way thru, shitty dynamics. Basically the things that are abundant in the world of electronic music. Short songs are becoming a thing. Long songs usually don't get too far with people. If you want a long ass electronic song that has a lot of variation, you're not gonna find it in the mainstream.
The girls voice in this song is Patty from "Realivox The Ladies 2" for Kontakt. Please don't mind her bad singing.
I personally don't mind a repetitive melody if the I like it. But if it's an annoying Katy Perry song, I'm probably gonna kill someone after about 30 seconds.

 

It may have already been said, but complexity can come in many ways. For example, instead of tryning to stringing along 16 chords in a progression, maybe instead use just 4 but with more interesting voicings. Or simpler voicings with complex modulation in the sound design. Or more basic sounds with a syncopated rhythm. Or all of the above or none at all.

The point being: there are more ways to build than just up.

 

It needs a big amount of work, obviously. Don't be afraid of harmonic, volume modulations, tempo / metric change, in your music.
It's a story to tell.
Check Beach Boys Pet Sounds album, for example. Seems for lots of people cheesy, but this is a gem among others gem. Few songs there, are very interesting in term of song writing, arrangement. Analyze it. Why is it working? Try to take this as exercice, choose a song and make it "electro-ish".

If you don't know yet, there is a "young guy" who's doing cool stuff (this is the only full album I've found on YT):

This man too:

an other great one:

Analize it. Why is it working?

Electronica, when it has appeared in clubs, was build from the wish to make transe when you danse. That's why when the disco arrived at the club in 70's, DJ felt to add kick, no more ends but continuous soungs and began to remix actual songs to make it more danceable. So they decide to change arrangements and so make it simple, in their mixing technics. 'cause the goal was to make people more focus on their body than their minds, if I can say briefly.

Few though, share a bit quickly… Cheers

 

I made this 54 chord progression (some gaps between them. using 28 different chords and 5 scales (major/minor and their modes)). They're not perfectly completing each other but do not sound bad. I used just triads (closed position) as they're suitable for electronic genres.

I can make more than 1000 minimal tracks from them but classical composers were able to make just one song using all of them. What a pity!


Cm Emaj Asus2 Emaj Fmaj Fmaj Amaj Cm Bmaj5 Bmaj Gm Cmaj Fm Fsus2 Cmaj Bsus2 Bmaj Bmaj Fm Cmaj Bm Adim Fm Amaj Asus2 Gmaj Fmaj Amaj Csus2 Cmaj Gmaj Fsus2 Csus4 Cmaj Dsus4 Dm Dsus2 Dm Dsus4 Dm Dsus2 Amaj Csus4 Fsus4 Fsus2 Fm Bm Bdim Fm Gdim Cdim Cmaj Cm Cmaj

 

Last edited by a moderator: Sep 6, 2016

Let me say something
You are just making this for the sake of it
Do you want to make music or what?

 

That's not a progression. It's just a bunch of chords stuck together.

No they don't. They sound woeful!

Not sounding like that, they're not.

No you can't. If you could make a track you would have made one by now. You can only make clips.

Just a bunch of letters and numbers that don't mean anything if you can't give them a coherent context.

All you are doing now is wasting your time, trying to avoid the real task of finishing a track.

 

Last edited: Sep 6, 2016

I'm totally boggled as to why you invest your time in electronic style music since for the most part, it seems you have distaste for it. I think you're more destined to pick up an acoustic instrument and learn to play that, instead of dabbling in this area of music. I think you'd probably find more enjoyment with free flow style musician stuff, kind of like old classical jazz. Composition and planing, looks like more of a hindrance than attainable. Just my 2 cents.

 

This is the chorus or a verse?

 

I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish. Neither do I understand this "quick-and-easy" attitude toward music-creation, though my learning to make music pre-dates the DAW and such, so . . .

If you want to make monotonous, repetitious music which changes key often enough to keep the listener awake, the listen to the primordial example of "Europe Endless" by Kraftwerk. The irony in that is that they were classically-trained musicians who were astute enough to be able to boil electronic pop music down to pictogrammatic minimalism while retaining the fundamental musicality of European classical and traditional music. Education and experience enable artists to innovate.

Why don't you and other musical fledglings stop acting like baby birds who need their mama bird to eat, digest and then regurgitate the half-digested puke into your mouths to nourish your "creativity" or "production skills?" Take it upon yourselves to sign up for music-theory classes, or take a songwriting workshop, or just get a guitar and learn to play chords along with different styles of songs. Most of all, learn to feel the music and what chord changes beneath melodies do.

How does anyone learn to do anything? If you want to be a farmer or a wildlife conservationist or a surgeon, do you watch YouTube tutorials? Why do people still bother to build pianos, anymore? No one is interested in learning to play real instruments now, and besides, there aren't any sufficient YouTube tutorial videos on how to build them.

 

It's the bridge, he really wanted to break it down.

 

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.

 

I'm not really all that familiar with music theory so you should take whatever I have to say with a grain of salt. TBH, I'm just blowing off some steam between trying to figure out networking stuff with jack audio(something I'm even more less familiar with =P).

I guess I can understand where you are coming from in some respects. Especially when it comes to over complicating chord progressions, I'm so damn guilty of it. Yet, when I listen to some of my favorite pieces of music I realize the songs manage to stay non-repetitive not through dramatically changing fairly basic chord progressions, rather they do that by adding and subtracting different musical elements (especially leads and arpeggios) to build suspense and add dynamic. Much of the time they ditch the main sounds all together and add something different all together while leaving the bass line and other elements that serve as the back bone of the track intact perhaps varying the rhythm slightly. Try ditching all the elements except for the "backbone" and create something totally new with what you already have. Rearrange the chords and come up with different parts of the song in an A/B/C structure. It's easy to over-complicate but try not to get to far ahead of yourself with the theory stuff, it's possible to create meaningful change within tracks with out straying too far away from what you already got. Don't keep building and building on something, eventually move on.

Also, if you haven't tried rapid composer it might be an interesting tool for you to learn. Good luck =)