@ Nikon

That does indeed set a grim mood...

One of my favorite compositions with a dark vibe is Clint Mansell - Lux Aeterna. It was used as soundtrack for the movie "Requiem For A Dream" which works real well together. The music let's you really "feel" the movie. At the end of the movie I actually felt like crap.

 

Good movie, good sountrack

 

I had the exact same concerns when I first started producing so trust me I completely empathize with you. I never learned music theory, I still don't know how to distinguish between individual notes sometimes so no shame in that at all. That does not mean you can't make amazing music. The way I learned was I stuck with one synthesizer (Sylenth1), learned the crap out of it, all the ins and outs of it and how to get the sounds I want using presets and learning from them. Presets are your best friend at this stage until you learn to get the sounds you want on your own and how things work. Then, it was a matter of ALOT of messing around with the keyboard. Just like hours and hours of mindless chording on the keyboard and figuring out which keys harmonize with each other and how they interact with each other. It's basically ear training since I have no official music training. You then start to develop a certain feel for the notes and the chords and start having favorites and preferences. As you listen to other music you start to have a sense for the minors and the majors and how songs are structured and the arrangements. As I think someone previously stated, listen to songs you like you like within the genre and analyze them, recreate them, find out how and why they sound the way they do and what the elements that make those unique are. It's a long, but exciting, fun, sometimes frustrating journey that it music and music production, enjoy it, and learn, you will never stop learning and that's the key.

 

Here is a useful tool.

RapidComposer

http://www.musicdevelopments.com/rapidcomposer.html

http://www.musicdevelopments.com/videos.html

 

And also -

Cthulhu VST/AU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t2yD1kX2_w


And.

Henrik Schwarz on the Schwarzonator (Max for Live)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhfvzTivVLg

 

Slažem se sa tobom Fuade

 

An interesting Deep House Chord Pattern Generator tutorial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFS9k7n5mdk

 

here this helped me http://blog.dubspot.com/how-to-quickly-write-better-chord-progressions/

 

You should check out some IDM and Ambient music. Alot of IDM is dark and explores chords and melodies like no other genre. Ambient music (imo) teaches one alot about the usefulness of chords and intertwining melodies and IDM the complexity and structure in complete chaos. Both genres took my melody game to whole new levels and still do.

Also two of my goto keys for the darker knits would have to be F# and G#. But those are the usual darker keys for electro/dubstep/bassmusic so...yea.

 

some times you can take a happy song and turn it sad just by repitching it

triplet percussion gives some good badass-ness