Well... if the midi does sound musical, then most probably it positively exhibits some congruent relationships between the notes it contains: the intervals used should definitely point towards some "key" or maybe "chord type" family. The thing is, being midi and all, you are able to drop this sequence anywhere on the keyboard, efectively transposing the sequence - changing it's tone but maintaining their relations.tablist56 wrote:ok ok ok folks....post starter here...
if my offbeat or bass starts on a c3, then i drop in a midi file melody (cheating, but just using this as an example), when i look at this midi file all the notes seem to be everywhere and there is not one group of dominant notes. therefore its hard to say that a particular riff belongs in such and such key.
Your melody should start anywhere that sounds good; even off-key (supposedly censored for key family X) might be good if it lets the following sequence of notes bloom better. You start it where you like it ... when you like it, you'll find that 90% of the time it will be a note that is in-key (if you had the background to be able to tell). IMO there should be no dependence between melody start-off and base note. I think it's much more important to think where your song is going after that initial note.tablist56 wrote:having said that my bass is on c3, in these instances should my melody always start on a c aswell? ie c3, c4, c5 etc?
I can only guess that the melody is already breaking the traditional harmony rules, with respect to the bass. Then you go on and try to layer chords with pads on the top and the brain goes Oh-oh, and then you get a sonic equivalent of the blue screen of death,tablist56 wrote:i seem to have this issue when trying to layer a chorded pad type sequence.
bassline sounds good, then when the pad starts it all falls apart.
here are my two cents:
0.01 : maybe throw one of those files in here, so we can have a closer listen and try and tell you - fix this. Can't guarantee anything.
0.02 : 1 month of nice classes will take care of 75% of your uncertainties ... I am guessing the other 25% should take you the rest of your life.
good luck
-h