Ableton Forum

dudes

hi, i'm quackerfilthintrice, how has your day been my fellow web users, good i hope. so i'm doing the home studio on a p.c. way of making dance music, but i worry to myself. is my lack of knowledge in music, you know, chords and keys and instruments and stuff gonna make me disabled when i want to start getting my groove on, via computer? i mean, the music sounds good in my head, but will it sound good in real life? thanks for any help, and remember, J. C. loves us all!

dude,

Yeah Good Ol' Jean Chreitien. I love that guy too. But seriously, Quacker, Get a drum, get a keyboard start learning to play, look up some music theory. Isn't there a passage in the New Testament where Jesus says wisdom is out there, you just have to be open to receiving it. More Christians need to take heed of that one. Good luck.

Benny M.

I think so long as you like what you are making and are enjoying doing it then you are doing it right my friend.

I little music theory never goes amis, but it won't stop you dead in the water if you have none.

As for ability with conventional instruments, it's not a pre-requisite either.

ms

there's good resources for music theory to be found on the web... just beware of that evil porn

The really simple way of looking at it is this....

Simple: All the white keys are the same....

Complex: They all belong to modes of the F Lydian or C Ionian mode
depending on your perspective. You can build a chord off each note of a
scale, harmonise it. These chords only contain the notes of the original
scale (white keys if you started in C). The only time black notes come
into a C Ionian scale is when you're borrowing them from another key
(although they are just as legit in theory).

Simple: All the black keys are similar....

Complex: They are not part of the F Lydian mode, but can be seen as
being substitutions for chords that are.

Simple: Skip every second note to make chords.

Complex: Inversions are where you may play notes from higher up in the
chord, below where you're actually playing the root note. So even if your
bottom finger is on A you can see it as a C or G chord or whatever.... It's
all perspective.

Simple: Skip a note, skip another note... That's the 5th... It's the note you
hear in simple trance bouncy basslines. It's pretty much equivilent to the
note you started on.

[(C Root)], D Major 2nd, (E Major 3rd), F Perfect 4th, [(G Perfect 5th)], A Major 6th, (B Major 7th), [(C Root)]

btw... Perfect... not Major.... because they are "close to God".... Hangover
from when flat 5ths were considered the devils sound.

Complex: All modern (post Miles) theory is based of 5ths (it used to be
backwards and in 4ths). A 5th is the building block for all scales, modes,
substitutions, etc etc etc. 1 5 2 6 3 7 4 1

Simple: Notes 1 semitone apart can clash.

Complex: Ionian: Tone, Tone, Semi-tone, Tone, Tone, Tone, Semi-tone
It only has 2 semi-tones, which generally "target" the nearest full tone
(4th or octave). Playing these together can cause disonnace. Playing
other semi-tones from other scales together with the note next too them
can be even "worse".

Rule: "There is no spoon" No rules, nothing which is "correct"...
Generally if you get too deep into theory it takes about 4-5 years to
realise all the theory adds up to "Play what you feel".

-Ben

That being said..... It is really good for knowing ahead of time where you
have to aim your lines... Where the tune is going.... It's also really good
for finding interesting chords which are more then just "random" key
mashing.

-Ben

really comes down to whether or not you've been properly Saved.

The following text is from Conrad Keely, member of "And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead" and was published in the germann spex-magazine. I liked it a lot!! It's a music-history in a nutshell:



"Music has been defined as sound organized through time (one might write the equation M=st). Records of Western music before the high-middle ages is unfortunately a scant one; only forty or so fragments of music still exist from that time period spanning thousands of years which we call the Ancient world, the oldest known of these being a fragment of a chorus from Orestes by the Greek playwright Euripides (who apparently not only wrote and directed his plays but composed the choruses as well). To our ears this disjointed, rather oriental-sounding work of monophony might seem a little tuneless, but it is important to keep in mind that at this point “tune” had not yet been invented, and our modern harmonic understanding would be many centuries in the making (as we shall see). However the basic Greek musical ideal would steer European music on its course for centuries to come. Consider our tonal modes – Aolean, Phrygian, Mixolydian, etc. – which still bear the names of their Greek origin; or even our word for music, deriving from the Greek muses, those nine goddesses who gave mankind divine creative inspiration. But more importantly the concepts that all music stemmed from the work of a greater divinity, that it illustrated a cosmic harmony capable of being understood through science and geometry, and that it had at its root a higher mathematical as well as spiritual significance – these ideals would not only set the basis for music’s role in the early Christian church, but in Western society itself.

Arguably the most valuable development of this time was made by Pythagoras, the famed mathematician who was him-self not a musician. Pythagoras is accredited with single-handedly inventing music theory when he discovered the correlation between mathematical ratios and harmonic intervals. It is said that upon his hearing a blacksmith working with different weighted hammers which created tones of related harmonic intervals he began experimenting with weights and strings to make this remarkable discovery – the division of a string by exactly half will create the interval of an octave; by one third will create the interval we know as a perfect fifth (from C to G); and by one fourth, the interval known as a fourth (from C to F). One might consider that by this observation music, like mathematics, is a universal absolute, in which case advanced aliens would have already discovered rock and roll long before having discovered Earth.

It is during the Dark Ages that we in the West begin to develop methods of writing (and thus recording) music. These monophonic plain-chants of the early Christian church (commonly known as Gregorian chant in honor of Pope Gregory I (540-604 C.E.) who standardized the Church’s liturgical procedures), like the technology of the Dark Ages, was slow to develop and had in common with other world music at this time the fact that it was tied fundamentally to religious practice. However the changing climates in Europe during the High middle ages that would eventually see great rises in population and the formation of cities also helped to influence the rise of secular music. Composers such as Leonin (1159-1201) of the Ars Antiqua in Paris – incidentally the first composer’s name we have on written music – began advantage of these changes in attitudes to free themselves from the constraints of church music. These early Renaissance composers began develop polyphony – works of two or more melodic lines – to open up a new musical palate. It was in calculating the relationships of adjacent intervals of these melodies that Western composers begin to develop the idea of harmony. This wonderful double-edged sword would actually yield two fruit, for by creating the idea of harmony, one must also acknowledge dissonance, which would become an extremely effective tool in the modern era of static and traffic. It would still be several hundred years and many developments later, however, before the rules for this would eventually be worked out, and the troubadours of this time would suffice to sing their madrigals ignorant of it.

It is to the unlikely role of the Protestant Reformation that we arguably owe the emergence of Pop Music. Martin Luther, a man of great religious conviction, was also a great lover of music who, far from being the repressed Protestant preacher we might associate with Footloose, believed that music was meant to taken out of the choir-boy pews and be sung by the entire congregation. This led to the development of the Protestant hymn, an easily-learned, melodic song which could be taken up by just about anybody with a voice and a hymnal. Along with great advances in harmonic theory the stage was set for the Baroque era, which many people see as the starting point of Western Classical music. It should also be remembered that the development of the printing press in the mid-1400’s by Johannes Gutenberg further helped to spread written music throughout Europe. One also cannot say enough (in half of an extremely inadequate paragraph) about the development of opera in 1600. It is this sublime Italian combination of dramatic text (libretto) set to music – originally conceived, incidentally, with the help of Vincenzo Galilei, father of famed astronomer Galileo, as a revitalization of the Greek ideal of music accompanying theatre – that would greatly define the pinnacle of Western music from that time on. Although pages could be written about opera’s influence on our perception of entertainment itself, the music video, Broadway (and Hollywood) musicals, the arena-rock concert and the Superbowl half-time show are only a few examples of its lasting influence upon our popular culture.

We now come to two key developments whose evolutions are so closely interconnected so as to be almost inseparable, and whose dissemination in our culture is so complete that it necessitates pointing out for people to even notice them – the invention of the piano forte and Even Musical Temperament. For those musically illiterate among you, allow yourself time to breathe but let it be one of relief rather than dread for these topics are not nearly as daunting as they might sound.

Up until this point the favored instrument of composition had been the harpsichord, a plucked instrument incapable of any dynamic gradation – either you were loud, or you were soft. In 1709 an Italian in the employment of Ferdinando de Medici named Bartolomeo Cristofori drew up plans for what he simply called gravicembalo col piano e forte, or the “big harpsichord with soft and loud” (our modern word for piano simply means soft), an instrument whose strings were struck by a balanced hammer mechanism rather than a plucked by a plectrum. The gradients in dynamic expressivity afforded by this allowed composers to write works of an emotional content hitherto unimagined, and consequently ushered in the Classical period. This new-found emphasis on musical expressivity would eventually lead to Beethoven and the Romantic era, a period in which music (and art) finally began to be seen as acts of personal expression rather than ones of religious devotion or duty to a head of state. The idea of music as self-expression is so permeating an ideal of our modern culture that it is difficult to think of it as anything else, however you might say we have Crostofori’s big harpsichord to thank for this.

By comparison the solution of musical temperament has often taken the backseat alongside such grandiose developments as opera and the piano-forte, perhaps rightly so as it continues to be an on-going argument to this day. That our modern tuning system is actually “out of tune” is not apparent to the average listener. Unfortunately, like finally seeing the animal-shape in an abstract computer-generated pattern, once you’ve noticed it you will always notice it. Simply put, sometime in the mid-1800’s it was decided to make the intervals between notes on the piano of a perfectly even from one another – a C# would be perfectly in-between C and D. That this so completely obvious to a modern musician is an illustration of how much we’ve embraced this idea. However prior to this even-tuning, or Even-Temperament as it is known, a piano was restricted to playing in certain keys, mainly keys such as C with little or no accidentals. Transpose a piece to, say, the key of B and you were in for some discordant trouble. To understand the reason for this would take more explaining and mathematical diagrams than I have time for, but suffice it to say the tuning method invented by Pythagoras was not as divinely perfect as we had hoped. To compensate for this it was decided to tune all the notes on a piano except for the octave a little out of tune, but not out of tune enough for the general public to notice. The result was our new-found ability to play fearlessly in any key, and lo! we have jazz. But at what price? Well it may be too early to say, but it has been postulated that we children of the modern age are so used to hearing music out of tune that we simply no longer take true pitches into our consideration, and have perhaps lost one of the great beauties of harmonic balance for eternity. And listening to modern rock radio would certainly attest to that.

To summarize the many stages of development which led to our modern era in so brief a space is next to impossible. We miss out on the perfection of the valve system for horns and winds, the evolution of the lute into the guitar, the development of the musical virtuoso, and subsequently the sonata form; even the invention of the saxophone. But it is necessary to skip all these wonderful details in order to focus on one single great development which perhaps signaled beginning of the end of pure music – the invention of recorded music. It is perhaps more than anything our ability to not have to leave our beds, let alone our chairs or living rooms in order to hear music or have it played for us that has led to our current level of ambiguity and disaffectedness as listeners. Before the phonograph there were concerts, and then there was the amateur – that person who didn’t have to be great at what they did, but did it because they loved it. Could you even imagine that in order to hear your favorite Beatles song you would have to go to a piano and play it? No, because to our modern minds the artist and their recording is inseparable. If you hear someone playing Hey Jude in a piano bar, you’re not really hearing Hey Jude! No, you would have to hear played back that noise-shadow imprinted onto plastic by George Martin of the Beatles performing Hey Jude in 1969 at Abbey Road studios – that is Hey Jude. Anything else is simply an inept cover, even if it were the Beatles covering it themselves!

This association of music with a recording rather than a live performance, along with the loss of the average listener to be capable of playing the music they want to listen to and the absence of a piano in every average middle-class household, is probably the most defining aspect of our less-than-definitive musical age. No, it is not the atrocious-sounding electric guitar, no it isn’t those annoying drum machines, no, not those synthesizers that are impossible to comprehend or even those computers you see everywhere these days. Rather, the demise of our need to work for music, to have a certain affinity to it, whether it be seeing it performed for us by apt musicians or listening to a family member reading it out of a song book, which makes us the consummate insatiable consumer and gives way our need for more and more choice and diversity. Like a glutton who has overstuffed themselves past the point which their stomach-linings have bloated outward, so our musical-ears are overstuffed with variations without ever paying attention to theme, obsessed with consumption without any focus on merit. And we will continue to break off chunks of the pure form and dilute it with any whim available simply because it is available, for there is no longer any actual activity associated with our ability to appreciate.

There is only one last major development to mention, and I’m sure that for those stalwart defenders of rock music it is the only one worthy of consideration – electric instruments. Whether this is actually a development or simply a conclusion we may be too close inside to actually determine. As we are speaking of something concurrent to the present, when everyone who owns a Macintosh has a virtual recording studio and the idea of an Enlightened Amateur may slowly be being resurrected, we cannot perceive it with objectivity or purity of understanding and so are best leaving that to our grandchildren."

tuning method invented by Pythagoras was not as divinely perfect

To digress..... Pythagoras is actually 100% perfect....
It's Bach's well-tempered keyboard which isn't perfect....

In nature sound is a spiral....
Take a close look at a spiral, a sea-shell....
It spirals around... but there is also another curve to it...
each 12 o'clk is slightly out to the one on the spiral arm below it.

This is the problem.... In nature Octaves don't exactly match up...
They are always just a little ahead of each other, a little further up the
spiral.... As a spiral progresses it gets tighter and changes... It's not
simple like one of those springs u let go down stairs... it's pointy and
curved...

But....

We need Bach's well-tempered keyboard otherwise as said above you
can't play in different keys and bands need to tune up different each time
they do.

Meaning....

We've pushed out all the old cultural tunings.... Listen to a Gypsie band, it
sounds odd.... That's because half the instruments are thinking like they
were 400 years ago... They are playing odd local cultural scales and
tunings... While the piano accordian is playing Bach's well-tempered
tuning.

However....

Here comes Miles.... George Russell... and Coltrane...
Russell and Miles turned the classical theory upside-down, using 5ths
rather than 4ths working from Lydian it turns out the temperment is
actually closer to natural sound... by 99/100 cent... Coltrane on the other
hand used another method of stacks of maj & min 3rds to get the same
result.

So 300 years of doing it "wrong" has for many somewhat changed now-a-
days.... With modern Jazz theory....

but all this is beside the point

"Play what you feel!"

That being said...
Many do say you need to learn the rules before you can break them....

-Ben

btw not to get completely off the point... but interesting none-the-less...
Indian music (and others) gets past this by using micro-tones.... Half
a semi-tone.... If you play a bunch of these quickly it's a hell of a lot
smother than playing cromatically up a keyboard. Generally they use
them by vibrato, and hover around a target note.... Kinda does away with
the problems and lets them just "float" around a true natural Pythagoras
scale.

Anyway I'm sure I've already helped this go way beyond "Should I learn music"

-Ben

Interesting bit of potted music theory/history/physics there Yellow, really, thanks

The spiral thing is hard to grasp.... but probably the best example....

http://www.guggenheim.org/image_archive/index.html

The Guggenheim Museum in New York is a bit controversial.

Many think it's ugly and looks uneven....
It looks like it's tilting and it's going to fall over....

In reality it's actually a spiral and perfectly balanced so all the load is
spread evenly..... Kinda like Pythagorean approach to music/sound. It's
perfect, it's absolutely perfect.... but it looks odd and is hard to work with.


To bring this back to where it started tho.....

Best thing you can learn is how to Harmonise a Major scale...
and play chords which are all part of the same scale.

Might seem like a bit of effort on my part.... but I need the revision...

Terminology

T = Tone
S = Semi-tone
(All MAJOR scales have same formula of semi-tone/tone spacing)

Chromatic scale (all the notes black and white)

C = Unison = Same note
C#/Db = Minor 2nd (flat 2nd)
D = Major 2nd
D#/Eb = Minor 3rd (flat 3rd)
E = Major 3rd
(no black note between (C MAJOR is keyboards "default")
F = Perfect 4th
F#/Gb = Suspended 4th (Diminished 5th) (Sharp 4th, Flat 5th) (Tritone) (dead center)
G = Perfect 5th
G#/Ab = Minor 6th
A = Major 6th
A#/Bb = Dominant 7th
B = Major 7th
(no black note between (C MAJOR is keyboards "default")
C = Octave/Unison

Take a C Major scale.

Notes: C D E F G A B C
Intervals: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1
Steps: T T S T T T S

Build chords off each interval. (Skip every second note)

C E G B
D F A C
E G B D
F A C E
G B D F
A C E G
B D F A

Now using the interval names and the semi-tone gaps we can get names
for all these notes and see how they conform to chord types..... Research
this more... I'll just throw up the guts of it... This is the old Ionian way of doing it.... Bit more common then Lydian theory....

C E G B
E = Major 3rd
G = Perfect 5th
B = Major 7th
Major 7th Chord

D F A C
F = Minor 3rd (A Major 3rd in D would be F#, which isn't in C Major)
A = Perfect 5th
C = Dominant 7th (A Major 7th in D would be C#, which isn't in C Major)
Minor 7th Chord

E G B D
G = Minor 3rd
B = Perfect 5th
D = Dominant 7th
Minor 7th Chord

F A C E
A = Major 3rd
C = Perfect 5th
E = Major 7th
Major 7th Chord

G B D F
B = Major 3rd
D = Perfect 5th
F = Dominant 7th
Dominant 7th Chord

A C E G
C = Minor 3rd
E = Perfect 5th
G = Dominant 7th
Minor 7th Chord

B D F A
D = Minor 3rd
F = Diminished 5th
A = Dominant 7th
Minor 7 Flat 5 (Half-Diminished) Chord

So....

Chord 1: Major 7th
Chord 2: Minor 7th
Chord 3: Minor 7th
Chord 4: Major 7th
Chord 5: Dominant 7th
Chord 6: Minor 7th
Chord 7: Minor 7th b5 (Half-Diminished)

You can now choose chords from this harmonisation and they will all be perfect relatives of the original scale that was harmonised.

This will give you every single Beatles song ever written and 90% of
western music.

So now. It follows that each Chord has a Scale which represents it best...

C D E F G A B C
D E F G A B C D
E F G A B C D E
F G A B C D E F
G A B C D E F G
A B C D E F G A
B C D E F G A B

These are the "Modes" of C Major (Ionian)...
You can do the same for any other Major scale... Say D Major which has
2 sharps, F# and C#.... It would all be the same except you're no longer
dealing with just white keys....

Ionian
C D E F G A B C
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1
T T S T T T S

Dorian
D E F G A B C D
1 2 b3 4 5 6 b7 1
T S T T T S T

Phrygian
E F G A B C D E
1 b2 b3 4 5 b6 b7 1
S T T T S T T

Lydian
F G A B C D E F
1 2 3 #4 5 6 7 1
T T T S T T S

Mixo-Lydian
G A B C D E F G
1 2 3 4 5 6 b7 1
T T S T T S T

Aeolian
A B C D E F G A
1 2 b3 4 5 b6 b7 1
T S T T S T T

Locrian
B C D E F G A B
1 b2 b3 4 5 b6 b7 1
S T T S T T T

If you get into it.... These numbers will run thru your head until you know
them instantly and can call on them mid-solo to pull out the part you're
aiming for...

Ionian
A straight Major scale, simple.

Dorian
A good substitute for Natural Minor (Aeolian), funky, solo friendly.

Phrygian
Hard to get at first, b2 makes it sound odd... Makes for lots of fun.

Lydian
Miles and Russell say this is the true "root" mode, a whole nuther story.
It's Major, but the #4 gives it a Tritone, which makes it more balanced.

Mixo-Lydian
Major with a b7... Great for funk bass-lines.... Being a V (5) chord mode it
turns around into Ionian or Lydian very well.

Aeolian
Natural Minor.... like the Major of the Minor world... Relative Minor to the
Major key, they go hand in hand.

Locrian
Another hard one to get at first, b2 makes it sound odd, starting on a
semi-tone gap really can throw you.... but once you "get it" the b2 b7
combo give you a lot of solo options for making some cool lines.


THEN......

The 6th mode... Aeolian represents "Natural Minor"...
A is the "Relative" minor to C Major.... Same for all keys... the 6th...

Harmonic Minor....

Is simply the Natural Minor with a Major 7th.
This gives you a lot of gypsie, indian, ethnic sounds.

You can also harmonise the Harmonic Minor scale as you would a Major
scale to come up with chords such as Fully-Diminished (double flat 7th)
etc. Personally I love 4th mode harmonic minor and 6th (gives a
major/minor combo sound)

A B C D E F G# A
1 2 b3 4 5 b6 7 1

Melodic Minor..... When you learn this generally you play Melodic minor
on the way up and Natural minor on the way down.... In the end you look
at it as containing all the notes (too many for an 8 note scale)

A B C D E F F# G G# A
1 2 b3 4 5 b6 6 b7 7 1

Blues (Minor Pentatonic)...

There are MANY pentatonic (5 note) scales, basically every small ethnic
sound is some form on pentatonic.

A C D (Eb) E G A
1 b3 4 (b5) 5 b7 1

The flat 5th is the "Blues Note" without it... It's just "Minor Pentatonic" with
it, it's "Blues Scale"... Probably the easiest point to start with improv, it
fits easy into most things and gives you some freedom from the major
scale.

Now turn it around (if it's a 6th mode.... it's 3rd is the Major).... and you
have....

Major Pentatonic.

C D E G A C
1 2 3 5 6 1

This sounds "Country"... you can play modes of it for more sounds.... but
generally lots of "Major" "Country" kinda fun to be had here.

Then you have all your modes of Harmonic Minor, Altered scale, other
symetrical scales, the explaination of how a Major scale works using
Upper and Lower tetra-chords and so on. Then you have Carnatic
Melakartha which is the Indian classical method of a grid of upper and
lower tetra-chords that can be combined as needed to create 42 classical
scales... then you have... then you have.... Lydian Chromatic Theory (my
fav)... etc etc etc.

"Play what you feel!"

-Ben

Before I go....

Cycle of 5ths....

1 5 2 6 3 7 4 1
or
1 4 7 3 6 2 5 1

Which includes the classic "6251 turn around"...

In C Major....

1 = C Major 7th
5 = G 7th
2 = D Minor 7th
6 = A Minor 7th
3 = E Minor 7th
7 = B Minor 7th b 5
4 = F Major (sus 4)
1 = C Major 7th

or

1 = C Major 7th
4 = F Major (sus 4)
7 = B Minor 7th b 5
3 = E Minor 7th
6 = A Minor 7th
2 = D Minor 7th
5 = G 7th
1 = C Major 7th

Sus = Suspended = #4 = Lydian

Take parts out, loop parts, play it from end to end etc etc...

Notice the 5 - 1 ... G 7th to C Major 7th....
This is the classic... AMEN... sound.... a "Perfect Cadence"
Resolution doesn't get any more perfect then 5ths.

Now you truely have every Beatles song ever written

-Ben

flat 5ths = I want to scare mum




and I'm not cleaning up my bedroom

aaaah the legendary TONE OF DISjunction ! It will bite you on the ass if you give it a chance. Legend has it that propper use leads to complete enlightenment. good luck.