Music Theory for Electronic Music Producers

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to this Music Theory for Electronic Producers course. My name is Thomas George. I'm a music producer and have taught thousands of students all around the world. So this course is for anyone that is a music producer and they want to rapidly improve their music with a bit of music theory. So what I've done is I've actually filmed this lecture as one of the latest lectures and I'll give you a quick overview now of what you're going to learn onscreen with me. We're going to start off by looking at major scales then we're going to look at Minor scales, Major chords, Minor chords, Diminished chords, Chord Progressions, Modulation, Relative majors, Relative minors, Modes, Song analysis, Track deconstruction. I'm also going to show you how to write a song from a Drumbeat, how to write a song from a Chord Progression, how to write a song from a melody, also how to write melodies, how to write harmonies, how to work out keys and scales and pentatonic scales and much much more. So let's get started and I'll see you in the first lecture. 2. Keyboard Layout and Octaves: Hello and welcome to this first lecture. This lecture is all about the keyboard layout in our Digital audio workstation. So in the DAW we should have a piano roll editor. So which ever DAW you use it doesn't really matter. They all will have a Piano Roll Editor. For now I'm going to demonstrate is Abelton live 9, But if you're using say Cubase, Pro Tools, Logic Pro, or maybe FL studio, they will all have a Piano Roll Editor. So this along side here is our piano roll editor and so this actually is a keyboard. So if you flip that it's on this side, it has the notes of a keyboard and if we extend this out, it looked very similar to a piano. So all that really done is chop this off here because the way it's actually shaped by this is for the hands of a piano so you can play certain parts are just chopped off and put it on its side. So we actually had the names of the notes, whenever we hover over these notes in our digital audio workstation. So here you can see I've got C 3, C#3, D, D#3 etc.. The white notes go from A to G and then repeat but let's start on C, makes more sense, if we start on C. So go C D E F G. Then repeat the alphabet so A B C and just repeats all the way up the octave. Notice here that C, has this black notes actually has two black notes and then has a pattern of three black notes. So just like there are remember, the pattern of two then the pattern of three and just to the left of the pattern of two you will find a C. So we do have these notes these black ones as well. So in between, we can sharpen or flats, a sharpen in basically means just a little bit higher and flatten just means a little bit lower. So, this one here will be a C sharp because a little bit higher than a C or D flat because it's a little bit lower than a D. Same with a D. So we have a D sharp or an E flat because it's a little bit lower. We don't have any sharps or flats between E or F and the same between B and C, so between B and C there's no sharps and flats and E and F. So just remember that there isn't an F flat or an E sharp and there isn't a B sharp or a C flat. Okay now, let's have a look at what middle C actually is. You might have heard that term middle C. It doesn't really make any sense to start with middle C. It does on a piano because it's in the middle of the piano. But when we look at our digital audio workstation we can go really low and really high and there isn't really a middle C. But we do refer to something called a middle C all the time. So it's good to know what a middle C actually is. So the middle C is the C4. Then below this we have a C3, below this we have a C2, below this we have a C1. We can even get C0, C negative 1, C negative 2 if we're doing some really low base stuff and it goes up again C5, C6, C7, C8. So looking at our digital audio workstation, you can find the C4 here because it just says C4, ans this here is our middle C. You might hear the term octave as well. So the term octave will get thrown around a lot. An octave is basically this notes but the pattern higher or lower. So, if we're on C4 if we say an octave higher this will mean C5, or if we are on C4, this will be an octave lower, this will mean C3. So it's the same pattern. Just remember two blocks of the black notes in the three blocks of the black notes, and then it repeats through octaves. Like I said earlier, the two blocks of black notes just to the left of this, you'll find a C. And it goes up C D E F G and then repeats A B C or the A actually repeats so it goes from A to G. Most of the time you think about it starting with C which will have a look at later on. But just remember to start at C if you are new to Music Theory in Electronic Music Production. Some octave, if we look at the physics is just, half the length of the wave so the C5 as half the length of C4 and C4 is half the length of C3 etc. The easiest way to describe this is to look at a guitar. So this is a guitar here. If we look on the strings exactly half way will be the 12th fret and this 12th fret is an octave higher of one of the strings because we quite literally just chopping the string in half to make it half a length which will make an octave and these octaves fit perfectly and can be used lots of different music especially bass lines, if you ever stuck a stick on an octave and that will sound perfect. So if we look at these waves here, one below is an octave higher. It's just a half a length really and it's because half a length the waves are twice as much. So this will create an octave. So in this lecture, we've had a look at the keyboard on our Digital audio workstation. What the Piano Roll actually is. So we have the notes up here and across, we have time so just remember it's just a different way of writing music. And these are the notes. And this is time so when we go across we have a time value and a note value. We've also had a look at the names of the notes. So which these are actually called. So just remember it goes from A to G and then repeats. Also had look at middle C which is also C4. And then we've had the look up octaves. Just going to play a few octaves now. I just threw this together on Abelton live 9. It's just a few octaves played on a synthesizer. You can create some cool rhythms and beats and bass lines just through octaves really, it's quite simple. So this is a rhythm I just threw together. I typed in on the Piano Roll Editor, I just used just a little pencil tool and drew them. And this just allows you to create a nice sounding and a rhythmic symph sound just with octaves. You don't have to overcomplicate stuff if you're new to music theory. I recommend just starting with octaves. Just hearing what this sounds like. I think of the interval of somewhere over the rainbow. As an octave so some, so there's different patterns you can think of or you can hear a note. You know what interval is. Intervals basically just the distance between the notes. So that's the easiest way I thought of so. You can even put this in down octave. You can hear the interval again. Two octaves down or one octave up. So there are loads of different patterns we can actually use remember set at intervals. But of course, on our Digital audio workstation, it even tell us as we can see on the left here which notes were actually hover, we are actually hovering over. So here we have C3 and goingup we have C5 and C4. We can easily notice these octaves if you train your ear. Let's just play this again. So you can go through it just change this around as long as you stick to octaves, it not really going to go wrong but you can put it in any octave with it within reason. Obviously, if you put in C minors 5, it might be too low. Or C9 it might be too high. We can just bash in a few of these really quickly just to get some kind of octaves in really to create a nice interesting sound, we can't go wrong. So definitely start off with octaves If you are new music theory. . . . So I hope you found it useful in this first lecture. Just remember the octaves. Easy way to start making music and then just remember the two black notes till left of this, you will find C. And this pattern just repeats two black notes, three black notes, and then repeats. So thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one. 3. Basic Music Theory Terms: Hello. In this lecture, we're going to be looking at some common music terms. So if you are brand new to making music, music theory, and music production, I am sure this lecture could really help you out. If you've been in writing music for quite a while you know a lot of these terms maybe just skip this lecture. So these are the terms we are going to be looking at Pitch, Scales, Chords, Rhythms, Melody, Harmony, and Intervals. So if you collaborate with musicians or producers these terms will be thrown around quite a lot, and generally they will expect you to know what these terms mean. So first of all we have Pitch. This is basically where the note is. Is it high? Is it low? So if we have a low note generally this is a low pitch and if we have a high note generally this is a high pitch. So this note here you can hear a quite low as a lower-pitched than these notes and this note up here as a higher pitch, and both of the notes. The high pitched just means it sounds high, low pitch means it sounds low. Next we have Scale. So a scale is just a pattern or sequence of notes that fits a certain pattern of certain scale, also call Mode is a different type of scale we're going to be looking at later on. But for now, just remember scale as a pattern of notes. When writing music, we don't have to stick to a scale we can do basically whatever we want. But if you are brand new to write music and music theory, I recommend just sticking to a scale. So in the left here, we have a C major scale. On the right, we have a C minor scale. It both sound slightly different. If you want to stick to a C major scale. It basically just means just use these notes and if you want to stick to a C minor scale it basically means just these these notes. That's what a scale is. It's just a series of notes that fit in a pattern. There are lots of different types. Like I said about Modes which we will look at later on. But for now, the main ones really want to worry about a major scale and minor scale. Next we have Chord. Chord is basically just two or more notes. That's all it really is. The most common type of chord it's called a Triad which is three notes which is usually the root, the third and a fifth of the scale. So if you look at the scale, it will be the root note, the third note, and the fifth but it depends on where you are in the scale which note you start on but generally, a Chord is two or more notes. You can have a chord with 10 notes, you can have a chord with just 2 notes. Okay, next is Rhythm. And Rhythm is basically just a sequence or arrangements of sounds and silences. So let's go back into Abelton live just delete this. So Rhythm like I said a sequence with tones or notes and also silences. I don't have to be pitched notes you can get a rhythm on a drum kit for example or different drums. You can get a rhythm on pitch notes like a Piano. So let's just play this and this is a rhythm you can see there's different notes or tones or sounds and then there's also gaps or silences. So that's the Rhythm. You can change the Rhythm. You can move it around. "Music" And that's all a rhythm is. I'm sure you've heard this hundred, thousands maybe even millions of times. Next is a Melody. And the Melody is a series of tones or notes that creates the pattern. So let's go in to Abelton live again. It's a melody a series of notes or tones. So it could be. A lot of the time melodies do resolve so it will go down to the starting note of the chord. But not always. There's no real golden rule for this. Generally we do like to resolve melodies. So this could be a melody. A lot of the time melodies are repetitive and they generally do fit a pattern. And this is kind of an overall term of a melody that have to be Key, that have to be in Scale that there always have to repeat. But the melody is generally a pattern that's pretty much what it is and like I said it normally resolves if you get into more experimental music might not want to resolve your melodies but if you're starting off I would recommend they can go melodies resolve the key or the chord. Next we have Harmony. This is quite similar to chord. It's really one or more note being played simultaneously. So one or more note being played at the same time and this will create a harmony. So if we have this note here which is a C, we could have a harmony of an octave which is just the same note but up in a different octave here. So you have C2 and an octave above is C3. So a real simple harmony is just an octave above. So I can just drag all these or copy these over or draw them in again up in an octave. We have this one here which is an E, and the ends of C, I don't have to have the octave all these notes. I can choose different harmonies. So this one here could and this note here could be changed to say a G here and this will create another harmony. It's basically just two notes or more being played simultaneously and this will create a different harmony. That's a harmony, similar to a chord. But harmony can be use and the melody and other instruments too. Intervals is a distance between two notes. So if we go back to Abelton. So this is the interval of an octave as you'll see here it says C2, this is C3, octave different so that is an interval of an octave. Here we have C to E. Which is an interval of a major third. And here again, we have E to G which is an interval of a minor third. Don't worry about the major and minor differences now. Just remember an interval is a difference between the two notes so neatly one is this interval is an octave. You can hear it here. That's interval and this one here, this is the interval, and this is the interval. That's all it really means. These are basically the terms. S we have Pitch which is basically the high notes, the low notes. Scales, a pattern or sequence of notes and generally we try and fit in the scale and writing music. But you can always try new stuff. You can always experiment. A chord is two or more notes, a Rhythm is just a sequence with some kind of sound and silence, Melody is a pattern or sequence of notes, a Harmony is one or more two or more note being played at the same time, Interval is a distance between the notes. And these are kind of the main terms that are going to be throwing around in this course and also when you collaborate with other musicians or producers. These is of common terms really, we're not going to be looking at any Italian terms like crescendo or diminuendo anything that's more just these normal terms to be using when producing music and writing music with of a musicians or producers. So thank you for watching this lecture. Hope you found it useful. I hope you understand some of the most common terms that will be used in this course and also in writing music of other musicians and producers. 4. Working out Major Scales: Hello and welcome to this lecture. In this lecture, we're going to be looking at major scales and playing in key. You may have heard this term. Are you playing in scale? Are you playing in key? A few times what it basically means is there's a structure of music and western music any way I have playing in the 12 tones or 12 notes of the scale. So if we look at the keyboard and you count from C to C. One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve there's 12 of these notes including the black notes, and each one of these has a separate key. At the moment, we're just going to look at major scales, and later on we're have a look at minor scales. So we have 12 of these notes here and we can actually work at a major scale for each one of these notes. So if you're just starting off I recommend just sticking in the key or sticking in the major scale for now. And when you get more advanced you can try minor scales and also changing scales and changing key for writng your song. But for now, let's just start with major scales. And the way we do this the way we work it out by using this pattern here TTSTTTS. You might be thinking what TTSTTTS and TTSTTTS is Tone Tone Semitone Tone Tone Tone Semitone. A tone is two notes. So if we look at C here, two notes above C so go up one that's C sharp or D flat. But let's call that C sharp for now. So, one C Sharp goes up to D, so that is a tone above, so D is a tone above C and a semitone is just up one. So C sharp is a semitone above C. So each one of these will give us the name of the note that we have in our scale so if we go up Tone Tone Semitone Tone Tone Tone Semitone, we can go through these notes and actually work out what notes we need to use in our major scale. This only works for major scales. We will look at minor scales later on but let's just stick with major scales for now. So let's open up a word document and let's work out first of all, let's do C major. So we start with C. Then we go up a tone that says remember to count to one-two. Now we have got D. Okay, so we've got other second note. Now we need to go up another tone. One two and we've got E. So far we've got C D and E by just going go up two tones. Let's write just down E. Then going along need to go up a semitone. So a semitone from E is just one note and notice there's no black note here so it just goes to F. Then we need to go along a tone. This tone here. This T one two. That's G Got another tone here one two A. We have another tone here one-two B and then a semi-tone and there's no black note between B and C. So it just goes straight to C. So you can make a little document like this that just say what's actually going on. So C major scale from work in the up C D E F G A B. We can even go on to a digital audio workstation and just type the same, you have to hear a major scale. You do need to train your ears to recognize what a major scale sounds like. So C let's put up here. D, and a B. We finish with the C as well just to finish off some sounds that we can play this boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. And this is a major scale boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. This is all just from this pattern of tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semitone. You do have to go through and work this out for yourself. One thing me saying saying it but you really have to just train your ear and realize what a major scale actually is. Even we don't have to just to say we could start on D E F G A B or even these sharps and flats in-between. So now let's go up to D. So let's go up a tone. Remember. So one two. So a tone is counting two semitones or two notes. So we've got D, and then we've got another tone. So one two and they're sharp. Remember we have to count the black notes as well. So we've got D E and now F sharp, and now we have to count semi-tone F sharp and G, and now we have to count a tone which is A, another tone which is B, another tone So it's to of this one-two just go up to the C sharp here and now semi-tone which is D. So go through that again. So count one two one two. The first tone. One two. The second tone. One for the semi-tone here. One two for the same of the tone one-two the tone, one-two up to the sharp for the tone and then one semitone to finish back it down to D. So you can write this in our word documents right in D Major if you remember it was D then E and F, we can use a sharp. As kind of a hash tag. We can use a flat as a B as well. Little B and when G A B and there is a C sharp, and then finished on a D, we want to write D Or we can just leave now in the last note. We can also go into a digital audio workstation and just type the same. Or an even easier way if you want to be really cheeky. You can just grab it all and just move up the tone because the pattern is the same for every single major scale so if you look up here D E F sharp G A B C sharp so the notes have changed and the pattern actually fits exactly what we had by dragging little up. Alternatively, we can grow go in, and actually, just draw the same. Let's have a listen to this I am going to add the D on the end just a kind of finish off. So it sounds like scale. That's a D major scale in go through all the keys here to work this out just by using this pattern. t t s t t t s. One little cheeky thing you can do is you can just put in one scale and your digital audio workstation for example. This is the pattern of a major scale. You can drag this down say to a B. You might not know a B major scale is but now you will just got a B, C sharp, a D sharp, E, F sharp a G sharp and A sharp and a B. But I do recommend going through a working this out just so your brain will kind of remember the different notes of the scale. If you ever get stuck you don't know what notes will fit in the scale and it's a major scale remember. Use the Putten tone tone semi tone tone tone tone semi-tone. This works on the black notes as well as the white notes. Every single notes. Or in this 12 tone scale. This is basically the Western music 12 tones, of course Indian music and of a world, music do use different types of tones and scales. But for this we're just going to be looking at the Western 12 tones. It's called 12 tones because with one two three four five six seven eight nine 10 11 12 notes in an Octave from C to C just 12 notes there, and this is the pattern we use to work at a major scale. So just try and remember this t t s t t t s so two t s three t s tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semi-tone, and that way you can work out all the notes in a major scale. Hope this helps and remember if you've just started out writing music I would just stick to the notes in the key and you get more advanced. Or when you continued through these lectures you can start to use more unusual notes more unusual chords but to start with just stick with the notes in the scale. So thank you for watching. I hope you found this useful and I'll see you in the next lecture. 5. Perfect 5ths: Hello, this lecture is all about fifth's and perfect fifths. A fifth is just the fifth note of a chord or the fifth note of the root note. The root note is basically just the starting note the chord note. So if you're in C this is the root note, Playing a C chord. And we want to find the fifth. We just go up four notes find the fifth note of the scale. So C is 1 D is two E is three F is four and G is five. If you don't know the names of the notes in the scale for example we're starting on G. You might not know the G scale the G major or the G minor scale, and you want to find the Fifth. We can go up seven semitones. A semitone it's just one of these notes are black note or a white note. So let's go up seven semitones one two three four five six. And seven. So the D is the fifth of G. Let's try on a one two three four five six seven. So the E is the fifth of A. It's quite simple to do, who Using a major scale or minor scale, a major chord, a minor chord. The fifth is the same it's called The Perfect fifth because it pretty much sounds perfect. It's great for chords and harmonies and it's really simple to work out. If you don't actually know the notes of the scale just use the seven semitones formula to find the fifth. If you don't quite get it right and you get a little bit lower it can sound horrible so make sure you count the right amounts. For example when a A if you don't hear an E you hit any flat or a D sharp, can sound quite bad this can be commonly known as a tritone augmented fourth or a diminished fifth and this is quite advanced harmony. If you want to use these horrible sounding notes to create something that can work in your music. But for now let's just forget about that. Basically an augmented fourth is a fourth note so a D of the A but a bit bigger so it's a D sharp or diminished fifth which is the E a bit smaller. So it's a D sharp or any flat. But for now let's just look at fifths because fifths are really great to start from. Because the Basically just sound perfect. Which is why it's called a perfect fifth. So let's go into our digital audio workstation. and let's type a C and let's type in a D and let's type in a G. Okay, now we need to find the fifth of a C, if you remember a C major scale. It's a G. But let's actually count up seven semitones just so we get used to doing this. One two three four five six seven so it's a G and let's do the same of D. One two three four five six seven. So that's an A and let's do the same with G. One two three four five six seven. So that's a D. Let's hear this back. So that's the sound of a fifth. You really have to train your ear to know their sound. One thing I like to do is just play the note and trying singing what I actually want. And a fifth. It's actually the same as the Star Wars film so bum bum, and then go delidada So. So just remember the Star Wars film to find a ffifth. It's quite easy to do, so as little patterns for each of the notes from fourth, I like to think of hear comes of the Bride. So it's bum bum bum bum and the fifth Star Was just lows of a ones as well, we go over later and ssix, my bunny fell into the ocean. And a few others as well. But that's basically how you can work it out just think of the Star Wars film. If you need to write in by ear. If you can't actually work out what you want to just train your ears. Think of the Star Wars film because that is the interval of a fifth. Or you can just count seven semitones. Want two three four five six seven. Or the fifth note of the scale. If you know the key. So, for example, D Major you go back to the lecture all about working at major scales, you goes D E F sharp G A, so D E F sharp G A. So we can work at the fifth there and G the fifth of the scale is G and A B C D. It,s pretty much the same as a C but it's gone F sharp instead of an F. But let's not worry about that for now. Let's just look at fifths. The fifths are really easy ways of just finding some nice harmony. So if you're a bit stuck. You can't go wrong with a fifth an octave. So the octave of C is obviously the same note above. Same with a A. So the D. And also the G hear. So we have to look at this now here. Just put it up above an octave it's that easy. Let's hit this back. This is just a Roots which is the start note and the bottom note for the chord. The G which is the fifth of the C. and the root as well. So if you stuck just start off a root and fifths and then we're going to continue in this course and look at some more complex harmony. But for now to start writing with roots and fifths is is a great starting point is called the perfect fifth because it is quite perfect. A works of major scales and minor scales. So thank you for watching this lecture. I hope you find it useful, in this letter we've just gone through how to actually work out a fifth, we can do it by counting up to the fifth note of the scale. If you know the scale. If you don't know the scale can count up seven semitones. All we can think of the Star Wars film to actually do it by ear. 6. The 3rd: Okay, now we're going to have a look at the third. So the third is really the most important thing that determines a chord whatever it's a major chord or a minor chord. The roots of the first note of the chord and the fifth can be the same in a major chord and a minor chord. But the third depending what type of third it is already determine if it's a major chord or a minor chord. We do get minor thirds and major thirds. Well let's go back to this pattern. We looked at previously which is tone tone semi tone tone tone tone semi-tone and this is the easiest way to actually work out what our third is for the key that we're in. Remember that tone is two notes and a semitone is just one notes. So that includes the black notes which means chromatically and chromatically basically means all the notes that there are in front of us. So Western music chromatically there's 12 notes so C C sharp D flat D D sharp E flat E etc.. All of these notes here. Let's go it to our Digital audio workstation and let's start on C and write out chromatically. What there actually is I have got all these notes here. But if you want to use the pattern of tone tone semi-tone tone tone semi-tone. We were actually need to work this out in our Digital audio workstation, So let's start on C and let's go up one tone. One two, then another tone one two then a semitone. Remember our pattern tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone, so semi-tone gets this to tone then a tone to g a tone one two A and then a tone to be and then semi-tone to C. So these are all the notes in C Major. So you can drag this pattern to say D. And this is all the notes in D major. This is great in our piano roll to actually just drag the pattern around. If this was us actually playing this on the piano to transpose this which basically means move to a different key be a lot harder than just dragging it around. We have to know what notes are in the scale. This pattern here is quite similar to a guitar note, you have the pattern or the shape. I think guitar you can basically just transpose it by moving it up or down. But some instruments you can't do this especially some woodwind and Brashear really have to know instrument back to front but on the piano roll editor it's really easy to do. Let's go back to see though. Okay that sounds like a bit of a mess at the moment. If you hear it because it's just playing all the notes at the same time that wouldn't be very good chord it's just too muddy. Too much going on. So let's actually draw in here. As C major scale or C major chord. So we've got the roots which is the C and the third So we can just count up here. One two three. A And then the fifth for five which is the G. That's the easiest way to do it's just basically just count up. Just remember a traditional chord has the root the third and the fifth. So just the first note with that one note the next note that one note the next note. Quite simple today and this is a major or major third in middle here. If we actually drop this by one semi-tone we'll make it a minor and if we put the minor up by one semi-tone or make it a major if it's a minor though you'll notice it's this note D sharp or E flat and that's not in our scale here. So the moment let's just keep to our scale. So let's put it back to E. Another way of finding out if the chord is major or minor is to just listen to it. Listening to this. Does this sound happy or sad. It's a complete generalization but. Major Chords sound happy and minor chords sound sad. So let's hear this. That is meant to sound happy. Let's just drag this over and let's turn this into a minor. The easiest way we turn a major chord into a minor is to drop the Fed by one semitone. So this should sound happy and then should sound sad. Lets just slow this tempo down a bit. We hear it gives a different mood if you can't hit a difference at the moment don't worry. If you practice and time you be able to hear the difference. So one way you can just do it just here. Is this a major or minor. That's a sound reasonably happy. And the second one should sound reasonably sad. They should be able to tell that that's a minor. But if you can't tell at the moment don't worry. Welcome to you eventually. There is another way of actually working out our major and minor chords. And the Major a minor third of that is five and four. For major four and five for minor. That might not make any sense at the moment but it basically means five semitones and then four semitones to write in a major chord and for minor writes in four semitones and five semitones. So if you start on C we'd if we go up five, five semitones one two three four five starting on the C one two three four-five then we to the E and then including the E we would go up for one two three four. It's a G. So one two three four five. That's a C then one two three four will take us to a G. So just remember to include the starting note so one. Let's delete these and and delete this, and in a drawer in a major chord and a minor chord and one two three four five then count for one two three four. That's our major chord and now for a minor chord It's four and five. So let's counts for one two three four. One two three four five. That's a minor chord. So whatever note we start on so let's start on D. So now we're going to start on D and use this same pattern. Five and four to find a major chord or to write in the major chord and four and five for a minor chord. So these are the ways of showing you. So far the one way is five and four and four and five. The other way is to just write in all the notes in the scale then you can work out which ones you need to put in, and they have a way it's just to hear it. So let's just do this on D. So five and four one two three four five. Remember to count the first note and then four one two three four and then minor one two three four and major. Well there are five semitone one two three four five. So there should be. Major chord then there should be minor chord. So let's hear the Major and then go up into the minor. You can hear the second one does sound a lot sadder. You should be able to hear it doesn't sound as happy though it sound a bit moody compared to this one. You've probably heard Major chord and minor chord. Hundreds thousands maybe even millions of times in your life and not really realized that this is a major, the minor. Okay, we do have something called an augmented and a diminished chord. I wouldn't really worry about it too much now it's just a different type of chord. There is a pattern to is at as well. I'll just show you quickly. So augmented basically means a bit bigger. So that's five and five. Diminished means a bit smaller. That's four and four, so quickly put in diminished and an augmented chord. Let's start with the augmented. Let's go back to C delete this. So augmented is 5 and 5 1 2 3 4 5 and then 5 1 2 3 4 5. This will give a different kind of sound you might not be used to. And there are certain places we can actually use these type of chord but for now we're not really going to worry about augmented and diminished. But let's just hear this augmented chord. You can hear it doesn't sound as nice so we really do have to know a fairy to know where to put this chord now. Now let's try the diminished. So that was four and four. One two three four and Four. One two three four. Sounds a little bit odd. It can be used later on but for now. Let's just think about major and minor chords. So like I said earlier to change a minor to a major. It's Just go it go up 1 semi-tone and to change a minor to a major. Just covered that. Go away down the semi-tone. So let me just explain that in our digital audio workstation so we've got to drag this over a C. Let's make this a major one two three four five one two three four. So this is major. I want to make this a minor. All we have to do. Change the minor, it's going to down a semi-tone on the third. So remember the third note just drops one semi-tone. That will make it a minor. Now this is a minor. And if we want to make the minor a major, so change the major just go up one semi-tone. So all we have to do is get the third and pull it up semitone. And this is a major. So the difference between a major and a minor chord really is just the third. We can stack these notes as well so we can put different octaves. So we can put this C up here. I could put this G. On top. So you have a bigger sounding chord. It's just the free notes just in different orders have added an octave. That sounds a bit bigger then. So it can create different sounds especially in pop music and dance music. It really is just built around these three notes in jazz music or maybe RNB Or music with kind of thicker harmonies. It does have more notes and more chords which we're look at later but generally. If you want it to sound a bit jazzy add more notes in the chord, if you want it to sound more simple more straightforward or kind of pop music dance music I Just stick with the free notes. So the route third and the fifth. That's basically how you can work out a major chord or a minor chord. It's all based around this third, so if you go up remember five and four major. So one two three four five so C E one two three four C E and G is a major chord or major triad, triad just basically means three notes and a minor is for one two three four A C E flat one two three four five and a G so C E flat G is minor some minor triad or minor chord. That's basically how we can work out. Major Chords and minor chords. Now we go to have a look at our digital audio workstation, and now we're going to put in other chords on by writing that these notes here tone tone, semi tone, tone, tone, tone, semitone. try to remember that T T s T T. T S so two t's and a s and three t's and s tone tone, semi tone, tone, tone, tone, semi tone. So remember that we can write out all the notes in the scale, so C D E F G A B C. That's the C major scale. So if we start in the D I'm just following notes here. So remember, it's the first the First, the third, and the fifth. So 1, 2, 3, 1 ,2 ,3 ,4 ,5. Let's hear this Does that sound happy or sad? So it's the first way of working out Hopefully, that should sound a bit sad because it's a minor chord and the other way of knowing it's a minor chord is to count up one, two, three, four, so it's four and then 12345 So that's four and five and five and four is a minor, so that's a minor chord. So this is a D minor is in the scale of C Major because it's using the C major chords, but it's a D minor chord. Let's try another one. Let's start on F. So remember F third and the fifth so 1, 2, 3, so it's adding this one, which is an A, and then 12345 adding C. So according to our scale here. The route is near The third. His name on the fifth is a C. Let's hear this that sound happy or sad? Hopefully, this should sound a bit happier to you. Of course, it's a complete generalization, but this kind of like the way we can work this out also is to count up so one, two, three, four five since five between F and A. 1234, that's four semitones. Any of these notes chromatically, climatically just means all the notes. So it's 5 and 4. Let's have a look at this five and four, some major so f is a major. So we just made or wrote in F minor. Sorry D Minor and F Major and, of course, we can stack these together and we know C minor, C major as well, because that's just root chord, which is just the 1st 1st note of the chord. So let's put in these notes here. Let's start worth F major, and then there's type in the 2nd one if you remember, is called a D minor. So let's go back today it was four and 5 1234 12345 And then that's put in C, which is a major cause It's the scale of C major. 12345 1234 Let's just drag over now and play this. To be honest this, this note sounds a bit high, so you can put it down an octave. So we just find another say. Let's play this back. Sn not the best sounding chord progression, it's just a series of chords. But it works. Okay, let's put in a bass line now. So what we can do is just find this pattern for a bass line. Remember C wasn't up here C was up here before The C was up here before. That's just delete. All these notes that aren't the low ones basically. that's the easiest way of doing a bass line. So it's F, d and C. Let's just play. The bass is normally lower. So we can drop this an octave so this should be a lot lower. We can even add a bit of rhythm this just making it like some chords on the bass line just from what we did. Just working out the notes in the scale, working out the root, the third, and the fifth and then put in the different chords together. The F major, the D minor on the C major, We go back to here. Remember, we wrote out of C major scale. We could work out all the notes and all the chords that go of C Major. Of course, we can use different scales. Different keys. But for now, let's just stick with this. Let's add in the fifth. So the fifth of F. We are in C majors 12345 Or we can work out this way. So seem F major. Five and four. 12345 So it's got an A as the 3rd 1234 and C is the fifth. So F, A, C so we can use that C if our bassline as well. - And put it down. Okay, let's do a similar kind of thing with a D. Let's use this pattern. And then let's go up. Let's actually go down to the fifth. I think that sounded cool. Okay, so the fifth of D is D minor, if you remember, it's 4 and 5 but it doesn't really matter for the fifth. It's the same note for a major chord or minor chord, but let's work it out. So we got 1234 so D and F. 12345 A. So we can use the A in our bass line. So let's copy this pattern. There's A and the C, that she is. Let's use this pattern as well. The C is twice the length as you'll notice here. We'll just copy this over twice. Another thing we can do, we can just copy this over and because the A is the same for major and minor. It doesn't matter that we copied it over, it's still a G, which is the fifth. To work it out remember C Major, because it's the first chord of the scale. It's the root chord, So let's work this out. 12345 C and E 1234 the G. So a G should be our 5th. Let's copy this over again. Let's hear this with the bass line. It's not the best kind of um, pattern in the world. It's not the best chord progression, but it works. Let's add some drums in. Let's see if this That's works with the drums. Let's increase the tempo a little bit 100 bpm. But it's a way to just throw together some chords, and it fits, it's all in key, it's all in tune. The bass line with the 5th sounds fine. All I did was throw on a drum loop. I think it sounds all right. The way we did that, it's just to work out. What third was, and then we know it's a major or minor chord and to also work out all the notes in the scale with tone, tone, semi tone, tone, tone, tone, semi tome. Then you come out all the notes in the scale. After a while, you're just remember, you know, that C Major is just the white notes, and then when you go through the other scales and the other keys. You realize certain patterns, for example, D major has an f sharp instead of an F. And when you go through tone tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semi tone, you'll realize these different patterns. And, of course, because we're using the piano roll editor, you can just go through and drag these up. So let's just do this now. Let's drag this C to a D. Of course, we need to the same of with the bass. So drag all of this and find the C and drag it to a D. Now that's here this back. So it's the same pattern just a bit higher. A tone higher. which is just two semi tones or two of these notes on the side. We can do the same. Let's drag it down. Let's drag this down to an A sharp. Let's find this pattern here. Oh, and drag this down to an A sharp as well. So that's a really quick way. We can write in some chord progressions that actually work. I've seen a lot of producers try and do it by ear, which can work if your ears is trained well, you can write out the chords. You know Deadmau5 does a lot of this by here. But if you're new to music production, you're new to writing music. You will really need to know what you're actually doing. What the chord names are, what notes go well together. You need to train your ears to realize that say this chord and this chord fit together. It might not be the most interesting chord progression, but it works, and it's better to have something that works and is simple than something that doesn't work at all and sounds horrible. So I hope you found this lecture useful. So in this lecture we've gone through the difference between major chords and minor chords. Basically, major chords are happy and minor chords are sad. A really simple way of putting it. But the way of working out a major and a minor. Major is five and four, So count up five, including the first note, and minor is four and five. And if we write out all the notes of our scale of tone, tone, semi tone, tone, tone, tone, semitone, please remember that TTSTTTS. You get really quick it doing that, then we can actually work out all the all the chords that fit in our scale, which is really useful. We went over quickly, diminish and augmented. Augmented is a bit bigger. Diminished is a bit smaller. We look at these later on, and the difference of how you can change a chord to a major and a minor, basically just dropped the third a little bit to make it minor, make the minor chord a bit higher, the third to make it a major, but this will come into place a bit later on, and that's basically it. So from this lecture, I recommend just going out or going on your digital audio workstation, writing in all the notes of your scale and just going through and drawing in all the possible chords you could use. Just remember the root, the third, and the fifth, then try and work out if it's a major chord or minor chord, with the five in the four and if need be, maybe an augmented and a diminished. But we look at this later on in the next lecture I'm going to give you a really interesting pattern. A really cool useful pattern That will allow you to work out if a chord is a major or minor, and which chords go where in our key. So thank you for watching, I hope you found this useful and stay tuned for the next lecture. 7. Perfect 4ths: Hello, in this lecture we're going to be looking at perfect Fourths. So previously we had looked at perfect fifths and perfect fourths are quite similar to perfect fifths. Basically me they can fit in a major scale or a minor scale. So in C Major the fourth one up would be an F, remember to go back to tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semi-tone to work this out, you really do need to internalize this. It basically allows you to work out all the notes in the major scale so that hops into Ableton live here and have just written in the patterned tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semi-tone. So the fourth note is C major is one two three four is this F and the fifth note is this G. These are both perfect fourths and fifths. So this means in C minor it will have an F and G and C Major it will have an F and a G. It's just the way of saying it fits in a major scale and a minor scale. So the fourths are quite useful. We dont really use them for building chords but they are really useful for inversions. So if we put down the route which is a C and the fourth which is one two three four and F, this is the interval of a fourth. But if we invert this. So if you put the F down here this actually gives this interval of a perfect fifth. So these forms are really useful for actually creating intervals. You will hear that this gives a very different sound to get the right now. So we count down in this way as well. So if we continue the pattern. So it's one two three four five. It's a fifth down, so above it's a fourth up one two three four and F and below. One two three four five is a fifth down. So if you flip it an inverter we can turn this fourth into a fifth. This gives a very different sound to us just gives us a few more options when we're adding and inverting chords just remember about the perfect fourth. You can use it in both a major and a minor scale. So that's it for this lecture. I just wanted to show you how you can use a fourth in your music and writing chords. The easiest way I like to do this is to invert it, put it down down an octave and then you've got a fifth which can be quite useful when building and creating different sounding chords, at the moment, we've got quite rigid sounding major or minor minor major major minor diminished major chords. But if you want to experiment and try some new different ideas inverting the fourth you can give you some new flavours and textures to your chords. Of course you want to try and stay in key. For now, if you are new to music very experiment and try new ideas and use your ear, most importantly, theory does help if you dont manage to train your ear and you dont write the music that you think sounds good. There isn't really that much point. So you just go through an experiment and one of the easiest ways you can do this is put in a forth and then dropping it down an octave below the root. In this way you can create some new interesting chords. So lets write in a C major here. So we have the root the third and the fifth. So it's one two three four five and counts up whatever a major scale here. Then if we put the F down here we have got a complete different sounding chord, take out the F. up the F ,that's gives a really different flavour to our core. Can you even add the C below. So this just allows us to create some new interesting ideas because if we just keep it too rigid and too obvious not really creating anything that's unique or just sounds a bit different and interesting for the lessner. And this is the easy way. There are a lot of cheeky short of doing this is sticking a fork drop it down an octave an experiment with this as it's a perfect fourth. Similar to the perfect fifth it's going to almost fit all the time so gives us loads of new options to work with. So thank you for watching this lecture and I'll see you in the next one. 8. Chords and Inversions: Hello, in this lecture, we're going to be looking at chords and which chords we can use for our scale. So previously we looked at this patterned tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semi-tone and this was so we can work out all the notes in a major scale. So let's just quickly go back to that and open up my digital audio workstation and let's just write in tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semi-tone to find the notes in our major scale. Then I'm going to show you a little pattern so we know which chord you can actually play with each note or which note has a separate chord. So let's start on C let's just draw in a few notes here. So we have C then we need to go up a tone, so up a tone from C is D, up a tone is E, so tone tone then semi-tone is F, tone G, tone it's A, tone it's B, and then semitone C so tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semi-tone please don't forget that it's really important. Now if each one of these notes here we also can play a chord so we can have major chords minor chords and as even one diminished chord. So if you remember from before the pattern for a major chord is five semitones then four semitones. So let's just start on C. So one we know already that C major. So the first chord is a major in the major scale. One two three four five and then four one two three four. Or you can be lazy and just hit the one here, miss one out this two three this one now that's five. So the first one is a C major. But what other other ones. And they've actually come out of a pattern or there's a really simple pattern you can use to actually work these out. This might look a bit weird mathematical but the pattern is major minor minor major major minor diminished major. The triangle is a major, minor symbol is a minor, and the circle is diminished. This might be a bit weird right now. And I've also written out like this the capital M means major. The little m means minor the dim means diminished. So the first note is a major. Second note is a minor, third note is a minor, a fourth note is a major, the fifth note is a major, the sixth note is a major. The seventh is a diminished. Then it repeats the first again so any scale any note restarting on any major scale. I use this pattern. Major minor minor major major minor diminished major. So try and memorize this major minor minor major major minor diminished major. I've also put the Roman numerals one capital is major and a little lower case is minor and this little circle means diminished. So it's major minor minor major major minor diminished major. So let's go back to Ableton live. So the first note is a C which is major. The second is a D which is minor. Third is a E which is minor. A fourth is an F which is F major. Then we have G major, a minor, B diminished and C major. I know this because going back we know the notes of the scale here. C D E F G A B C if you put bit long here so have C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor, B diminished and then C major. I like to use these personally. It's very similar to kind of jazz lead sheets. They use these symbols a lot of people do prefer the capital M and some people do prefer the Roman numerals. That's right. This in Ableton lives. You can actually hear these notes. So there's two patterns you need to remember tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone and the other one is Major minor minor major major minor diminished major and the other one is 4 and 5 means minor 5 and 4 means major n0 Form 4 means diminished. So that means 5 and 4 so 5 semitones from the root to the third, and then 4 semitones from the third to the fifth is Major 5 and 4 major 4 and 5 minor. I'll explain this again in Ableton Live now. I'm going a bit too fast. There is a lot of information to take in here. But yeah try and memorize this as fast as you can major minor minor major major minor diminish major and tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone because it's really important for writing music. Okay so. Remember major minor minor major major minor diminished major, you won't probably won't be able to. It's fast as me. Hopefully you should be able to learn this so you know which chords you can play in key. So in C major key now. And the second one I remember was minor. So let's draw in the next one minor D minor. We can be lazy. But all the notes and the side by doing tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semi tone or we can use the pattern 4 and 5 to 4 semitones and then 5 semitones for minor. Let's do both now so you can remember both of them. So the easy way D and then this one that's the third one to three is F. Four five is A really chicky easy way of doing it. Or this is a minor if we go back to here. The second is minor. Actually count for one two three four it's just F. One two three four five it's A. Now let's do the third one. One two three which is minor. Well let's have a look at the notes on the side one two three it's E. So we have A minor as 4 5 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5. Remember to count the first notes. Or we can just do this one two three so as E G. Three four five. B. Next is an F. But to this one two three four. One two three four to one count up here. Or up here so the fourth one. One two three four. We're going along here which is why the Roman numerals are quite handy because it basically tells us that the names of the numbers one two three four which is capitals or capital M or going back to these patterns these symbols one two three four it means major. So let's type in F Major the pattern for Major if you remember it's five semitones then four semitones a root the third, five semitones, third, fifth, four semitones or we can just be really cheeky. Just use them along here. So three and then five which is here. Let's add in some more tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semitone alongside so tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone. Okay so let's draw in G. Actually let' do F is, F is 5 and 4 to F That's five. One two three four and C. And now that's do G. Which is one two three four five. The fifth or one two three four five. The fifth and one two three four five which is major. Okay so the fifth chord of the scale which is going along is a G major. The fifth note is a G. And we know it's a G major. So one delays away one to three it's G and the B. And we have three four five and a D, four five and four semitones. So one two three four five one two three four. Okay. Now let's go up to the next one which is an A who we can see on the site. And that A is the six which is minor. Okay so one two three four one two three four five. Or the lazy way one one two three just a C, four five and a E, next one is the seventh which is a diminished so diminished is four and four. So I've said it many times but remember Major five then four minor four and five diminished four four minutes remember those patterns. And also this pattern major minor minor major major minor diminished major so say it slower. Major minor minor major major minor diminished major and we have the pattern is tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semi-tone tone tone semi tone tone tone tone semi-tone this goes up all the way although up the scale through all the octave these patterns. So here are the three ways of looking at major minor minor major major minor diminished major. I like the top way but now a lot of people do like this Roman numeral way. Just because you can see instantly which number it's is it's the seventh one as this little circle which means diminished. So it's four semitones from root to third, and we have a 4 semitones from third to fifth. So this is a bit of a weird one there diminished won't really stay on this call for a long time. It's more for passing chords or if you want to create a kind of moody angry disturbing sound you might use it diminish chord but generally for pop and dance music you will be avoiding a diminished chord most of the time. So B it's the seventh one two three four five one two three four five six seven. On the start you see one two three four five six seven. So one two three four. One two three four. We can just count up on the side. So the first second third fourth fifth, so it's a B D and a F. Let's hear this back down. Okay. Then back to C is a C and the G. We can use this pattern any of the scale any of the keys ready so we can jump up so we want to use D major that sound called a cluster. All the notes at the same time it doesn't sound very nice but let's hear D major. So they are all the notes of the major scale which is the same as the site. You've probably heard this little pattern as well. do re mi fa so la ti do. So if he sings that, it naturally forms a major scale so do re mi fa so la ti do by singing it is quite terrible. Hit my head. I can. I can do it. Let's go back to C major. so it's do re and put us up an octave. Okay, so it's do re mi fa so la ti do o o o o So you really need to lock in that pattern of knowing what a major scale actually sounds like. So for example one the notes are slightly off. You should be able to hear there that do a sharp and we will look at more advanced scales like modes minor scales. But for now we're just going to be looking at this major scale. So from this little pattern, major minor minor major major minor diminish major, we know all the chords that fit in our major scale or fit in that key. So this is basically playing in key or playing the chords in key. So also Yeah going back remember this pattern as well major is five of them four. So from C go four for minor and have five for major. One two three four five it's a E and then four one two three four. So we see major notes C E and G C minor. One two three four is C E flat. One two three four five and G C diminished. One two three four C E flat. One two three four and G flat. So this is how we know the difference between a major minor diminish. We can work them out. They do have different sound generally. Major is happy minor is sad and diminished sounds a bit odd. There's a complete generalization but does normally work. Let's have a look at an example now. Let's have a look at a song called Say by faloon. I don't share and work in whom working with the game on Love and Love as well. The rosy thing. RAY So that phrase saved for me. Don't know what i need Yeah. So. Me. Yes. So from here in that song should be able to hear it's a nice sounding song. There's nothing really that's too weird or too unusual. It all fits us all. Enki from having a look at the chords it uses a G D N E minor and A C. It's just that repeated a lot of the time. The first chord will be the chord of the key. That's a G. So let's just work out now if this is in key, but we can hear straight away it is in key. We're going to go through and work out if it's in key. So remember G D E minor and C. So let's go back to our pattern. Major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminish major and We also need to work out tone, tone, semi tone, tone, tone tone, semitone for G major. We can just use this pattern we use before. Let's just direct this up to a G. Okay, this would give us all the notes now in the G major scale. Let's just have a look through here and see if the chords that flume use actually are in key and are in scale. We should be able to train our ear if that song is in key but is good to go through and just check and one thing we can do is to make our own songs by using someone else's chords, rearranging them and adding new courts. Now we know what chords we can play in G major. We can add new ones, change them around so it gives us loads of new options. So going back to the chords, it was a C sorry a G, a D, an E minor and the C. S G, D, E minor, C. So let's have a look. So we have G. Yep. And then D. Yep. Then E minor and then C. Okay, you should be able to train your ears to know which are major a minor but if you're not quite there yet, don't worry. So it was one more time, G, D, E minor, C. So let's go back to this major minor minor major major minor diminished major. So we have G major, A minor. We have B minor, C major, so the C and the G is there. Then D major, E minor, F sharp diminished, and then back to G major. So just linking this up, we know that all the chords actually fit in that song, and what we can do is actually you some of his chords. So let's use, let's the move these over for a bit. Okay, So you had a G, it starts off with a G major, then D, E, C. So let's just put in D, E and C. We know the pattern, so we just need to find a D here. Then an E minor and then a C Major, we can move some of these notes around just because these go a really high up compared to this. So let's put this G up here. So they are the chords he was using. Obviously, he used and for much longer that weren't just one beat a time but say we could move this E over here. We could also add in an A minor. We can move this C here. Let's just delete these. Let's make our own little pattern now by using the chords from flume and just rearranging them to make our own chords. So if you're new to music production or writing music, I recommend starting off like this. You can use my music. Is that other people's music? As long as you that plagiarizing it and copy it, you could take inspiration and ideas from people. Let's move this C up here. We're just changing the octaves, we're allowed to do that. We can move the octaves around just because if the gaps are too big, it might sound a bit jumpy, so we moved them next to each other. Then we have this A. We can move this A up here. Then we have this D minor and then this B. Let's just make this B up here, Let's increase the tempo a bit. Compare that to the flume song. You can hear it in the same key. But it sounds very different. So we've got a quicker kind of stabby groove here. It's just a quick way you can throw some chords together and we can draw in the bass line here. And it's a really easy way of just finding out which chords we can use. So here actually move some of the notes around. It's easier to do if the notes are in the right place, but just fromlooking at this, I know that this is a G. So we can move this back and have the G down here and then this is a D, this is an A minor. This is an E minor, and this is a C, we've just changed a few of the notes around and made inversions, which is basically where we moved the notes. Generally, want the bass to kind of keep the same. So the bass here needs to be a B and then a D, so let's just draw this in. B then a D, . And going back we had an A minor . So that's a really quick way we can make music from just from looking at other people's music. Then after this we had an E minor, and then a C. You can hear instantly that's the wrong note. There we go. I'm just going to drag this down an octave. Okay, let's Oh, There we go let's say this back. You can hear the first note isn't quite right, and that's because the first note should be a G and I played it in that as a B. There's no Golden rule, a B would fit, but it wouldn't give the correct sound of the chords, so let's put it back on G. But this is a more advance way called inversions, where we basically take the notes of the chord and just swap them around. . So that's a really quick way. We can use someone else's music. If the Inversions are a bit confusing, just starts with the chords in just the normal position of root, third and fifth. So let's put this G back to root, third and fifth. Root, third, and firth. The second chord is a D. So let's put this on a D, F sharp and an A. Next chord was A minor. The next chord after this is a E minor. Next one after this is C. I might be going quite fast. But this is how fast you can actually gather If you learn major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished Major tone tone semitone, tone tone tone semitone. If you learn to internalize that. Like if someone said to me now, I don't know, play the fourth chord in C Major, I know instantly it's F major, You just know what notes go well together. And you just realize which cords actually fit and you just internalize these patterns. It's just a really simple way of doing it . I've got a little bit to advanced for you in this inversions, but basically what inversion is is you just move the notes around just a match up here there's a big jump. This is all this space here. So all of that is just move. Find this, G and move it up there and there's less space. Same here. There's a bit space here. So I can move this A up and here there's a bit of space. so I can move this C up and now this less of a jump. Iand less space so actually fits together a lot nicer So that's what an inversion is and from this lecture. We've gone over the pattern. Major, minor, minor, major, major minor dimished major. You need to get that fast. The really needs internalized major minor, minor, major, major, minor diminished major. So the first chord is a is a major. Second is a minor. Third is a minor. The fourth is a major. The fifth is a major, the sixth is a minor. Seventh is of diminished and going back again to the first, it's a major and the other one going back again. It's tone, tone, semi tone, tone, tone, tone, semi tone. So we need this pattern toe work at the the notes in the major scale. So tone, tone, semi tone, tone, tone, tone, semi tone, the matter where you are on the keyboard. If you use this pattern tone, tone, semi tone, tone, tone, tone semitone you can work out the major scale. Then, from that major scale, you can workout which chords you can play. It's a major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished major, so it's really crucial, I've gone over this a lot, but you do need to internalize. It might take a while just to remember tone tone semitone, tone tone tone semi and Major minor, minor major major minor diminished major but you do need to memorize and the other thing is 4 and 5 for Minor If you don't use this pattern if you don't write out tone tone semitone, tone tone tone semitone You do need to remember five and four for major, four and five for minor, 4 and 4 Diminished. That's basically it, I've also gone over inversions and looking at someone else's song. So analyze someone else's songs. Look up the cords online is going Google and type in someone sung and flume in the chords, and you can see what courts people are using. Find songs that you like and try and backwards engineer the chords that they use, and then you can go through write these chords out in your digital audio workstation and then swap them around, Move them about changed inversions. Obviously, they plagiarize, don't copy, but take inspirations and you can move these chords around. And this is basically how you can write chords in key. So if someone says that's not in key, it basically means the courts don't fit major minor minor major, major, minor diminished major in the scale, of course, is other stuff like melodies were going to be looking at later on. But for now, this is how you write a diatonic chord progression. Diatonic means it's in the key. Chromatic means it's any of the notes, so this is a diatonic chord progression. So now you should know how to write a diatonic chord progression and also move something notes around to create inversions So hope you found it useful one more time. Just remember tone, tone, semi tone, tone, tone, tone, semi tone and major minor, minor major. Major, minor, diminished major. Four and four for Diminished, four or five for minor and five and four for Major. It's a lot to take in this lecture, so really in depth in detail lecture. But hopefully, you should remember three free things. Major minor, minor major major minor diminished Major. Tone tone, semi tone, tone, tone tone. semitone. Four and four diminished. Four and five minor, five and four major and then you're sorted. You can write diatonic chord progressions. You know how to write chords for any scale or any major scale that you come across. Later on . We're going to be looking at minor scales, and you're going to be looking out writing melodies. But for now, just remember, this is how you writes a diatonic chord progression in a major scale or major key. Thank you again for watching the hope you found it useful, and I'll see you in the next one. 9. Chord Progressions: hello. In this lecture, we're going to be looking at chord progressions. So called progressions are basically just a load, of course, be put together in our song. We can use different chord progressions for different parts of the sun. Or we can just use the same chords or chord progressions on a loop for at the whole song. If you're making electronic dance music. Ah, lot of the time it is quite repetitive. But you can put different chord progressions for OutKast song just to mix it up and to make it a bit more interesting. So let's go back to tone tone, semi tone, tone, tone, tone, semi tone. This is really important just so we can actually work out the notes we need for our major scale. So let's go back into our digital audio workstation, and soon enough, you'll realize why this is important for core progressions. So this time, let's start on day tone soap to a tone up to this black on F sharp semi tone to G tone, a tone to bay tone to this black onesie. Shots on semi tone to D. So this is a major scale in D Major six D E f sharp G a B c sharp d And now we can work at which cause we can actually right in this key. So we had day A f sharp G A, B C sharp D And if you and if you remember the pattern from before major minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished major, we just link it up. So the 1st 1 D major e minus the 2nd 1 The 3rd 1 is minor F sharp minor, fourth major Mona Mona Major G Major Major. A major minor chairs B minor diminished. Just see Sharp diminished. We only really use this as a passing chord unless you want to create something purposely angry or moody. But generally in kind of purple dance music, you don't really use a diminished chord that much. And then back to the 1st 1 which is major. So these are all the cause we can actually use in our song in the key of D major Silicon use D Major E minor F Sharp minor G major, a major B minus C sharp diminished, maybe. And then, of course, back to D Major. So is loaded of different options. We can use. But which order should you put these in? It really does depend. There's no golden room, but there are a few different common core progressions we can use. So let's just look at this court pattern in a different way. So we have Major, which is the one minor, which is the second so e minor, which is the to F sharp, which is the free. Remember, the lower case is minor. Capitals is major on. The little circle means diminished. So a lot of the time when we talk about core progressions, we do use Roman numerals. So obviously, when it has the little Roman numerals, it means it's minor on the capital, which means it's major. There's a load of common core progressions that written most songs. Really, a lot of songs do follow formulas on have just put together some of the most common ones, and I go through a few of these in that digital audio workstation soon, So the 1st 1 is from Don't stop believing by journey. It's 1564 so it's a major one. So in that key major one as day and then five, which is a major so it's D and then a and then six, says D A B Minor says D A B minor and then four, which is a major because of capital. So we got D I. Let's go back to D A B minor on then. Jay. So you have D a B minor g d a b minor g so we can put that in tow. A digital audio workstation D A B minor g really common one. So let's just write this in so we have day start on day, so I just miss one out. That would give Root third and fifth. What we can use. The pattern. Five and four It was 123451234 Today let's go back. It was Day I B Minor J. We know this because it is 1564 So one D five a six b minor for G to D major. A major B minor G major. So that's right. This in D Major, A major B might naturally made a really simple That's putting everyone here a major, so that starts on a Let's get one that says see shop, and then we can add on tone tone, semi tones we haven't evocative as well. So just added tone tone, cemetery in tone, tone, tone, semi tone in D major. So it's two octaves. So I remember Just skip on out. So we have a day and then a we can go back to remember it's a major 123451234 Okay, so let's go back to this. So it was 15 have written, and now and then we want six, which is 123456 b minor needs. But now, so that starts on B. She has one above here. Remember, we can just skip when I fed on, then for the fifth, which is F sharp. Or we can use the pattern four and five. You can see here. It's a minor because their majors got more space there and less space. This has less space here, more space, but let's just come into as well. 1234 12345 So this is a B minor. It's just extend this site, okay, and then let's put in the last one. So it's 15 64 So Let's put in the fourth going back to this. We know fourth is a G. That's G major. So once you know this pattern, you come right out. Lows of core progressions. You can use other people's core progressions as long as you change the melodies and the style of it. But I could exercise is to write out a load of these common core progressions. Just see no what they really sound like. And then you can rearrange, move them about things, create your own. It's the last one was a J. Let's go to Jay here skittling out. Add on the tone tone cemetery in tone, tone, tone cemetery. So you have the time. Let's look at these here. Tone tone 17. Tone tone, tone 17. We're gonna zoom out a bit so you can see this here. So remember to miss one, so ever be. Then we have a date you can see here. There's a bigger space here in a smaller space, but 12345 1234 That's a major. So we've got a D major, a major, a B minor on a G major. Let's just play this on just going to stop all the lips on. Let's just play this one, okay? We can spread this out. Obviously, we don't need it that close together. So let's just spread these cords out of it. So no move. These two here. I made these along. Of course we can radical of these. Yeah. Wait, can just drag the saver. Okay. Okay. So Oh, sounds fine. It's not the most interesting thing in the world, but works. It's in key. It's in tune. It's a very, very common core progression. Oh, so you can use this 115 for so 1564 So it's major. One major five minus six on mindful. So it can do is take a screenshot some of these. If you want to print them out, put them on your wall if you're just starting out. So 156 for really coming one. The next one is 1645 pretty much the same. But we just swap in these around a bit. So 16 45 So in D major, 1645 So one is D six is B minor for G and five is a so day B minor J A. So that's going to our digital audio workstation. T b minor G A. So good to swap around here, everyone. You know the patterns. No, A goes at the end. No. So just move this around seven. It's, um oh, so G d major B minor G major. A major which is same causes standby maces 1645 So let's hear this back. This is just another really common core progression you can use. Oh, so just made a bit of a ribbon there just taken here. This works. This could be played in a dance song. You could imagine this science very generic. Very common. Yeah, it's not the most interesting thing in the world, but it will work. Just gonna delete some of these. Okay? And the number one is 156 free 4145 A bigger core progression. You may have heard the sun packing bells, cannon or classical song. Really common son. You've probably heard it hundreds, maybe thousands of times. That's the core progression that he used. Of course, there's the blues, which is 1111 What for? For 115511 You've probably heard that hundreds of times as well. So it's just the 14 times before the major fourth, twice with one twice more, the major fifth and then twice again. Then we have smoke on the water or the Purple haze port chord progression, which is 245 really common one. That's just put the answer to form five. I wouldn't know already to form five in D Major is a minor, and then is G G major and then a major. So a minor G major a major mere minutes realize that Let's just go back just to check. So a minor g major A so di basically just d g and a sorry e minor gene A starts on that. You can put the date you could have De Jean a e minor June A. You could have f sharp minor B minor. Um, a major. There's no real relief in just flipping around. Put what you want. I'm gonna make one up now that start with a minor. Okay, so we know he minor starts on a then skip on that such a G, and then one expects to be, so you can tell this is a minor because the gap smaller 123412345 So I got the one. Now that's pullin well, the first call, which is the minor. Let's put it in the, uh, It's putting six. So be minor. Okay, so sort of that on. Let's put in day the major, the one. So skip one out here. So it's 12 free and then 45 just on you can tell us is a major, because that's bigger. 123451234 Let's put in two more now That's been the C sharp diminished. Just for fun is a leading cord on. Then finish on the A. So she see shop into a no. So let's move there, see shop, then you're gonna miss one. So it's 12 free and then for five on the J. This might sound a bit weird, but it's a leading cord, and then we're going to finish on the five, which isn't a major. Okay, so that's just right this over and then find a major. Okay, miss one out. So go to the C sharp. Missed one out. So we go to the so. 123451234 So here we've got a minor B minor, bit more mind sounding D major C sharp diminished the weird one for 412341234 Then a major . 123451234 I just threw this together just by looking at these hand just picking whatever. Of course, there's the common ones at this 156416451 56 Free for one 45 at the Blues. 2455 for one, Which is sweet home Alabama or sweet child of mine. But these are just a guys I use whatever you want. Use whatever you think. Sounds good. There's no Golden rule, so that's just create little rhythm here. Quite like to have a ribbon before, Okay? No, no. Okay, let's hear what this times like with their drums as well. Just a put some chords in really quickly. I know it's going to be pretty much in tune. It's gonna sound a bit weird at the end. That's just a leading court. I might even just put one stab there just so it comes in quickly and there goes, let's say this seashell wonder. Same pretty weird but Sunny. There just is a little leading corpse. You could leave it. I probably won't put that in. Let's change this to something. Sounds a bit mawr usable. That's changed this to F Sharp Minor K, the third on F sharp minor. So let's go back on. Let's go down, Teoh F Sharp, Miss. One out. So it's a miss one out. See shop. Oh, I still don't like that. I think the fourth would sound good. G. Let's try that. So it's all about experimenting and just going in and trying stuff out. So 12345 that needs to be up there. 1234 way even change. The five at the end doesn't have to be in a. We could put it back on the G. Let's try that way. Just copy. It's over. It doesn't really sound as good as the other ones because they have ones. We've actually heard hundreds thousands of times thes really common ones here. This is why these sound good, because we're just so so used to an idi work that the way they've been put together just works. And that's why they're being used so many times. So I'd say it's go through these most common ones. 15641645 and then maybe the 245 and then the 541 go for these, right them or that like I did and then just experiment, move stuff around and try and find your own core progressions. So this is basically what core progressions are just a bunch of court put together effectively. But you do need to write out tone, tone, semi tone, tone, tone, tone, semi tone until we internalize all the different notes in a major scale, for example, you should know a C major. It's just all the white notes, so maybe you don't need to write that out. You just know all the notes aren't sharp or flats, so you could do that quite easily on then you could go through Andi workout with major minor minor major major mind diminish Major. So see major D minor e minor F major G major a minor. Be diminished on back to see. So if you work the sound every single key, or at least the most common ones, the ones you might want to use. Stop C major that may be going to d major G major a major and then experiment. You can use the black notes as well. Don't be scared of using the black notes. This is basically how you can work out the chords you can play and then put together a load of different core progression. Start off of the most common ones and then feel free to experiment, move stuff around, try and stay in key for now, to try and use the courts that fit in the key. Then later run. We get bit more advanced. You can experiment with different chords in different keys. But maybe wait a while until I explain that a bit fair run for out this course. So thank you for watching this lecture all about chord progressions. Hope you found it useful in the next lecture. We're going to be looking at inversions 10. Inversions: Hello, in this lecture we're going to be looking at inversions. So inversions is basically where we move certain notes of the chord up or down an octave. So they're blend together with the chord next them a bit nicer. So I wrote in this chord progression in the previous lecture which is what the most common chord progressions one five six four. So it's a major one major five minor six and major four. And you can hear it's quite jumpy the chords jump up quite a lot. You can see all this space here and inversions It's where we basically just move some of the notes around, so they fit together a lot nicer. But then it's a lot better and just sounds slicker and more professional really. So what we can just do is we have got E here. You can just drop the standing octave and we can do the same with a C sharp and now when we go between these chords you can see instantly that it's just going to lock in a lot better. You've also got a continued going for out. You can hear it's a lot, if we go back and jump took quite a lot. Okay, and let's do the same here so you can keep that B there. Let's move this D down an octave and let's move this F sharp down an octave. You can see it just still go up a bit but it hasn't got that big jump. We could move that B down here as well if we want it now. Let's move the B down so that sounds like ever this work really. So we're going to keep the G there. And let's move the B and the D down. So inversions is basically just moving some of the notes up or down octaves so lock in a bit better so it's a really simple way of doing this because you can even write in bass notes now we could keep it as it was before. So we had the D let's just put this down. And then the second chord was five. So in the key of D major, the fifth is an A A major, so we can go back to the A, No. Okay, and then the next one was the six and in D major the six is B minor. So let's find a B on the bass. Can I follow this pattern as well. So it locks in a bit better. Okay, and then the last one. Was a 4. So in D major The fourth is G major. So let's put that as a G. I can hear that still works fine. We've got the original bass note the original root note so it's the bottom one of the chord. We get different names for the inversions. Well at first inversion second inversion won't really worry about that it's more about just making the sound good. Moving them up and down the octaves so it fits in and it blends a lot more rather than being really jumpy. It gives us more options as well. You can see here the route now at the end is a B. So let's move this up to B just here if this works. That works. We can even move it to this root note C sharp and we get kind of a different sounding chord now. It gives us a lot more options from use inversions can really just change the base note this is still an A major but it kind of an A major first inversion because the C sharp is at the bottom rather than the A. So there's different ways we can actually make the chords sound and gives us more options and colour in our music. This is really great for bass lines. Like I said earlier can change the bass lines around. We can leave the bass lines and reposition completely up to, I'm just going to put this back into reposition where it was before. So we had a D then we had an A. And looking at this, got B minor. and the this one we've got a G major. So once you get used to playing these chords then and right now chords you can just instantly see that this is a G major. It might take a while. I'd start off just working out slowly. It's not really a race it's more about getting your music to sound good rather than just trying to put as much music out as possible really. So let's just copy these over. Then I'm going to actually put in the pad part. Okay, so this is the pad part and there's a lot more sustain on this as well so you can drag these out what saying good, you will notice is that this A actually. It's in both of these chords so what we can do is just have this A going along all of them. This is Sangrey in held chords or any synth that have a lot sustain. So these don't actually have anything. So you can hear, let's put this hear, you can change these inversions as well the versions don't have to be the same for every instrument. So let's put this up to a B, just drag this across. Okay let's do the same you notice there's a B here as well. Both of these has the same shared notes. So you can drag this across this note slightly different this goes to a G. So let's get rid of this and this goes to a D, so inversions allow us to find the chords that basically go more than one chord then just have this go on for us maybe not for stab sounds or piano sounds because you want to reattack the sound but chords or pads this can work great. So let's hear this in the mix as well. Let's just drag this in the right place. There you go. Let's hear this and let's triggered this. Instantly created a song that links together sounds a lot more professional that did previously before is a bit too jumpy. It didn't really saying that fluid. Now it links a lot better. It's great for pad sounds when you use inversions so you can actually share the same note in one or more chords to several of these chords could use. Now you can even use stuff like pedal notes. We just keep the continuing note going across and then other parts of the notes actually change. We look at this, later on, that's a bit more complex but really you could for example move this D up here and have a D going all the way across and now we've got a different kind of chord going on but then you will have to go back to this one and change the second one to a D. Let's hear this. We could even add a B at the top as well. But we're going to continue looking at this kind of stuff. But this just gives you some options of what you can actually do which is holding these notes unchanged in these versions around. I'd start off just keeping it really really simple, and then, later on, we'll actually go in and make it a bit more complex than add some kind of colour and more flavour to our chords. But for now, this is basically how you work out all the scales in our major scale, so all different chords in a major scale. So if you follow the steps of show in the last few lectures you should know which chords you can pull then and now we've gone through some chord progressions and also I've gone over some inversions so you should start to be making some music that actually sounds in key and quite musical and could be used as a regular song. Doesn't sound too all over the place. Lox and a lot better and won't we continue through this course. We're going to be looking at some more complex harmony stuff like seventh chords change you get around customizing your tracks a bit more and also melodies. So thank you for watching this lecture all about inversions. I hope you can use this to actually change some of your chords to make them flow a lot better and just sound a lot more professional. 11. 7th Chords: Hello, In this lecture, we're going to be looking at seventh chords. So previously we looked at building of chord of the root third and the fifth and now we're going to have a look at seventh chord, seventh chords is quite basically just adding a seventh note of our chord. We do have three different types of seventh chords. We're going to be looking at a major seventh, a minor seventh, and a dominant seventh. So going back to tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semi-tone this is how we can build all the notes and our major scale and also if we have a look at major minor minor major major minor diminish major we can actually build the chords from a major scale so if were in C Major we will have C major chord. Then the second will be a D minor E minor F major G major A minor B diminished and then back to C. So we do have three different types the major seventh the minor seventh and the dominant seventh. So basically if we have a major chord it will be a major seventh. So quite literally just the seventh note of the scale and if we have a minor chord it will be a minor seventh. If you want to stay in the key which will now and the other one is called a dominant seventh which is quite strange. Well in our scale the fifth note or the fifth chord in a major scale give us a dominant seventh. Might be quite a strange term that basically means a major chord but with a minor seventh. So let's go into Ableton Live and explain a bit further the differences between a major seventh a minor seventh and a dominant seventh, and what they actually sound like and how you can use them in your music. So let's actually draw in tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone to create a major scale tone tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone. So here we have a C major scale. So let's draw in a C major chord. So remember it's the root third so you can just count up one two three and then a fifth for five. So it's the C E and the G. Let's add in the second which is a D minor. So we have the root third and then the fifth. Just cancel that one, two three four five. So just using the notes in the scale and the other one was a dominant seventh which is the fifth note or the fifth chord of the scale. So if we can talk five one two three four five. This is a G. So let's add in a G, and then we have one two three. Let's continue the scale up here two tone semitone tone tone tone semitone and so we have one two three four five. So is this chord. So all we have to do is just add on the seventh note if we just look in the side here we have the notes of a major scale. So we have one two three four five six seven. So this will give us a B. So the seventh of a C is a B. And looking at the note above which is the octave. It's just one semitone between them. So for a major seventh the gap between the top note the octave and the seventh is just one semitone. Let's have a look at this D minor seventh. So we have one two three four five six seven so it's a C. And octave above the root which is a D is here. This is a bigger gap in C here. This is one semitone and this is two semitones so a major seventh has May a gap of two semitones so if we quickly see here. This is a major seventh and this is a minor seventh. Don't forget the second one is actually a minor chord. So this is a C major seventh because it's a C major chord. We have also a seventh which fits in the scale. And the second is a D minor chord of a 7. So it's a D minor seventh and the third is a G major. But like I said before we have. A minor seventh so it's a G major-minor seventh or called a dominant seventh. So basically let's add on the seventh note so we have one two three four five six seven will give us this F. So this is a G major chord of a seventh, and the gap between the seventh and the root which is a G so it's one two, two semitones same as the minor so it has a minor seventh but some major chord. It's called a dominant seventh. The only one in the scale is the fifth chord. So just remember the fifth is the dominant. So let's just play this for you and you can hear a difference between a major seventh a minor seventh and a dominant seventh. That's the major seventh. We have a listen to this again gives us a bigger richer sound. Then about the seventh. And with the seventh. Sounds a bit jazzy. I guess you could say it's a bit wider more colour. So it really depends on what type of music you want to create want to create something that sounds a bit jazzy or a bit more colour or depth to it maybe consider considering adding a seventh or a major seventh. This one is a minor seventh. A similar kind of thing sounds a bit more moody to me than the major seventh. Let's take off the seventh. This is with the seventh. The best thing to do is experiment yourself and go in and just play around with the chords maybe try and this the seventh and just use your ear and see which one you like the best. Now let's try the dominant seventh. This one sounds quite jazzy too to me. And without the seventh and with the 7th. So this is. So this is basically how you can build a seventh into your chord. So just remember if it's the fifth chord or the fifth note of the scale it will be a dominant seventh. So it's a major chord with a minor seventh. We know it's a minor seventh because there's two semitones between the seventh and the root note of the chord for minor chord. All we have to do is count up seven notes of the scale. Of the key burden not of the, of the chord so seventh notes notes of the key. So use tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone to find the notes of the scale then just count up the seventh note and this will be two semitones away from the root position of the chord. Also So if we're a D minor should be this one here which is a C and then a major seventh how was just one semitone between the roots seventh. And also the octave of the roots so seventh notes above the root. Give us the seventh and it's just one semitone between this and the octave of the root position. So this is basically what a seventh chord is how you can use your music. So just remember an example of a major seventh in C major is of course C major seventh and this is how we write it just an A G seventh. You can also use a little triangle. This is more the Jazz kind of way of writing it. But if you see a C triangle and a 7 this will mean the C Major seventh. Minor seventh right I n or mincer D min 7 is D minus 7 and this can be use as a little dash like this. But this is more jazz music and then dominant seventh is just G seventh. So if we in the scale of C Major the fifth chord, the fifth note is G, and if you want to turn this into a seventh It will be a G dominant seventh. So it's basically a G major. My 7 so it's a G major chord or minor seventh. But you wouldn't really call it that. Call it a G major minor seventh is a bit long and a bit complicated. G 7 is what you call that that's basically the terminology is a dominant seventh G seventh. So this is basically how we create major minor segments and dominant seventh for a music in our scale. So just remember to go back to tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone I've said it a hundred times but this will allow you to work out the notes of the scale. That way it's really easy to build your seventh chords and eventually you will just internalize the notes in the scale. C major quite an easy one because it's just the white notes. But for example if you using D major or G major or F Major there's a few differences that you will need to look at and using this patterned tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone and of course using their major minor minor major major minor diminish major to work out the chord types and then it's really easy from there. Just use the notes of the scale build up as a seventh, and now you should know the differences between a major seventh a minor seventh and a dominant seventh. So thank you for watching this lecture. I hope you found it useful and I'll see you in the next one. 12. Chord Extensions: Okay, now we're going to have a look at some more cord extensions. So previously we had a look at the seventh, and now we're going to have a look at the knife. 11th and 13th. You might be thinking there's only seven notes in the scale. Eight, including the active. So what's the knife? 11 from 13th? This is basically way and notes above the court. So let's just type in C major. Remember the pattern, its own tone? 17. So that's taking quickly for NSE, major or a really simple way. Just the white. Now it's starting on C. So this is a C major. So if you type in the cord since the route third on the fist. So this is just a standard C major chord we add in the seventh. So we have 67 We have this big. It gives a really nice sound to see Major Seventh because it's ah, major note The major seventh. Now we're going to add in the knife you might think in nine. Okay, so if you can't up again So eight, nine. So we have 12345678 Back again. Nine. Which is the day or the second. It's kind of the second, but for the second could be played here so nine could be played up. So this is a C major. Nine. Sounds a bit more jazzy them or extend these cords more jazzy. It sounds. Of course. We have stuff like the dominant on the minor knife. So if we're in C major, we will have a D minor, which is the 2nd 1 major minor, minor Major, major, Minor diminish Major. The 2nd 1 is C. D. So D minor route 12 free 45 You know that. Then we have the fifth and above this we have 67 which is the sea. Oh, so we have see mine at nine. And the 2nd 1 is D seven. So if you add on the knife as well, which is the second technically but this octave above. So there's nine. So we have 1234567 a nine. Remember, we have to go back to the day. 1234567 a nine. Is this a We had an octave above. So this is a d minor night. The different kind of sound to the major nine way. Continue for out all the cords and the scale, obviously the Fed one. It will be a minor 944 major, nine and so on and so forth. We also have 13th. So it's a little crazy now, just some more jazzy, the more we build up. So if you think we have the knife 11th on the 13th the for teams actually more commonly used in 11th. So let's just start with a fair team and then we can at the 11th as well. So it 12345678 9 10 11 So 11 for being F 12 13 for being a. So if you want to turn it into 11th we just add on F A furtive got on a or six. So basically the seventh is 1/7 night. The knife is a second look. Productive. Above 11 is 1/4 note. An octave above. On the 13th is a six night full octave above So 1234567 notes. This is gonna sound look crazy now. Little jazzy. It doesn't sound as nice and clean. It's just a traditional major scale. That sounds, in my opinion, a bit cleaner, a bit crisper push. One experiment will make it a bit jazzy. You could try it. Just the 11th still sounds a little dissonant. You can try the different courts, so if you want to turn the day into on 11th So we just had on the fourth basically octave above 1234 Sweet Adeline G. And that's here. What this d minor 11 sounds like. I think that sounds a bit nicer. Personally can change it into 1/13 as well. So the 13th is six bucks have above toe. 1234567 A. 9 10 11 12 13 says the B. I know this looking assigned? Yeah, a little distant. A little too much. That's good to know from the crap. Big huge court. If you're making it's a music for pitch and you want a big over the top. Jazzy cord, maybe 1/13 maybe a knife. Maybe even 11th really does depend what you want to do. What you trying to achieve. I like the minor night. I think the minor night sounds nice. Of course, the seven sounds great, but go for an experiment. Just know you have different court extensions. You can just add more notes, but the more notes you add thicker. It sounds, and generally the more jazzy it sounds. But maybe to start the seventh and then build upto a knife 11 13 from did by ear. See what you want have in your cord, but a lot of time. I love pop lot electronic music. You probably won't have more than, say, five or six notes of the chord. I don't know. You would often have a 13 for an 11th but now and again you might want to add one in. Now you know, it's basically just more notes in the scale. On the way we call it is the seventh knife 11 from the 14th 13th. You could try 14th but it's just the same, is not active. So this is basically how we conduct or 14 to be 1/7 above just a way of adding more notes. So thank you for this lecture. It's just all about called extensions. Like I said, you probably won't use it too much, but good to know, especially if you're playing with another musician or if you in the recording session, and they're like, Oh, let's for a night If you know a night fears the night notes. So it's basically the second octave above self that said, That's froze on the E minor. Nine. You should know you by working out of minor scale. Add on the seconds they just add non F sharp to the That's what the minor knife it's. But if we in the key of C in the say less out South F major 11 so you can work at quickly F major, so you have one to free for 56 So these. So we have 12345 So try it, then we have 67 Then we can add on 89 This will be an F major nine. It might take a few moments to work it out, but it's better than not no more. That is so at least now, especially if you're making, say, R and B music, jazz music, maybe blues. You want to kind of change up some of the cords Ants of extensions. But generally in pop music, it's not as common, but good to know, and I hope you find this less useful just to know about different chord extensions 13. Suspended Chords: Okay, now we're going to have a look at sus chords or suspended chords. You might see there sometimes on a cord that's just written as SUS Which means a suspended chord So this is basically where we move the third so we can have a sus2 which is basically where we change the third of the chord down to a second or sus4 which is where we change the third up to the fourth. So let's just write in C major so we have root third and fifth. So we can have a C2 we changed the third to now second. Then we have a C4 we changed the third to fourth. So one two three four. These are great for creating suspension and building up certain parts. So let's just draw in an example now. So if we have just a written pattern here then we have suspended chords so we have the sus4 just to start with. Then back down to the sus a normal C major. Then let's add a few sus seconds start so we have this tension of sus4 releases to C major then builds up the tension again with the sus2. This can be great for build ups we're creating some kind of tense music down. If you just have sus chords all way for each thing be tense the whole time. Of course, if you want music there's just tense all the time it never releases. You could have sus chords. You can hear it's just tense. then let's releases. Here with the sus2 tense the whole way. You it's release C major tax again. Well there's a good way to create build up tension just by moving the third move it down to the second be called C sus 2 suspended 2 and move up to the fourth and it be called C sus4 or suspended four. Let's just basically can quickly add some tension and release and your music goes to release this or you have to do is pull it back to the third and to build up tension. Experiment of the fourth and the second. So thank you for watching this lecture all about sus chords or suspended the chords. 14. Circle of 5ths: Hello, In this lecture we're going to be looking at the circle of fifths. So the circle of fifths is basically a diagram that shows us a few different things about relative minors relative majors and modulation, modulation is where we can change a key into a different key and the circle of fifths just allows us to quickly see the closest keys. So say for example we are in C major and we have the notes C D E F G A B and back to see all the white notes. Then we have the chords that go with this. So we have major minor minor major major minor diminish major. So we have C Major the D minor E minor F major G major A minor and B diminished, and we don't actually want one of those chords they don't quite sound right they're not the ones we want. We can actually do something called modulate. So this is where we can basically move from one key to another. So if were in C we can move over to the right and we can use G. Or we can move to the left and use F over here. The reason these worked is because G has one different note to C instead of F. This has an F sharp for you used to reading classical music or any kind of score you might know these signatures here. This basically just means one sharp which is an F. If you go left you actually are adding a flat. So F uses a B flat instead of a B. You can work these out by using tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone like with it previously. Basically F has a B flat or one flat and C doesn't. So just one note different. So yes this is what these scores or these clefs are that just turn you has more flats or more sharps and that's basically it. You've got to hear because C flat is actually the same as B and G flat is the same as a F sharp just different way they're written. Don't really worry about that. If you say C sharp or D flat doesn't really matter even one is fine they still sound the same. So you can move to the left to the right any of these so say where in a song. And in A major if you easily moved to D major then you can use all the chords from D Major also. Or we could move to A major news chords from a major or even back to a major So if are using one key I can quickly go in between these different keys and go along the fifths. If you want to be really experimental or if you go round and round and he's loads of crazy chords but to start with I just recommend using one key and then modulating or moving to a different key so you could go to g go back to C and then get to F.. For this we'll just quickly allows us to look and see which keys are kind of next to each other and have the closest number of notes. So if you go to the right. This goes round in fifths which is why it's called the circle of fifths. So if we go clockwise C to G is one fifth F C D E F G and G to D is a fifth D to A is a fifth etc, going round. And if we go anticlockwise or left C to F C D E F is four notes F to be flat. If were in the key of F so you count from the key in and because f has a B flat not a B natural. You can tell it's got a B flat just because of this note above. And this basically means the OP fourth. So if you go left it's fourth go right it's a fifth. It's called the circle of fifths because traditionally we go round clockwise. But you want to go round the other way. You can use it sometimes called Circle of fourth but regularly. It's called Circle of fifth also shows as the relative minor. So C Major has a relative minor or natural minor and this is A minor the way we work this out. We just got six notes so C D E F G A six notes. Like just a minor. So G up six notes E minor D up six notes B minor etc.. Remember to stick in the key when you count up it goes an A there's an F sharp. So instead an F.. So if you count up six on a A B C sharp D E F sharp. We know instantly that it's an F sharp minor because A has three sharps. It doesn't really matter if you don't know what names are you just know there's three sharps and of course you can work this all out well using tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone to work out the notes in the major scale and then we can look at the circle of fifths and then we can see its relative minor. It works the other way as well. So if were in A minor we just count up three notes A B C can find our relative major which is a C. Let's quickly look up here so we know that E minors relative major is G major. So this is kind of what the circle fifth does just allows us to quickly find some new chords or new notes that modulate or move into a different key. Because a lot of the time you might be right and some chord progressions if you don't just want to use the ones in the one key one you sound different ones but not 100 percent sure which ones you can use. This is why if you just have a copy of the circle of fifths just going go in google images and just take a screenshot or print it off and put it somewhere maybe that hanger on your wall. It's not the coolest thing in the world. It's quite old fashioned and it was used schools quite a lot. I wouldn't really hang up in their recording studio but it's good to just reference now and again see quickly know how to modulate and change to different keys. The other thing it does it shows is actually the furthest away notes so if you are going C we get all the way straight down we find the furthest away notes which is a G flat, and the same of the A, All the way down to the E flats. So this is a tritone of words. It's called an augmented fourth. So a slightly bigger fourth or diminished fifth slightly smaller fifth or a tritone. These are the worst notes you can use of each of a if you want to make really horrible spooky kind of horror music. Maybe you can use these but generally, I would avoid augmented fourth diminish fifth or tritones whatever you call it. So C to F sharp or G flat is not a very nice interval. Let's just write on here so we have C here, then we have the F sharp, let's just right the song it's probably sound like horror music. Notice when I play that as a B. The third one is actually sounded okay. That sounds fine. Just one semitone away from a perfect fifth, so a perfect fifth sounds perfect. Most of the time it's just slightly off and it's really uncomfortable. The only thing that's more comfortable than this is perhaps put that a semitone apart. Oh that's pretty bad as well. I'd avoid the semitone clashed like that but the tritone Yes not a very pleasant interval. So maybe avoid that in the circle fifth just allows you to quickly see so if you are playing in the key of F all I won't use B because this will clash so for an F then you put the note of a B. Now we know instantly. It's probably not going to work. Like I said if you want to create some more unusual musical maybe some kind of jazz tritones can work horror music film music but generally for any kind of EDM dance music pop music a word avoid using these tritone, so this is the circle of fifths. It just really allows us to quickly see which keys we can modulate or move into so you can just go around and you can write some music allows us to try to explore new keys rather than just sticking in the same key all the time is quickly seeking left or right. And it's only one note away. And then we can also see the relative minor and the other way if we're in a minor key we can quickly see the relative major. So thank you for watching this lecture. I hope you found it useful and I'll see you in the next one. 15. Minor Scales: Hello, in this lecture we're going to be looking at minor scales. So previously we had a look at major scales how to work at a major scale. We have tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone. We also had a look at some major chord progression and how to work out which chords you can use in a major scale. Now we're going to be looking at minor scales, minor scales can give a different sound to a major scale. If you're writing a lot of dance music and electronic music you really want to know how to write minor scales as well as major scales. Just because you've got a minor chord This doesn't mean it's a minor scale. You can get minor chords in a major scale also. So going back to major was tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semi-tone to work at a major scale. I'm sure you're sick of this now but you really need to internalize this just thinking at the basics of working at a major scale and then let's have a look at C major and from this we know. The note's in C major and the different types of chords so we know if we're sticking to the scale we can explore new scales. We don't have to stick to the scale but if you are new to music theory. So good idea to know the basics and to just stay in key and issues the notes and the chords to start with. And then when you get a bit but when you get a bit more comfortable and you want to explore new ideas then we're going to be having a look at changing key, modulation, so moving keys and creating some new experimental ideas. But for now let's just stay in key, so we have C major. This triangle means major. This dash here means minor. This circle means diminished. So C Majo,r D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor, B diminished and C major. That's basically a major scale you can shift these up, so to D major, E major, F major, D flat major, lots of different scales. And this is the major pattern. So now let's have a look at the minor pattern, easy thing to do. You can actually change a major scale into a minor scale by flattening the third, the sixth and the seventh. So this basically means we take the note here and just put it down one semitone. So if we have C Major the notes will be C D E F G A B and C. So B flat in the third will be E flat or a D sharp, but generally in this scale it's only flat. So you have a E flat and A flat and a B flat. Let's just hop in to Ableton live now. Now I write at a major scale and then show you a really quick way of turning this major scale into a minor scale and that is by flattening the third, six and the seventh. This will create a natural minor scale. There's other types of minor scales going to look in two later on but the natural minor it's kind of their standard minor scale so if you recall that tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semitone, so this is C major. and to turn this into C minor as just right here next to it. So same kind of thing. You have to flatten the third. So here's the third. So just one step below and make this notes. Then let's continue. And it was the six as well. So just flatten this here. So as this note I have flattened the seventh. So as this note down so you can see quickly. We have the first notes, the second notes, a flattened third notes, fourth notes, the same, fifth notes it's the same and we have the flatten six and the flatten seven and same of the octave. So this will play a major scale festival and a minor scale after, a big cluster at the moment, so you can't really tell. But let's just move this along. So this is a C major scale then we're going to put in the C minor scale straight after hopefully be able to hear the difference. The major scale generally is happy a bit over simplification undermined the scale is sad. Okay, let's slow the tempo right down, I will play major scale and then the minor scale straight after listen for the third, the sixth, and seventh notes and hear it slightly different. I just got them minor. I'm sure the hear they're slightly different just by FLAs in the third the sixth and seventh but they correct a completely different sound if you want to create generally darker music you might want to use the minor scale. But like I said in a major scale you still get minor chord, so for example D minor, E minor and A minor and C major. So this is kind of the quick short cut way of writing a minor scale to write a major scale. flatten in the third, flatten the six and flatten seventh, all we can use the pattern, tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone tone tone. You might want to write this down or remember this so it's tone semi-tone tone tone semi-tone tone tone. So you can use this for working out a minor scale as well. So it's tone semi-tone tone tone semi-tone tone tone. So this is very similar to working at a major scale we just use a different pattern sets tone semi-tone tone tone semi-tone tone tone needs it here so tone. Semi-tone tone. tone semi-tone tone. tone. So in a C minor scale it will be C D E flat F G A flat B flat C. So this is the basic pattern of working outs this pattern actually repeats around. So if we have a look at the major pattern tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semi-tone and the minor pattern tone semi-tone tone tone semitone tone tone you will see just the same but shifted over so the minor scale as the major scale starting here. So just the same pattern that shifted round. We'll have a look at this in more detail when we look at chord progressions. Just a series of patterns that shifted in a different position. This is basically how you can work out a minor scale. So just try and remember this tone semitone tone tone semitone tone tone and this is how you can work out minor scale, you know how to work out a major scale. Same thing really just the same pattern in a different order or if you aren't there, cheeky. easy way to flatten the third, flatten six, flatten seventh and that will allow you to writes, or convert a major scale into minor scale. We won't give you the relative minor we will look at relative minor later on. So each major scale have a relative minor. It's the kind of the minor equivalent. But for now just remember this pattern. Tone semi-tone tone tone semitone tone tone to work at a minor scale. Or you can flatten third, flatten six, flatten seventh to turn major scale into a minor scale. So thank you for watching this lecture. I hope you found it useful and just try to remember these key takeaways. Like I said minor scale Pattern tone semi-tone tone tones semitone tone tone. I'll see you in the next lecture. Well we will be going to be looking at minor chord progressions and how to work out the different chords you can get in a minor scale. 16. Chords in the Natural Minor scale: Hello, in this lecture we're going to be looking at minor chords. So previously we used a pattern to work at the major chords which was major minor minor major major minor diminished major. So this allowed us to work out which chord we play in the major scale. So for example first that will be a major scale net would be a minor and so on and so forth. We also have a pattern to work out a minor scale and this is the pattern. So the pattern is minor diminished major minor minor major major then it repeats and that's basically a similar kind of thing for major scale so we're starting on C minor. First one will be a C minor. Then it will be diminished at E flat major. F minor, G minor. A flat major and then B flat major and C minor. Remember that four to work out. Major Scale. It's five semitones from the root to the third and then four semitones from the third to the fifth to work out a minor chord. It's 410 semitones from the root to the first and five semitones and the fair to the fifth and to work at a diminished chord. It's four semitones from the root to the third and there are four semitones from the third to the fifth. So you can't just write out some of these. Right now let's go into Ableton life. So the first one is C minor. So we have to use this pattern which has tones semi-tone tone tone semi-tone tone tone. So let's use this to write out the notes of C minor so it's tone. Semi-tone tone semi-tone tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone first one semitone. Posehn Tone semi-tone tone tone and these are the notes of C minor sometimes Ableton Live or other digital audio workstations. All right sharpes and the flats. C minor really. It's an E flat and a flat and a B flats but it's the same kind of thing really. It's a sharper flux. It's just written differently. But music theory terms of traditional music very person with generally wants this written as flats. But if it says sharpes if it sounds the same it's pretty much the same. So these are the notes that we're going to use. So the first one is a C.. It starts in the snow here. We can work it out like I said before by using this pattern minor to finish major minor minor major major minor. Or we can just go through the courts and just work out really the root the third and the fifth and we can a lot of the time see if it's a major chord by the spaces or minor chord or diminish caught by the gaps between the root the third and the fifth. I'll show you on here also. So the first one was a C minus route to three. So this is the first four five. This is the fifth recount up here one two three four one two three four five. That's four and five. The distance. So that means it's a C minor. Next is this note here. It's one two three. This note here four five. The snow here could instantly see this is diminished because the gaps smaller can also count one two three four one two three four. So this one is a d diminished. Next one is this note here. It's a D sharp or an E flat. Don't worry too much if you're confused about shops and flats. They both basically mean the same thing they're just different names for the notes. One two three. This one here. You can see now that this gets bigger. This must be a major or augmented. You never know. Augmented is 5 and 5 but it's not it's a major. Three four five. This one here says one two three four five one two three four. So this one is a D sharp or an E flat major. Next there's this f stop one two three. So this note here G sharp or a flat four or five. This one here can see now that's quite small. That's quite big. That's one two three four one two three four five. So that's F minor. Next is a G. One two three. This note here you can just continue this must not be here. So to write that in I wrote quite fast. I just used the Putten tone semi-tone tone tone semi-tone tone tone. That's how I can write in a minor scale. When you start doing this a lot it just becomes second nature you won't even need to think about it just write in the scales write them the chords and you just instantly know for example the fifth chord of C minor is minor. If you're in a minor scale but in the major scale the fifth chord of C major is G major but you just understand after a while it just from a little bit fast and you'll get a bit quicker every single time but it does take practice and you do have to kind of go in and do it a long hard way to start with and eventually it will just become easier like any skill any S'pore any art. And if anything like that the first few times you try it's quite difficult. After a while became easier and easier and once you've done a lot of times it just becomes second nature really. Okay so. A fifth of the G says. One two three four five is this D here. And this is a minor you can tell by the gaps. One two three four one two three four five. So at the moment we've got C minor. Flat. Major F minor and G minor. Let's try this E flat. Sorry. A flat one. It's free here for five here. That doesn't look quite right. Starts on this note here. G on s I want to phrase that as the same for five. So I knew that wasn't right because it created a diminished shape which is for and for semitones the root. The first four semitones third to the fifth four semitones and now there's only one diminished chord in a major scale. So I knew instantly just by looking at the shape of that hearing get that that wasn't right. So a lot of the time you all make mistakes like that but just work it out. Go back to this go back to this pattern. You can just work at a flat. Okay so that is a major that needs to be a major shape. Now it's a major shape you can tell by the large space there. And finally the last one is this is sharp or be flat. It's quite hard to match up once this far away sometimes you might make a mistake. The good thing is when you move your pencil tool or your cursor at all will tell you on the side of Ableton life anyway. What note. Actually hovering over that one. Two free nets for five can tell instantly This is a major. So this is a B flat or a sharp major. So just by looking at this we can tell minor diminished. Major minor minor major minor Chuck minor diminished major minor minor major major. Let's just have a listen to this movie's these here. It's a different sound to major Gresh. A lot of the time you wouldn't really use a diminished chord you can use it as a passing chord so you've got a sequence of chords you can play in the diminished ready quickly or your making say really purposely angry or disturbing music. You're writing music for TV or a film may be a horror sequence or some kind of dramatic scene going on. Maybe you could do some minor chords but generally specially in a lot of dance music. You just must stick with major and minor chords. But using these corporations for a minor scale. Can correct different sound generally more moody darker and create more. Deputy music a lot of the time. I do lot to write in major major scales and minor girls. Well it's worth experimenting were both and just seeing which you like. But to start with I'd recommend writing all of this out working out the cause. Just so you know what the chords are where they are and getting used to these patterns. So if you look at this pattern here of working out a minor scale. Actually the same is a major scale pattern but shifted along. So of all these last ones this is where the pattern repeats. So we know there's only one diminished chord in the whole of these patterns so we can just work it out from the diminished chords. With luck here it starts. Minor diminish major minor minor major major. This is the minor scale minor to major major minor minor major major. There what we can do. It's just count off me can find it here so this is the first notes so you can just count up one two three four five six. So the six note of a major scale is the minor scale. So this is also how we can work out the relative of mine. So each major scale has a relative minor. Basically the minor equivalent of the major scale. So if you count up six notes in C major. C D E F G A. This is a minor and the relative major of C Major relative minor of C major is a minor. Basically I'm just saying if you count up six notes in a major scale this will be your relative minor. That's the easiest way to do it really were one two three four five six or camp back free one to free. I've offered to count up six but some people are no can't back free. So if you look at C count up six one two three four five six because remember C major is just the white notes when they explore different keys. There will be. Black notes. But for C Major it's just the White notes. One two three four five six. It's a minor or capped back free one to free. And that's how we can work out our relative minor. Could work out as well. And that's basically what a relative minor. It's a well go into more detail about this but good to know that the patterns are the same they're just in different orders. So Major minor minor major major minor diminish major. Work at here as well. If you look at this major minor minor major major minor diminished by just my major so the minor pattern also repeats. So just good to know that these aren't completely different. There are quite similar. There is a relative major and a relative minor for which putter. And that is basically how you can work at minor chord progressions quite a deep detailed subject. This may be you might want to go Bach or even screenshot a few of these just so you can work out what's actually going on so this is the major pattern. Here is the minor pattern. I can say we will go into more detail about the relative minor and the relative major for the minor scale but just know for now. Every major scale has a relative minor every minor scale has a relative major so he can interlock these and he can do something called modulation which is where he can change keys and there's a certain technique and pattern we can newsman changing key so it doesn't sound too weird. We can change keys so it's nice and smooth. But don't worry about this for now we'd be looking at this later. But like I said earlier I do recommend learning how to write minor scales as well as Major scales. Once you've learnt how to do the scales you can work out which chords go of this. This is really useful so you can create a lot more interesting music really major scales are great there's lot fantastic music may just have major scales but using the tone semitone tone tone semi-tone tone tone pattern to work at minor scales then you can work out what chords go over the minor scale so it's minor diminished major minor minor major major. And that's how you can work at a minor scale and all the chords you can use in this diatonic minor scale so diatonic means you can play the chords are and key. Of course you get a bit more advance you dont have to stick to the key. You dont have to stick to the chords you can basically put what you want but you can't break rules until you know the rules because you are not even going to know what rules are breaking or if you are breaking animals. So good thing I would says learn all this as best you can memorize it and tell lies. Do it hundreds of times and then once you know what youre doing once you know what the rules are then feel free to break them. But to start with your news music fairy just follow these rules. Tone semi-tone tone tone 7 tone tone tone my diminished major minor minor major major minor to work out a minor scale and which chords you can use sustain key of your minor scale. 17. Harmonic and Melodic Minor: Okay, now we're going to continue looking at minor scales. So previously we had a look at the natural minor scale, this is basically the same as the major scale but starting on a different note. So for example C major. Natural minor is A minor. We know this because all we have to do is go up six notes in the scale and the six note is our natural minor scale. So let's just write in C major by using tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semi-tone you're probably sick of this. But the best way to learn something is free repetitions we have tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semi-tone, this is C, for got up six notes one two three four five six. We have the A. And you can see here actually matches up. It just needs a few more notes on the bottom. Get rid of the ones here. This is a minor scale, giveaway is we can use the pattern for minor scale which is tone semi-tone tone tone semi-tone tone tone. So if we just use tone semi-tone tone tone semi-tone tone tone, from work out as well. Or we can use the major scale and then flatten the third flatten six and flatten the seventh. So if you write out A major. So we have to tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone and all we have to do is flatten. Just means. For the third note, down one semi-tone, put the six one down on semi-tone, and the seventh down one semitone. This makes a minor scale as well. So there's a few different ways we can actually work at a minor scale and now we're going to have a look at the Harmonic minor scale and the melodic minor scale. Melodic minor scale. It's kind of a hybrid half major half minor scale. Looks strange and the Harmonic Minor scale. It's basically the same. All we have to do is raise a seventh note. So let's just type in the harmonic Minor scale. So you can see this kind of a bigger gap here. So this creates a leading notes so when were on this note here. You really want to go back to here. So it gives us a lot more tension when it resolves back to the root note or the first note. It just adds more released adds more tension. So if you wanna create something a bit more tense maybe have a look at the Harmonic minor scale. So if you play this again and a pause on the seventh. It sounds really unnatural you want to go back to the first. So just another technique you can, you can use in pop music an EDM Music, electronic music, dance music. It's not so common but still Explorer it still works and then we have the melodic minor scale, so we still flatten the third, it's the third. A major is a C sharp so we have this fluttered to a C but then we don't flatten a sixth and seventh which sharpen a six and the seventh, so it's kind of first half of it is a minor scale. In the second half of it is a major scale. It's a little weird. We can create some interesting sounds of this. Let's hear this melodic minor scale. First half minor, second half major. This will of course change all our chords, so you will have to go through and workout the chords now. The best way to do this is to just write the notes in here. So now this is a melodic minor. So we have the first half, so we have the flattened third as a minor, in the second half no flattened third, I have no flattened sixth, no flattened seventh, so the second half is a major. It's kind of weird. See, we will have to go through and work out third fifth. Root, third, fifth, Root, third, fifth, Root, third, fifth, and so on. So you've got some kind of different chords here. So the easiest way to do that, that's just count one two three four five, so the first one. One two three four is a minor then a major gap here. So one two three four five. The first one is a minor, the second one we can see straight away. This is a minor, it's by the gap, so one two three four, one two three four five. The second is a B minor. And then so it just kind of change the chords quite a bit because before this would have been a diminished at some minor. So it gives us some new chords to work with. So something you can experiment with. I recommend just sticking with the Natural Minor scale and then going through working out which cause an I'm not going to show you now, if you want to work out the melodic minor scale I think it's best to go through and work out it yourself because that's the best way to is that go for experiment and work it out tweak what you want to work it will change some of the chords like I said the diminished chord is now a minor chord and this chord here, that looks like a weird one before would have been a major chord. One two three four five one two three four. Now it's this big chord. Sounds a bit weird. This is called augmented chord. So this is where we get an all major chord. Make it a bit bigger really, so a major chord we have the gap of five and four, the semitones, the root, the third, five semitones, and then third to fifth, four semitones but augmented its root to third, five semitones, third to fifth five semitones, get some newer chords here so we can get some interesting stuff going on. And this is basically what a melodic minor scale is to the Harmonic Minor. Or we have to do is sharpen the seventh and the melodic minor we sharpen the six and the seventh. All we could look at it this way round if we are in a major scale, we flatten the third, not the six, not the seventh, or if you want to look at from the minor point of view, the minor scale is sharp in the sixth and seventh, so it might sound a bit complex. But let's have a look at this again. So if were in a major remember tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semi-tone this is a major, want to turn this into a minor or a natural minor, flattened the third. flattened the sixth, flattened the seventh but when they change this a major into a melodic minor. just flattened the third , and now it's melodic minor, kind of a hybrid. Half minor, half major, first half minor, second half major or want to change this major scale into a harmonic minor we flattened the third flatten the sixth and we still have this semi-tonal movement by the roots and the seventh which gives a real leading no adds more tension so it can be good to experiment with or if we're in a minor scale or we have to do sharpen the seventh. So a few different ways is a bit more complex. It's not that commonly used. Just remember melodic minor. SHARP And sex sharp and Seventh. Or if you looking for adding from a major point of view. Or you have to do to create a melodic minor, flattened the third to create a harmonic minor. Let's flatten the third flattened sixth. That's basically the difference. But yeah you probably won't use these very much. I am not going into too much detail. Just remember there is a melodic minor and a harmonic minor and you can go through and work out all the chords you can use for each of these but generally a lot of electronica and pop music, it will be the natural minor. But I have an experiment, we have the natural, harmonic and melodic minor and remember of that so you can always just, create a song in a natural minor, if you want to change it stereo off, maybe even just one section you could try changing that bit into a lmelodic minor or harmonic minor. But be careful of this. It's quite easy to get confused. Maybe just stick of the natural minor. Yeah, harmonic minor sharpen the seventh, melodic minor sharpen in the six and the seventh. So thank you for watching this lecture I hope you found it useful. Hope starting to understand now that there's different types of minor scales. Maybe just the natural minor. But there is the melodic and the harmonic. They have different uses. Like I said the melodic is kind of this weird hybrid thing going on if you want to be major and minor and the harmonics. If you want to create some more tension at the end and have that leading notes. 18. Write the Chords, then the Melody: Hello, In this lecture, we are going to be looking at building a melody from a chord progression. So this basically means we write our chords out and then we can write a melody on top of this. This is the main way I like to write my melodies. But you can do it the other way around you can write the melody first then put chords to the melody which we will be looking at the next lecture. So what we need to do first of all is write out a chord progression. So let's just pick a key. Let's pick is say G major. So this is. Basically C Major but one different note, an F sharp. You know this from doing tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semitone, So we have all the notes of G major. And then we can work out which chords go where. So we could try the first chord which would be from looking at this a G major. So we have the root Two three. The third. Four five and the fifth and the gaps between here. One two three four five, one two three four means this is a G major. So you could start with this one. And then we could add on different chord. Let's try the third, let's add on a B minor to be up the B, just One two three D, four five and the F sharp. Okay. We can put this down inversion. It just looks a bit cleaner and sounds a bit smoother as well. Now we can add on the ones as well, so stretch this out a bit. Okay so it could have. Let's try a D. So going through major minor minor major major you know the G is a G major. The B is a one two three it's the first it's a major minor minor is a B minor and a D will be major minor minor major major D major. So let's try it this good D major. That's right. It's a D major. So going back here we have the D. And we have the F sharp. One two three going back again four five. We have this A. Let's move this round a bit and invert this, just put a F sharp down here okay. That's out on one more chord, let,s try an e. So major minor minor major major minor just the sixth, Actually let's put the six here and put the D last because the D will be a fifth It would give a nice five to one it basically make the pattern go round and round so I'm going to move this just over here. And then I'm going to add on an E minor. So we know it's just one note here, two three and go back again four five. So we have the B. Just can I put this G down one octave and maybe here it is well. Now that E up there. Okay. So this is the pattern all from G major this cause one fifth, just remove this. What might that plus the sound. Here we go and put this back really really quickly how we can write a chord progression. Let's just loop this. So we have G major B minor. E minor and then D major really really simple. I'm just going to add a Loop to give a bit more flavor to this. Let's just find loops. There's your search loop up , just we will do really simple. Okay. One thing I like to do is actually copy all of this over and just going to color this definitely. So now it's a different one and then I'm going to go through, delete all the bottom notes and just keep the top ones. A lot the time the melody is just a top note of the chord just an easy thing to start. And then actually put this up an octave. Like so. Okay, it's just a really really easy way. It's a bit boring to start with but it's a good starting point we can add a few passing notes. Not always the notes in the chord. We can move them around but it's actually just do this. Then you complain them both at the same time. Let's hear this, It sounds a bit dull at the moment. It's just. We can do. It's just drawn in a few extra passing notes. So we know the first chord is a G major. So really we kind of want to stick to notes in G Major and we know the root third fifth is a G B and a D could be a bit kind of cheeky. adding this F sharp in the melody to, we then have to just stick to this because I didn't know it's passing notes passing tones but it's a good idea to really stick to the notes in the chord to start with. But we can just add in a few of the ones. So let's try this B here which is the third and that's half passing notes. An F sharp which is the seventh. And we have D the second one. So we mean the chord is. B Minor if you remember. So you have the B D F sharp, so that's B D an F sharp. So we start with the D. Could land on this could be quite predictable we can move it to another note don't have this note on D. Let's try. So try to do there. Try and either. But to the F sharp there to go back to the kind of play this melody in early this has a good effect you can use next chord is a G A B and e, an E Minor. You can use that in the copy the shape from the start. So this is actually the seventh of the E minor. And then this is the fifth the E minor, so we are copying this melodic shape. But we are actually put in on different notes. So let's try that. I'm going to move over slightly. Continue this E. So we have the similar kind of shape is a little bit different. And then the last time when I do a similar kind of thing copy the shape here and looking back this last call is a D major. So we have the D. The F sharp and the E. So this has a D E and an F sharp, so and then in E, so we could copy this but change it modify it quite like the shape change a little bit. Okay so the D. E and F sharp, then it goes to an E, have this land on a different note. Try the D again. The case of this just a really quick melody not really too sure what's going to sound like but I know it's going to fit. So let's hear what this sounds like. Okay, just loop this, And there go again, But look the rhythms a bit boring to me. So you can add a few more in, remember, as long as we stay in key really add whatever notes we want. It doesn't have to be the notes of the chord. We can add passing notes that make it a bit more exciting as well just changes to an E. That note didn't really work. Let's try this. There is a bit too much space at the moment. The song is very bare so you can kind of make them the melody a bit more complex. passing tones, It's there. Can move it as well so it's kind of off beat. It's not always landing when the chordes just kind of throw it around a bit. Just to stir up it doesn't have to be the same every single time let's try a C that I want to put a C in. Even though it's there the seventh but it can work. Maybe not that C, let's try the B, Very nice. It doesn't matter just change it around. And that works. But a new MIDI instrument now. You can add more of the Synth sound ready. Let's try a more of lead sounds, So this is built just around these chords, It all works. All fits in key. So if you passing tones just to make it a bit more exciting. Like I said there's no real fix the rule, that's a combination stick in to the key. Using notes in the chord and paused adding passing notes just to make it a bit more exciting because if it's just the notes in the chord it can be a bit boring if the notes are in doubt and also for us to think of as rhythm. Think of this sort of thing quite exciting that people would sing along. To me this sounds quite catchy, it's not too productable, A few passing tones, there's some rhythms, keep it flowing keep it moving. But this is basically basically how I would write. Melody from a chord progression. Next we're going to look at the off way round we're going to write the melody first of all and then add the chords afterwards. So thank you for watching this lecture and i will join you in the next lecture where we're writing the melody first and then adding the chords. 19. Write the Melody, then the Chords: Hello, In this lecture we're going to continue writing melody. This time we're going to write the melody first of all and then at the chords previously we added a chord progression and then wrote the melody. But now we're going to do it that way round. So in the key of G Major, we know this from writing out tone tone semitone tone tone tone semi-tone starting on the note of G. So we're going to write a melody in G. Need to think of the rhythm as well. It can't be too boring once something that's quite repetitive but. Isn't too boring has a bit going on so we going to put some passing notes in another bit rhythm to try and create something that people could kind of sing along to maybe at home or something. It could be quite catchy. First of all, let's just experiment with some notes that fit in the scale of G, so you can start off with the third. Keep it really simple and then have this D. Then go to the C. Then. Go to the D again. So this is really really boring. This would be an awful melody. So when it's D now it's kind of mixed. And if you have a stuthman. So you can have this and then add. It's kind of doing this randomly. I think and I'm just looking over the notes that fit in the key. Some of these patterns as well. This time go down D, I'm going to copy, recopy, copy this. I have it backwards. I'm going to start actually with this, then and on this. Okay, and move couple of the notes around. Sorry. It's a similar kind of pattern but a little bit different. Okay, let's hear this. I like one bar one and bar four. You might just copy this. Then drag it that, drag it down. We has the same kind of shape. Like this. Might swap this round a bit. So start on the B. So I'm just copying this but haven't thought of way around. So that's a similar kind of shape but different notes I am going to add an passing note here as well. No C here. So if this works. So I think while one to work but it does not and getting somewhere. Just looking at the shapes really looking at the notes that fit in the chord. Or the fitness scale. It's not really thinking about chords just yet get rid of free maybe just keep this really really simple. So do you know about this but might copy this over again. The shape as well, the passing tone now. Now I like it all apart from the last but it's really just trial and error. Well, I think of something that's quite single ball ten do do do do den, something like that, but this ten ten ten on, It's maybe just have this repeated. ten ten ten ten ten ten , That seems touchy to me but not to put it Bob. Okay good, now let's get these notes of the scale. There are some cords underneath and later are copy and paste and move them to another instrument. So you may know in G major is the notes. Okay, I am going to see, look through these notes and see which chord basically has all these notes or most of these notes by looking at the root third fifth and seventh of the chord. So we this B, it's quite strong now. I think this B needs to be in the chords. So far the C here maybe this D could be a passing tone. But the B definitely needs to be in it. Okay, and then we have the E. I think the E is quite strong note as well. So we need to think, what chord has the A and the B, so could be quite a few, could be a C major7. So C E G and B. That could work. So we have the C and the D could be a passing tone, let's try that. But the G up here, B down there. Changes to C you have the B in the melody. Quite a pretty sounding chord we could make this a bit darker. We dont necessarily have to have this so we could change this to a D. Then the G. So the first one could be a G. Because we have the G, we have the B and the D. Then we have the C, I quite like the major. C major. Of what that's quite good don't even have to be really just a. A nine or a second. But really would have to put the 9 up top. Think It sounds better like this. So let's just, move these notes across. I have another chord here. So this D is quite a strong note as well. So let's add this D. This F sharp seems like quite a strong note because it's repeated ever ones could be a passing tone. But really want the D and the F sharp up lobbyists want to be the major. Or we could have an E minor 7. So we have the E D and the F sharp. If we want to make it a knife. But really let's just keep us simple that's just have a D major. So with the D, F sharp and with the A. This will fit. Okay let's hear the first two. It's B is quite a strong note. Let's add this B. Then we have. The F sharp seems like quite a strong note as well. Easy one to go here is Yeah. Just a B minor. So I am copy this D over. Also we can copy these notes over like say. So we have the melody going from here. Don't necessarily need to have that B there. It's pretty much been played at the top. Let's have a listen. That sounds a bit bass Not quite like the B. This is what I would normally do. What a darker sound you could try different chords. But the moment we have. B. G C major 7. It's kind of weird. It's called the gas. Then we have the D Major, so it's very major, very happy and then we have the B minor, so it's getting a bit darker. So feel like we should have another minor here. So starts with the F sharp, this F sharp quite i drag it one, Then this D quite driven one. And we could have a another note, So it sounds like an A as well. This is a D major again. You could make it minor. We could try maybe E minor sus 2, we could try that. So it's basically even F sharp. Might sound a little too straight stranger to attention. It might work. Very tense. Ok you go back to the D major one a bit. Kind of huh a more released. It's a different kind of feel. We don't necessarily have to stick to these chords. For example, we have E B and F sharp, so we could use it's kind of a weird chord from before. Let's try that. Let's try this. E minor. Then we have the F sharps, it's kind of the sus chord. It even changed the chord there. You have this kind of sus feel here and move to a B minor. Add another chord here it doesn't have to stay the same. We could add this E minor sus 2, so basically E minor and F sharp in again at the end add a bit of tension so we have tension and release. So let's add this E and then we have the F sharp and then B but let's put this in the base. Last one sounds a little strange. Let's try and move that down to a B minor. So this is a few different options, we can do and now let's just stick with these. So one thing we can do, is just, copy this over in Ableton Live. So we have this one so let's just colour this differently, so this can be the melody. Just rename this as well. It's great to rename the stuff. I know this isn't an Ableton Live tutorial but still useful to rename stuff whatever digital audio workstation you're in because getting confused daily in the wrong stuff can be pretty bad. So this one is we can see the chords. Let's delete this melody. Those top notes of the chords down here. So these are the chords. and vice versa for the melody. So we just, delete the chords. We can have it all on the piano sound if you want but next of a bit easier when you're mixing to have different instruments. And the chords down to Melody up. And that's so, let's hear this, Make sure the loops that's okay and let's hear this. it's been up an octave. we can add them on two different instruments. This works as an electronic songs. I think it sounds a bit boring. Just on the piano side. But when we add some different synth sounds pads riffs blocks can sound a bit more interesting, I think this as a melody. It's not too terrible. Still got a bit going on. Still catchy. ton ton ton, I firstly remember this. Some of the courts we will in key, few kinds of interesting ones like this E with the F sharp. We've also got the C major 7, stars on the top of a melody it's banditti. I'll be sorry so it's this major seventh. Then we go to the. This E sus 2, so it's e and F sharp. So we've got major seven chords suspended second chords tension release never away from write a song, write a melody, write in the melody write. Stick with the notes in Key to start with you can of course experiment with notes donncha and key modulation. Look at Circle effect for that. That's kind of a more advanced version. But to start with just write a melody in the key and then go through and work out what chords can fit with this. So this doesn't have a way of writing a melody and then you have got the chord progression to the melody. So thank you for watching this lecture. I hope you find it useful and I'll see you soon. 20. Arpeggios: Hello, In this lecture we're going to be looking at arpeggiators. So an arpeggiator is basically a MIDI effect that plays the notes one after the other. So if there's a chord of three different notes it will just play these three notes in the pattern we determine. So in Ableton live. We do have our arpeggiator plugin, this basically just plays the notes one after the other and you can choose different patterns. Up down up down. Etc. Different steps so if it goes up more than one octave. A lot of digital audio workstations will have an arpeggiator built-in with the DAW or you can just type in the notes yourself. So let's hear what this says All I've really done is got these chords from previously and just create a new track and a stock on an arpeggiator to change the cemp Slightly. That's pretty much. So let's hear what this sounds like. So here's the arpeggiator. So we can increase the steps so it goes up more octaves. The rate as well so what rate it goes through the notes. And that kind of thing. Also going to type this and manually because it's good to know what it's actually do rather than just relying on the plugin. So let's just open up this clip. Well, it was really doing just playing one note one after the other. So lets just Just type the send we can choose any pattern really an arpeggiate is great as kind of counter melodies. It's not the main melody but something else going on the bit of movement because sometimes the chords can just be ecstatic. But we have our arpeggiate going on as well, we can create a bit more movement, so we can just use the shape. Maybe just speed up. And that's the timeless. Then that's just repeat this. You can choose different patterns so you can have this E last note go on up to an octave. Do the same when the next chord so use the same pattern. Remember there's also B there, an F sharp there, so let's just draw an F sharp here. So we just know for later. A here. So yeah you can do this manually or you can just draw it in. You can use the arpeggio plugin if you have one most DAW as well. It just adds a bit more flavour to your music. A bit of movement kind of a countermelody this won't be the tune that people will be walking around humming. That's very common in electronic music to have. an arpeggio. Lot of the time you won't even notice it's there just in the background. You probably will notice there's a bit more movement in the track. This one that's put up an octave nearly that. So the last couple chords. Just so you can see how to actually write in an arpeggio manually just about using the same shapes just remembering where the notes go. That's kind of it's really simple. And of course you can mix it up you can change the patterns around it doesn't have to be the same every time but it's nice to have a repetitive pattern sometimes just to make it a little bit more memorable at times. So there you go. So you could move it around a bit maybe start the D there and then have the B at the end. And have this F sharp up and this D down. Lets hear this with the tracks. Like I said you could just select all drag it back and then. The blow up. So the some more interesting effects you can create that hit each note twice now. And then go through maybe even move. Some of these up an octave perhaps. So the first and the third. I'm going to move up an octave the chord. The second note first. To this kind of thing. So there's quite a few different things you can do. Sometimes using the arpeggiator to doesn't really give you as much customization as if you just go in manually do it yourself. Obviously it's a bit harder to do it yourself it can be nice and easy and quick just a fro and arpeggios just to see what it's like. Some times might sound really good at times. It might not. If you spent all this time messing around with these patterns then you realize it's not very good he might have wasted a few minutes but it's all about experimentation so let's hear this This could be great for a builder. Just add a bit more movement flow in your music. Going to the synth you just change it around a bit. You can do that's just me quickly just messing around in the synth like I said this is not a sound design course it's the music theory course. One way you can quickly go in at a bit of movement into your track is by adding in an arpeggiate. So you can even find your MIDI instrument. Then just throw in an arpeggio effect before it goes to the synth. Or you can just type in manually what you want to happen. It's a bit more difficult a bit harder but I personally think is the better way of doing it. So thank you for watching this lecture all about an arpeggio. 21. Writing Bass Parts: Hello, this lecture is all about creating a bass part. So the bass line is really important just to kind of lock in with the drums add some low frequencies that really full fill out the sound and just to make the songs how more professional really if there's no bass generally doesn't really sound that professional the bass locks in the low frequencies and makes the mix sound a lot better. Obviously this is music theory class, not a mixing tutorial but writing a baseline is extremely important there's a few different ways we can do this. We can write bass riffs. So basically just a repetitive pattern going over and over again something catchy and memorable a bit like maybe Money by Pink Floyd. There's a baseline and that is extremely memorable or maybe it could just be locking with the chords getting some groove and rhythm and just following the chord patterns as a few ways we can do it. We could even have the chords following the bass part or we could have the bass part following the chords we start off having the bass part follow the chords are all done just copy and paste over the chord pattern on to this piano and that's pretty much it. Let's hear this. So what I've done here. I've actually inverted the chords of moved some of the notes around so you think the bass part would be these bottom notes but not necessarily that. So one thing you need to do is go through and work out you can tell by the shape instantly you can tell this is major chords. You've got one two three four five one two three four. So yo know the first note is a C. So let's just type in a C below the octave. This one one two three four five one two three four. This is another major chord. So this one is a D as well. So let's just write the D in. Okay, then we have this one which is a bit more unusual I remember it was actually a sus 2 chord. So one two three four five six one two three, so it's definitely some kind of inversion. So if you put this b up an octave. This was actually what happened at one two three one two three four five six so this was the F sharp, was kind of replacing the G replacing the third. So there's actually an E in the bass note. This one. One two three four one two three four five. So the four and five distance between the root the third third and fifth means it's a minor so it's B. This one looks like some kind of inversion. So let's just put this D up here. One two three four one two three four five six. That's not quite right. Let's try it back down again. So it's one two three four five one two three four. So this is five and four so the D is a major, just to put this down an octave, there's one, one two three four one two three four five. So this is root position. This is B. So these are the bass notes. So what we can do is just delete all this. Okay, and it's already down an octave I put the all down an octave. Generally you want the bass to be lower than the chords. It's kind of a bit boring but the notes. Let's check in to see if they fit. This one sounds a bit strange just because it's their suspended chord that's meant to build up tension. So we could in theory just used this B as well let's hear if this works. I quite like the E. I think it works. So of course we can do stuff like make some rhythms so you can just copy and paste. A few patterns over like so. Remember that's a D so we've just copy this over to a D. That's one to an E. So this will just add a bit of movement. Still not going to be terribly exciting. But it's tough. So this was a D. And this is B at the end. So there should add a low bit of movement. You can add some passing notes as well, this D, So remember the notes in the chord, remember the scale we are in. Let's just check with the chords whats skowron SOME us see. We have the D of an F sharp B of an F sharp so it looks like from looking like at this. You are in G major because we have this F sharp, so basically G major is the same as C major of one different note the sharp. So okay, let's look at this bass part. Let's rename this as well to bass because it can get quite confusing when there's different tracks and you don't know what's what. Okay so in C major. So the first chord it's a C major then it's a D major it's E minor B minor D Major B minor. So in the key of G major all these chords. So we can even use passing chords, so chords that are in the scale but not in the chord or which is a bit easier. We can use theres In the chords. So this is the third. So this will go to the seventh. This might not work sometimes using the seventh bass note can sound a bit strange but let's hear it sometimes it works. Maybe not to the F sharp perhaps. Third of the D. So last one has their you look actually. Fourth's. B C D E. Then it goes on to the thirds the C, so it's different things we can do, we can take a few notes out here, just a bit of rhythm. So what the sounds like, On the offbeat which creates a bit more of a pulse against the bass drums because the bass drum playing on every beat. So based on the offbeat it will allow space for the kick drum and the bass to be heard. This kind of thing. So exact role we just want something that kind of locks in. So quite like this pattern we have at the start. So we're missing one. Then we have one missing one and then four. So let's have a look. So missing one. Have one missing one, one two three four. So missing one. Have one missing one have one. One two three four,let's hear this. We'll see Octave used to mean many octaves it all sounded just go by. But it's good to use octaves now and again for bass parts. Just be careful. Depends you might want it disco sounding. Maybe not. Who knows. Think of work as a bass line and of course when I change it from a piano sound this kind of electronic music. Maybe not a piano is the most suitable. So I'm going to just drop on synth called Saw 20, It's just a sign of more than serious science and a great one serum. I personally prefer this kind of music. So I can tell instantly these octaves don't really work now but more kind of into contacts so we can do a fine bass part and find the octaves and just stick it back downing it does sound a little bit too out of contacts. But to the disco, if I might like, it's fine if you want to make a disco track. So this is one way we can create baseline. It's just base it on the chord progression. Another way of course is to make a bass riff which we're look at next. 22. Writing Bass Riffs and Adapting Melodies : Okay, let's have a look at creating a base rift now. So this is another way we can actually create a bass line. So don't have to have the bass follow the chords. We can have the cords follow the bass so we can start off with a baseline. So we've just opened up a new clip here just kind of draw it in a bass line. I'm just going to stick to our key which was. G major. I'm just using so far the root, the third, and the fifth. And then add a passing note here. And so this sounds like. So a lot of it is about trial and error Unless you have a MIDI controller and you're playing it in. Also I want it in the right register. So I want it low. So I do believe create the bass is about being quite repetitive. Let's add the drums to this. So this is really just based around the root which is the G, the third which is the B, the fifth which is the D, then I have a passing notes of an A and an F sharp which is their major seventh. And so in theory we could just play this G major chord that would probably be a bit boring but it will fit. So I'm just gonna draw in a G major chord just to show you that it will fit. It will sound a bit bland as well or we could just have this playing every beat. Yeah would probably want to mix up, you'll hear soon. Remember we just played basically the G major chord but we haven't an A and an F sharp, It could add a few other chords. We don't have to stick exactly to these rules. I quite like this pattern for the chords, the rhythm, you can change it to different notes to see what it sounds. So we have the G, the D and the B or and we just have A and an F sharp, so let's just We can do it of course similar to melody writing. Is just copy this over, just I can see what's actually going on. We have this here, okay so now we can see where it lands on this chord. It has a B. It's we could change this to simply a B minor. So the B minor kind of the same. But instead of the G it's an F sharp, we know this because if we get four then five one two three four. One two three four five F sharp. It repeats again so it goes back on the G. So maybe you could try a different note. You could try. A D chord. So we have kind of a D Major slash G, so it's a G in the base but a D major in the chord progression. So one two three four so it's an F sharp. One two three four five. So one two three four five F sharp, then one two three four is an A, so that's b needs to get an A. It gives a different kind of sound. Try and have one could try. Maybe even a E minor. Try that. Let's put this G B and E. Repeating the G again at the end or contrived of a chord. Remember major minor minor major minor minor diminished major for G major. So we could try A minor, let's try A minor. Give us a bit of an unusual sound but it might work. Not so much I didn't like that one. Go back to the G, Look at this could probably have the B going through the whole riff as well so we can just add a few notes as well cause if you really want. This is more kind of comes under a melody countermelody. So then we can write a complete new melody based around this base riff or we can even see if our old melody actually fits. It's no harm in experimenting. So let's find our old melody, sometimes this kind of stuff won't work. Some times that we never actually know the here as are old melody. Let's drag it down to see it first. You can get rid of that a high B now because it clashes with the melody. Let's see if this fits. It sounds a bit messy. That's a starting point you could go in and find out the bass notes and compare them to the melody. Well just compare to start with perhaps even the chords with the melody. So let's go back to the chords. Select all this and then go to the melody. It's just different ways of finding new parts for your arrangement. There's one thing just right and if few cause another thing actually make an interest in adding new parts. So this is basically our chords here. So let's just drag these across. First one's D, yeah. First now is a B, shall fit with that chord a G major second has kind of a E D C B. Kind of fits there and then we have the day with the E B and the G. Kind of sets is not maybe not the most ideal thing in the world. This one kind of clashes at F sharp with the G we could change this chord to an F sharp or it could even change the melody to a G. There's a few different options we can do. Same here the B. That works fine F sharp B that works fine. G F sharp This events change the melody up to a G then j there's change there's a sharp bit. Now think for a bit better. The chords that fit with the bass line and now a melody that fits the chords. One thing we need to do here is go into our synthesizers and actually try it a bit more space is a bit muddy at the moment. Like I said this isn't really music very well it is at the same time as our mix is super important. Board. Try this with a melody. Now we're going to try the melody with this new bass rest. Let's move this on too. Yeah. So this is just a piano. Sounds a bit easier to hear what's going on because sometimes you've got all these different symphysis is quite hard to hear. What's going on because of so much sound design. It's quite hard to sculpt him because you can get these Choon and different effects in noise from the sense if you just go back to the piano sound can be a lot easier sometimes. It's easier to hear clashes and what's going on. And to need this chord sequence over to a piano. Then when you can hear it works you can move it back to a centre. But I think to start with. Not always the best today. For an hour arpeggiator. There's loads of different stuff we can do now. Got bit more going on, and now I'm just going to extend these chords and just make and then a bit more interest, and hopefully, some kind of more for my song because right now I think you should be getting the basics of what notes and what chords fit together. It's more about creating actual music. So now I've got the bass, arpeggio, add the drums. Then add the melody. So do this. Let's hear the whole thing together. So you have this chords playing here. This trip out about the chord is all about the drums. The arpeggiate. So it's just the bass and the riff. So we did change this riff. We changed the F sharp to a G. So I'm going quite fast in this lecture but basically all I've done is I've created a bass riff that's repetitive that fits with new chords and with these new chords. I've actually adopted the riff to fit these chords so the bass line has chords and the ref new riff fits these chords so it can go between the old riff and the new riffs. It's kind of similar for the old one has chords that fit the riff new one the riff fits the chords which fits the baseline. So you've got two different sections now. So this is the first section. Now it's a complete new section. One two three four. We can go back to the old section. So really this is about a bass riff and creating a bass riff that's more gone into how you can create new sections and adapt melodies to different parts because it's not just about right. The bass riff right of chord progression it's about all the parts interlocking together and creating some nice music. So you have to be aware really like the bass riff and those chords that F sharp which clash and so we have to change it to a G, to stuff like that but we still got the F sharp in the first riff and then the the second riff we haven't so it does have a slight few variations which can make music a bit more interesting because a lot of the time electronic music needs to be repetitive. But it also needs to be different at the same time so what you need is most of the parts repeating but certain intricate parts changing every time adding a bass riff changing the chords around this bass left or right and the chords around the melody or writing the melody around the chords different ways you can step up and create new music and create new melodies and keep it repetitive but also interesting at the same time. So thank you for watching this lecture was mainly about bass refs but also about adapting your music to different instruments and different parts. 23. Song Analysis - Chords: Hello, in this next section we are going to actually deconstruct a song and analyze a song, and work out how this was created harmonically the chords that we are used and their melodies. So the track I'm going to actually deconstruct or analyze is one of my own tracks called Space Radar. There's basically two main sections in this song kind of A section and the A1 section so basically the main chord sequence with a melody and then another chord sequence that's slightly different and the melody adapts to this. So we're going to let these lessons up. So, first of all, I'm going to go over the chords and then I'm going to go over the melody and then I'm going to go over the arrangement. So in this first lesson here we're going to have a look at the chords, so I'm just going to play the song now and then we're going to have a look at the chords and I'm going to deconstruct and analyze how I actually created these chords. These were created by combination of to playing what I heard in my head and also working out certain things by using music theory. So it's a combination of using your ear and using music theory to a kind of write your own songs and melodies. From my experience anyway, so let's have a listen to this song. Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. And then the song kind of repeats. But this is basically the song it's from these two sections. This green one here which is a section and this purple one here which is that a one section. So the melodies were going to have a look at the next lecture. But for now let's just have a look at the chords and the bass line. The easiest way my experience to work out chords is by looking up the bass line and then you can look at a chord patterns on top of that and you can basically work out what's going on here. So I'm just going to solo these chord patterns and let's solo the bass line. So this green section here is a section so let's just loop this. If you're not using Ableton Live. Don't worry the other digital audio workstations will have an arrangement view a view like this where it's quite similar. So let's just look at this a section and try and work out what the chords are. Okay so let's start with the baseline. And here we can say we've got a. And the G. So let's just write this down a. And the second one was G. And we had an F and then a G. So this first chord. The first baseline is from bar one to bar three. So this is the A, so let's have a look at the pattern above. So really we've got two chords here both very similar as we can see has one vote difference here. This note here which I class really as a leading note not as a separate chord. So here we have the notes E A and B. Let's write this E A and B the first one. So we had A at the bottom then above we have E A B, E A and A this is how I like to write chords out just by working them out like this. So I need to think A's at the bottom. So generally it's going to be an A chord. It could be a slash chord. I recommend it's just going to be in A chord. So now we need to think what order this could be. So this is probably an inversion we can tell here by the gaps that it's bigger than 5 or 4 semitones. It's 1 2 3 4 5 6 so it's probably some kind of inversion. I did write this song but I wrote it while ago and can't completely remember remember how I wrote it. So it's a good idea to go through and actually analyze your own songs because it's a lot easier when you have the arrangement like this. You can see the certain notes but you can of course download MIDI tracks on MIDI files of other people's tracks and go in and analyze these. So we have A. B and a E I would say. A B and E. So if we had A B and E just wanna write the same. A B and E. So this is kind of sus2. So this was A minor would be A and one two three four to a C. One two three four five to an E, as we've got a B. Let's have a C. This is actually a sus2 so we're playing the second chord instead of the Third chord. This gives a different kind of sound. So the first one I would say is Asus2. I think these chords are in two parts as well. So the second part. Let's put this in to divide. Yeah. The second one. We have A. Then we have an E. So the A on the bass we have the A in the chord anyway. But let's just leave that in the bass so we know it's kind of A chord and then we have an E as well. Let's put the E on top, then we have a D. So we have a D and an E. So this is kind of a bit different really. Instead of been a bit closer of the Csus2. Have the fourth which is we drawn here. One two three four. So we have a sus4. So we have the A. We have the E. And we have a D. So a sus4 means we play the fourth instead of the third. So this is a sus4. So the first chord or the first pattern is asus2 a source for then it kind of has a leading note here back to the sus2. So you got the first two chords now and let's see if we can work out the other two in the bass note for the other two is a G and so we have these notes here which is D G and B. DG and B we should know this already. The second one we have a G, We have D.D.G.B. You should know this really easy one so it's D G B. So this is actually an inversion as well. If we start with the G in the bass. We will have D, G B and a D. So if we count up one two three four five one two three four means major chord and it's a G major really simple. So after this the next chord is G. That's here. Just so we know there's a divide and the chord after is which drop the B to an A, so this note should be an A instead. instead. So it's G D and A, G D and A, This one we just think G D and A, so it's a G chord and stuff played a B. It's an A. One lower. A one lower than third a second. This means the G sus2. So not played the third place the second and that sus basically just means to play that instead of a third. So we've got our first four chords now. Half way there of working at the first sequence. So next one. Have a look at the bass note or is referred to the bass note bass note means a lot easier. So we have an F and the next chord starts with F down here then we have a C, and the A really easy one. So C and A. This is another inversion. So if we just put it around sometimes just have you just have to look to see if it's some kind of inversion you can tell by the gaps the gaps are too big or they're not quite right can tell the same kind of inversion so the F A and C. So let's write an F and C, so we have F A and C. To the gaps. One two three four five one two three four so five and four it is a major chord. So this is an F major. Nice simple chord that which is good. This in here. Okay, in the next one will be Earth as well. In this time you've got the F chord with added something. So this isn't a sus. It's not swapping the third actually adding the D. So if you count F, One two three four five the D it's the six, so its an F add the D. So this will be Fadd6. Use the words add literally just mean to add though on these words sus a lot of time it just means we swap it suspended so we swap it for another chord. Normally replacing the third. So we've got Asus2, Asus4, G, Gsus2 F. Fadd6. Okay, and the last one we have the root note of the G. Got a big inversion here. You can tell because it swapped around the notes D G and E so D G and E so we have got added to the G. So G D and E so you can work out D, G D and E. A bass note. Check in the bass note again. The last one is a G. It's really a G chord that c can work out which chord Is this one has a little bit more unusual than the rest. So you haven't actually got a third. Where's the be the third of the G is a B. So we haven't really gotten one them. Look along here actually goes to a D. This quilt quite. No third. So it's kind of a. I would say Gsus6, doesn't really exist the sus6. But from my point of view, the sus means a swap in for the third, so sus6 means you get rid of the third you added in a 6. That's one way of writing it. another way could be a slash cause they could have a G in the bass and a chord on top. But for me of a C Gsus6 means on swapping the third for a six because there's no actual third in this chord. When we look at the melodies we might change the chord a bit because the melodies will add in a harmony if it played the set and time the chord. But for now, I would say this is Gsus6, a bit of an unusual chord. I quite like unusual cause it adds a bit more flavour to the music and this one. Basically just a G we have add third and we add the third in there. I might just call this one a G because we do have the third second half for it to not be a hundred percent accurate but I can kind of tell what's going on here. So I would say this. So I'd say this is the chord sequence for this A section, so it's Asus2 Asus4, G Gsus2, F Fadd6, Gsus6 and G. The next section is this purple section. So let's just have a listen to this. You can hear it's a lot different. There's a few stranger chorts in this. Let's have a look at the bass. Actually, first of all, let's see what key we're in. For now we can tell by looking at this. That we are in A minor. I'd say This first chord I just realized it's actually an A minor sus2, not an A because there isn't a C sharp. So there we go. let's have a look at the B section, so in A minor. So look have a look at these chords. The bass notes. So we have an A, we have an F sharp which is out of key, so we're changing keys here. So let's just write this in, A, then F sharp. So this is a section. Now let's have a look at the A1 section I'll call it it's quite similar but has a few different chords in, so A1 section. The first note was I think, was the same, an A, A minor. Next one is in F sharp. Okay, It's a bit more interesting though. But then it goes down one semi-tone, it kind of breaks a few rules here to an F. Bit it works or I think it works. Then the next note is a G. So we've got some dissonance here, it's going a bit out of key. I think this sounds interesting, but it's up to you what you want to do. But me personally, I like it sounds a bit more interesting. It's good to break the rules. It's good to try new things because if you just stick to the key, stick to the rules all the time, it's just going to sound like everyone else. It's gonna sound a bit boring personally, but it's best to start with the rules and learn to break an expanded modulate and try new ideas . Okay, so the 1st one was an A. We already know it's an A minor. We can tell it doesn't swap keys on the first chord, but let's have a look. So we have a on A and Obey E and I in the bay. No prom before that. This so says to you, This is the same Caldas before to have a minor 60. Then the 2nd 1 goes up to the data is the same as before. A minor. So it's four. This is the way called Let's Have a Listen to this again. The 2nd 1 That's a bit more tension. Really. Like that court just f shop that's working well, that is his shop. I see shop F sharp, a C shop. The 2nd 1 is have shop. I see shop que se one to free four sets of minor 12345 Simply just f sharp minor modulation going here. I like this. Then it's work at the next one, goes up to Dean's to have a C shop, then goes back down to a C sharp. You could call a add six because we're playing. Both of them were playing the fifth on the six. I would call this F sharp minor. Add six F shop minor at six. Well, we could just call the f sharp Minor. Six kind of implies Has the six as well Evens find at 66 Depends what comfortable with. So we got some quite interesting chords here. Let's have a look at this one. This goes to a F thank you f major. Same as before. The for court. So you haven't f because it goes f a. See if we can't up. 123451234 That's a major court. The root note is F f major. After this, it goes up to the day. This is ah, same as before. Belief F at six. Have a look at the court before before we after the six not have replaced the six you can see here. So let's call this one here. F minor. Add six. We don't get too confused. Isn't really a exact role for writing these six cores when you replace them, but it's kind of Ah yes, six cold up. So we've got some Chromatis ism here, so we're just moving there in semi time. I think there sounds really cool personally, which by wrote it But I'm quite biased, but depends what you want If you want to insert a bit more unusual but more tension, maybe have a look at changing the key and some chromatic notes doesn't have to always stay in key notice Later on, when we talk about the melody, the medic, the melody actually adapts and changes to these changing court. So the melody didn't stay the same. Sound similar, But it does. We've with these cords also okay. And that we have the last one chairs this G start that bass note waas a J So if we look down here, base notes G make up to this God. So we have Jay day. Thank you. Them see? Same as before. This the g So six. It basically means that sex is a bit of a strange one. It means you play six. Note step the third that I think it's the same as before. It goes down to this day and obey. So this is just a j. Okay, so these are the cords? Quite complicated. Really? You hear? It just sounds like music. A lot of time. If you haven't trained, you hear music theory. Let's have a listen back then you realize you deconstruct the court to realize this quite a lot of stuff going on to the first section. We have the A minus us two, so we play the second now instead of the third, any minus us four. So play the fourth note instead of the third G juice sauce to swim. Play the second there instead of the third f f Add six. I don't six note as well G sauce. Six. Pitiful, Weird. Once we played the six note instead of the third, then a G 20 major on the A one section a minus us two. So it's a minor chord, but play the second instead of the third in behind the Suss four. So you play the fourth now instead of the third F sharp minus. I've got a key change here called. That doesn't fit in key. Then we have F minor at six. So you basically had the six note F. So we changing the key back again. F. Six. So this would add the six. We play the six note. Let's have a look at this again. So here, actually playing the six notes have the fifth note just watch called the F six. Then we have a G. So six the weird one Again we play the six notes No third note, if a strange one and then back to G Major or G. So this is the core progression that's used in this song, and this is how you deconstruct. It's not the easiest thing. The basic thing to start with is right down the bass note. But once you've got the bass note right in the other notes, and then try and get a pattern off, say, five and four major form. Fight for minor form four for diminished five and five for augmented two different types of patterns, you might have to readjust them. There's a lot of the time when people write music and they arranged the music. They create different inversions, so it's not always in the right order. So don't be afraid to have a look at these notes of flip them around a bit, and then you can kind of work at generally. What's going on. This is quite a complex chord progression, really a lot off. A lot of songs just have really simple ones like C D minor G but this one is a little bit more complicated. Is a bit more going on before being interested. Want to show you a bit more interesting? And it's one of my songs as well, so I'm a bit more biased, Um, but I personally prefer this kind of course Sequences called Pattern just sounds a bit more interesting than just regular of 25 ones. This add a bit more flavor, color and character to your music. So thank you for watching this first section this first lecture off this deconstructing section. Next, we're going to have a look at the melodies used in this track. 24. Song Analysis - Melody: Okay, In the last lecture, we had a look at the chords from this track and we also deconstructed and worked out what the chords were, the two main sections that A section and A1 section quite similar but the A1 section had a few slight different chords and had this kind of chord that wasn't really part of the key and was quite a chromatic chord. I personally think this worked. Now we're going to have a look at the riff or the melody of the track. The track is basically based around these two chord progressions and the melody locks in with the chord progression. So let's have a listen to the melody from the first section the A section and then we're going to deconstruct and work out what this melodies actually doing. So from looking at this melody or listening to this melody you can hear and see that splits to two parts and they both repeat. So it's really just based around these notes. B D A G. Let's have a listen again. Then the melody repeats looking at the chords the chords carry on the melody repeats. The way I already wrote this was thinking about the notes in the scale and what you can create a logically. So think of something that's quite catchy and memorable and also quite repetitive. So the notes B D and G think the scale A minor which are the notes A B C D E F G and A, so basically the white notes. But starting on A is a scale A minor but I don't necessarily use the notes should expect to a lot of the time you'd expect riffs or melodies, kind of revolving around the third and the fifth, you can look at this one first chord. We have a B D and a G chord you're playing is an Amsus2, so we have the B in a sus2 because it's an Amsus2 chord. We have an A. We have a B instead of the C, and we have an E, here we have a D as well and we have a G, so this kind of changes the chord as well. So this really turns the chord into a seventh chord, also had on this D, so it's quite a few different things going on, this chord isn't necessarily Amsus2 from looking at the chords it is. But when we hear this melody it adds a different shape this kind of makes it a lot bigger a thicker sound and so you've got one of the seventh for minor seventh and also this one two three four instead of a five and four all turning into an Amsus2. Add seventh add for 7th. So really they can not use this chord making it sound. More colour more colourful and more kind of going on and the deeper sound which is why this sounds quite mysterious and the track though actually called Space Raider because I imagined a spaceship flying through space. Robbing different planets like a space Raider and it's kind of big mysterious sound is creating created by a combination of the synthesizer sound because music quite a spacious synthesizer sound and also the chords and note selection so really it's not an Amsus2 it is at the start but when the notes come in of the riff it changes the shape of the chord completely and adds a bigger shape to the chord. This was kind of done subconsciously but I also knew I was adapting the sound of the chord by adding his melodies in and then we've got the second chord which is an Amsus2 Similar kind of thing, and then we have the G. So you've got the notes of the G here so you kind of have this tension of this first chord. It's all built up and has these different notes that aren't the traditional notes of the triad and then it gets released by the second chord which has a nice straight G. Let's listen to this again. So we kind of have this first couple of chords that are quite straining quite colorful have all this tension then it gets released on this G here and then kind of add the tension a bit more with the Gsus2 let's just listen to this again. It's quite hard to notice until you try. Yeah. So start with tension then a release and it builds up again. Let's have a look at this third chord and the melody that links to this third chord So we have this A minor just here. Then we have the G, it's kind of releases a bit the tension builds up when we have this sus2, and we have this chord here just kind of a lot of tension going on because of this B with the F which clashes, so actually playing this note here this B with the C, at the same time, that clashes which is another thing your subconscious. Did I want the tension to build up a bit more. I think it's created from this clash in sound and then a similar kind of thing. We had the six. Here, we've got the fifth. Then we have the G which releases again there builds up because they're going back round again to this A minor. So it's really just the chord progression and the melody should build up tension and release build-up tension and release as long as it's released by the end as you can see here we're playing a G and the last chord has a B D and A. So kind of to have a little bit of tension with this A and a G. Not too much so it's melody. It just built up around causing tension release causing tension release causing tension release. That's basically and what I want to do is create something that was quite melodic memorable repetitive but also had a bit flavour a bit colour and a bit of depth. So let's just listen to this again. At the start, I just repeated the bit this riff just to kind of give you a little taste of what's going to happen and then we have A1 section. It's quite similar. We have a similar kind of riff. Let's play this. It's the same thing. So the first one's pretty much the same it is the same and then the second one while some then different happens here. This is kind of crazy the second one. So let's have a listen to this again. So the C sharp D and the A. So it still kind of have this release because the C sharp and the A are the third and the fifth of the C sharp minor chord. So you still have the bit of a release but the chord changes to a different key it's a chord that doesn't fit in the key so we have the release and the tension at the same time which I think works well. Similar kind of the thing we had the D add a bit more tension and then we go back to this F and then back to the G. So it's all about adding tension using the notes that fit in the scale but not necessarily always the root the third the fifth not always the predictable notes. Let's just listen to the second section again. So love isn't just about following the rules and writing. Exact same thing again using the exact chord part chord pattern right in the root third and the fifth for melodies, a lot of the time it just hearing stuff in your head and just working it out trying to transcribe what you hear in your head writing it down in your digital audio workstation. A lot of the techniques I like to use is causing tension and then release as long as it's kind of released by the end of the pattern and it can loop round as a loop. You can pretty much put whatever chords whatever notes you want there's no real rules. But generally you want to use the melodies the notes of the melody which fit in the chord that don't necessarily have to be the obvious notes and just make sure it can continuously loop around. Of course not all electronic music has to be repetitive but a lot of the time we do repeat certain phrases certain patterns set and melodies then we change certain elements like the drum parts maybe because instrumentation behind it add development and mood and really allow your music to let your listener go on a journey but this is basically how I created the melody. These notes that fit in the chord notes the fit in the scale and that went the chords and the scale changed because we have a key change down here. I added different notes that fit in these chords and scales but not always the obvious. No not always the root not always the third or is the fifth to add a bit of tension add a bit of colour and just make it a bit more interest than to listen to because I think if it's too obvious it's too clean It's too happy. It's a bit boring personally but write down write the music whatever you think sounds good. It's not about what I think sounds good but what you think sounds good. So I hope you found this lecture useful about writing melodies, and I do believe I wrote this on the keyboard I play the end of my MIDI keyboard. Then I just sat there and moved a few stuff around so you can write melodies on a MIDI keyboard. If you're used to playing the keyboard or you can just type in on the piano roll editor, you can even use of a devices like the push to if he isn't able to Ableton live at launchpad and different kinds of MIDI controllers to trigger clips and to write parts. So thank you again. Watch this lecture and the next lecture we are going to be looking at arrangements. 25. Song Analysis - Arrangement: Hello, this lecture is all about arranging your track. Of course, once you get your chord and then you get in melodies you really want to arrange your track and just not have the same thing repeating all the time that certain elements you can repeat like chord progression the melodies and certain points. But I do want to kind of create a mood and create a journey for your listeners when they're listening to your music it really is just the same thing all the way through all the time they can they get bored quite quickly. So arrangement is extremely important. This doesn't necessarily fit under the Music Theory kind of hub but arrangement is as important as anything else. When you write music if you haven't got a good arrangement it's going to get a bit boring or might be a bit strange which is why I think arrangement is super important. You have to go through and create different arrangements for your tracks because it's not always going to be perfect in the first time in Ableton live now we have two kind of use we have like a session view where we can trigger clips then and we have an arrangement view of a digital audio workstations just use the arrangement view which is fine. Don't have to use different clips and a lot of the time when creating music I use different control as a modulars to create sounds and launch clips but you can just do it all with your musical typing just by drawing and you dont need in the keyboards as long as in a music theory and you have got your arrangement sorted you can still create great sounding tracks just like there are no dead noise users Ableton live now doesn't use many MIDI keyboards just types in same Skrillex a lot of big-name producers create music just by typing it in. So dont worry if you haven't got the latest push. We haven't got latest ABC controller. You can still do it all in the box. So this track is really arranged through these different sections other A section and then A1 section. A1 section has kind of a weird chord in there which I think makes it sound a bit more mysterious or moody and the track is called Space Raider. So when I was creating this track I imagined a spaceship flying through space kind of landing on other planets and Robin them and going back in their spaceship and being a space race. That's what I envisioned when creating this song. A bit strange but a lot of the time when I write music I have an image in my head. Kind of a mini clip of. Yeah a lot of time it's weird spacious things a lot of people write love songs. The songs I write in or about aliens spaceships Monsters movie that kind of thing so really depends on the kind of thing interview and a lot of sci-fi and this kind of thing. It can be quite interesting to write music like this. So I really wanted the journey to. Go through space and have different ups and downs which is why I've got this strange chord in there and of course, I have another section where we use now a arpeggiator which basically just plays the notes of the chord. So let's just have a look into the section just to kind of mix it up a bit of thought I'd add an arpeggio just to make it a bit more interesting and stop the same thing repeating over and over again. And then the rift plays over this arpeggio and you also have stuff like washes sound effects simple reverse symbols. Just to kind of make it a bit more interest than to lessen it, and then I chop up the riff. Then so it doesn't play the way for it as part of the riffs that are kind of hinting the riff from before and then the listener can tell a song that's going to ends and then I bring back this the original chords. So certain things we can do this isn't really a lecture on how to use Ableton Live. That's right. It's about really arranged in your track knowing that you want to create your music list that doesn't get bored it's something exciting and you can use visions or imagery when you write and you can even use visual scores. You can write out on the piece of paper what you want to happen and then you can follow that and you can use your arrangement to fill up that so if you write a big crazy bang. You know it means it's got a build up and have a lot of tension and you can use the chords and the melodies to add tension and then you can release the tension by using the predictable notes and you can build up the tension by using the stranger out of tune out of key where the notes but really arrangement is about experimenting and just creating music that you find interest in and you also think a listener will find interesting of course orchestration. You don't want to just use the same instrument every single track you want to change it. Mix up a bit add percussion. You hit the drum part on here. There is a role on the hi hats and only really have this role when a space in the rift because if there's too much going on the listener won't know what to latch on to and then just be moody and ness in your music. So a lot of the time if you have space then you can add something that is a space for a new instrument or if there's a lot going on just push back and allow this riff or melody to stand out and shines the listener can latch on to that too. So let's just have a listen to the drum beats and hear you can hear the hi hats and when these hi-hats are playing you can hear that the breath isn't really doing much. Some of the notes are held. Doo doo doo. Then we have the high hats. This little intricate things like that that most people don't really realize there's the hats playing a rhythm like that and the space in the melody. Just think all this sounds good. I like this. Most people dont really realize this stuff and listen to music. They just let their motions take over and dictate what they're feeling. They ask a non musician what they think of a track. A lot of the time they will say I like the lyrics it makes me feel happy it makes me feel sad really. Now Eric turns that can mean anything. But they don't really listen to what the chords are doing and won't listen to this and they're all the same. The first chord creates tension the second chord releases the tension but also modulates to a different key. I think that you won't think the first call has a lot of tension the second course releases a tension but it's a different key though I think this sounds Spacey. This sounds a weird sounds nice or maybe sounds horrible. I wouldn't necessarily know this stuff but as a music producer electronic music producer or composer or musician whatever term you want to call yourself because they're all kind of fall into the same bracket. Nowadays if write rap music and you produce it. You are electronic composer and electronic producer and musician. Any of those terms you really have to be able to deconstruct and analyse music in general your own music the easiest to analyze because you can go in and you can look at a project and you can see what's actually going on. Of course you can download midi files for other projects or other songs or maybe just ask why your friends if they can send you one of their tracks and you can have a look at that. Just to analyze what's going on. So this the easiest way in my experience is get the middle file and work out what the notes are doing and you get a bit more advanced you can do it. Audio files and you do it with tracks and try and work out what different parts are actually done by ear. It's a lot easier to do it but it tracks. Thank you. Watch this lecture. I hope you found it useful. It's mainly about arrangement how you can use different arrangements and different patterns and techniques to actually create some interesting music. 26. Song 2 Analysis - Arrangement: Hello, In this lecture, we're going to do another song analysis and we're going to have a look at another one of my tracks and basically just deconstruct this and I show you how and why I wrote it like this and I will look at some of the Music Theory of why and how I wrote it like this too. So we're in Ableton Live 9 and I noticed straight away there's all this space here at the top. The reason is the way I normally arrange my music is I write lots of it. You can see down here. It starts at about 60 minutes so an hour in I have just arrange in and try new ideas and eventually came up with an arrangement that I liked and for the purpose of this demo I just deleted all these here and well I saved as a new project and deleted all the other arrangements that I didn't actually use. We have a look in the session view Ableton live this is just another view where I like to write a lot of my music and trigger in clips with different modules synths. These are some of the clips I use so it's a massive project really and it's just been arranged down to four minutes or so. So remember when you are a range of music what the time it's not going to be perfect straightaway. This probably took me maybe. A couple of hours to write and then maybe several days just to arrange it and find arrangement that I'm happy with and then to mix the actual tracks so when you're writing music just remember about the arrangement and taken the listener on a journey it's not just about playing in certain chords played in certain notes. It's about arrangement which is as important as the right to the music as the mix in the music as the synthesis, the arrangement is super important to so some of these tracks here actually have MIDI data and audio data, the audio data a lot of it has been reamped. So basically I've taken this MIDI signal and rerecorded it through a synthesizer and then through an amplifier and then put it back into Ableton live is quite complex. It just allows your music to have a different kind of sound make it more unique. Makes it a bit crunchy and crispy and dirtier for an amplifier I've got a workshop called beyond the music workshop where I explain all this but I just make you aware of what these audio waves actually are, and they have certain things here. I've done some sample in. Some sounds fry and pan sounds that kind of thing and then revamp the synthesizer with all these different drum parts. Big riffs base part another base part lock sound side chain, and the riff and the more riffs, horn riffs, revamped horn riffs would sound effects and some vocal samples here. So obviously how you writing music and get the notes to work and create the melodies. It's very important also, think about arrangement this track is being arraigned so much to get this four minutes as you can see. Like I said before an hour's worth of range and before pair off it was huge. I remember doing this I spent a lot of time trying to find this arrangement and the came up with his range with them. Eventually happy with. You can also see if I zoom in. It doesn't start banging on the bar. Here it doesn't start in what you'd conceived would consider the right place. But when I put a few effects and start to get some movement in the song I have a lot section than it comes in one bar one. So little tricks and tactics you can use like that but a lot of it is just right. Loads and loads and loads of stuff and then arrange arrange arranged so expect to get right straightaway of see people do like streams with a lifestream a whole track in one hour. Doesn't work like that. If you want to make a song that you're happy with or you think's decent it's going to be a lot of trial and error. Even the huge artists dont create a song a one hour. They spend a lot of time just going through fine Pikin dotting the I's crossing the T's to make slight adjustments until you're happy with it. Dont rush. Take your time. Sort of writing music. Take your time. Think of stuff youre happy with and also arrange and take your time. So this lecture is just really about arranging and seeing my project here. How much stuff have actually gotten it just to arrange it down to four minutes. Loads of different clips loads of different stuff just to these four minutes here. So just remember that when you write music and you are arranging take your time. Dont rush and if need be make maybe 10 20 different arrangements until we're happy with what the next lecture. We're going to be looking at the chords and some of my melodies and how I actually worked it out. 27. Song 2 Analysis - Chords: Okay, now we're going to have a look at the chords I use for this track. Let's just first of all have a listen to this so you can kind of hear what's actually going on. It's basically just these four chords repeated round and round. They have these two bass notes but there's actually four chords going on. Let's just hear this. There's the intro part where we have this kind of weird effect that have sampled and then the chords and let's just play it from where the chords enter. Then there's a riff there that enters and then the chords. Then the chords come in after this as well. These are basically the chords and these different refs that enter different melodies but it's basically just these four chords. It's more stuff that goes up. I recommend listen to this track. She really wants to go through and have a listen to everything that's going on. But for the chords sake it's just these four chords two bass notes and them four chords of got there the kind of organ sound ramped. So we have some richer thicker sounds going on. So it makes it sound a bit dirtier as well. We've got two different pads here one panel left one panel right to create a bigger sound. But this isn't a lecture about mixing music as the lecture chords so let's open up and have a look at these chords. So we've included the bass note here. The first one. This is a similar chords pretty much the same. Same with the second one so it's kind of two chords. But then a slight adjustment of the chords. What I wanted to create here was tension and release. So the first first chord is quite tense. Then it releases and then the third one's quite tense then it releases just the kind of add a bit of movement and kind of deft to my music personally. So let's have a look at the first one. We've got this note here. Which is a G. So let's write in G. So that's the bass notes. Let's put the bass note down here. This is how I like to work it out start the bass note and then build it up. Then we have a G there as well then we have a B flat or an A sharp that's called a B flat and then we have a D, so we can work this out one two three four one two three four five. So that's four and five. So the first one is a G minor. The next one is a G a B flat and a D sharp. So the way I have actually done is starts release and then the tension builds up then. That starts. More tension and releases so it's just a matter of release and tension and builds not tension. So it's the start-up of release tension and a build up a bit here because we go up a semitone. She isn't the most comfortable interval ready to go up. I did this purposely just to create tension a lot of the time I don't think exactly how can I write these chords in this chord progression a long time. How could I create a mood or movements and you really have to go for it and tell lies all different cause you know which chords you can play. But to start with just try an experiment of creating tension when you're even playing a keyboard or writing in the piano roll editor. Just experiment with creating something that you think the listener world of taking them on a journey it's more than just writing music for mathematically and writing stuff. It's about creating the art form is kind of a combination between the maths of music theory where you get the patterns and also the kind of artistry side the side of music where it's imagery it's a journey it's an experience for the listener so you kind of combine in your left and right brain. So you the artistic side with their kind of logical sides that can be quite difficult sometimes but remember trial and error you're not going to get it right first time you'll have to do a lot of experimenting. A lot of getting stuff bronc, but as long as you enjoy it and you realizing it's slow and steady progress. Don't worry if you get a few things wrong. Everyone gets stuff wrong all the time. As long as you're learning from your mistakes mistakes are absolutely fine. To the second chord is a G. If you have a B flat and then we have this. B flat so it's a bit different here so it's a minor but instead of a fifth we've got the six, so in a G minor scale. It's part of the scale. So this is a G minor 6 to the second chord, write this in G minor six. So it's a bit tenser. So we have this kind of semitonal movement which makes it a bit tenser. So we have the release then attention. The third one is this F, so it's an F at the bass bottom and then we have this note here. It is a B flat. Then we have this note here which is a D. So this is kind of an F slashed G because we have the third and the fifth for the G at the base note of the F, who could write this as F/G which means we have the F as the bass note and then G as the chord which G minor F/G minor. Or you could write this as F, quite hard to tell of this minor or major because the B flat is both in a major scale and a minor scale. But what we can do is call this Fsus4 because we play the fourth instead of the third. The B flat. So if you count up one two three four. Then we also have this kind of sixth note the D instead of the C because they're the fifth note of the F is a C, so it's kind of a Fsus4 slash6 you could call that. Or you could call that F slash G minor so you could call it that. So basically it's a G minor chord but there's no F note in the bass. So a few options that it doesn't really matter too much what you call it just really needs to know what's going on because these chords might be a bit more complex than you used to which is good. It's you can try something I am trying something new, I think that we have an F. chord I will like F bass notes, and then the next one is F then we have this here which is a B flat again. Then we have a C, So you've got the fifth in now which is good. So we have F B flat and then C, so this is almost an F chord but instead, we've got this B flat which Is the fourth notes, if we got one two three four. The fourth they're in a major and a minor scale. So really this is a Fsus4 because we playing the fourth note instead of the third. So these are basically the chords going on, we have a lot of tension here with the kind of this semitonal movement kind of release is again the bass note changes so we start off with a release. Then we have a bit of tension then we release of a bit of colour because we change in the bass note then we have the tension again this if this sus4 so it's kind of creating a lot of movement but were actually moving the bass note very much the bass notes only moving from a G to an F then we've got all these different chords above creating something a bit more colorful a bit more exciting then just having the G minor. Just like a G minor F. It might be a bit boring as I've added this G minor G minor six F slash G minor a Fsus4 we create more tension we create more movement we create more stuff to actually hear. So that's just the lessons lessons. Just have here to see if you can hear this tension and hear what's actually going on. It's basically just built around these four chords and that's kind of the song with different melodies riffs. I wrote it just around these cause I'm just playing around my MIDI keyboard and I found a chord progression. I liked that I wrote and thought that's right some melodies and riffs on top of this and then after a lot of different melodies there's a lot more than the ones here that I went through and arranged. But this is basically how I wrote the chords just experimenting. They're kind of started off of just G minor and F and then I thought this sounds nice but it's a bit too bland. It's a bit too boring. How can I just say well how can I make this in G minor. More interesting. So applied the six and how can I make this a bit more interesting. So change it to an F slash G minor and also change the fifth to the fourth. You need to know what you're doing but also try let go at the same time you think too mathematically if you go over that right side of your brain you won't kind of let a feeling of the music take over but the same time if you don't know the theory you don't know that the musical maths you might not really write stuff as good as you could if you knew a little bit of music very much. So thank you for watching this lecture. I hope it didn't go into too much depth I hope you are understanding get and I see in the next lecture where we are going to be looking at some of these riffs and melodies used in this song. 28. Song 2 Analysis - Melodies: Okay, in this lecture, we're going to be looking at the melodies in this track skylight. So previously we looked at the chords. Now we're going to have a quick look at the melodies and just work out how I actually created these lines and these riffs within their song. Like I said previously this track is built around four chords with two bass notes. It's basically just a G minor and an F, and that's kind of the track. Obviously a lot of arranging there a lot of just fine tweaks movies staff around and creating some movement and tension for the track. I've got a few different riffs the melodies and I'm just going to go through a few of these. Now just so you could create similar kind of melodies. Work out how I did it. A lot of this was just by ear. It wasn't all using music very it's a combination of just feeling the track feeling what notes should go there. But this is from years of writing music and kind of realizing what notes fit together which notes don't fit together but you can make fit or change and adapt. The core fundamentals are music theory it's very difficult to do correctly. So let's just play from the start here and now go through a few of the melodies of what I actually did. To have this delayed notes at the start. You can hear the delay still ringing. So let's just have a look at a few of these. So I've a D and a B flat. Played on the second chord, so a D and a B flat. Fits into the G minor and so it's a G minor add six really if we're including these notes. Because the D and the B flat fits in the G minor, G minor six with the E flat, so we have a kind of a bit of clashing here. By quite a lot of clashing adds a bit of tension because we have the release from the first chord and then the tension from the second chord and the bit of a release. But a strange release on the third because we've got a slash chord. We've got a different base note. We have a bit more tension with a fourth one. So for me it's about release tension release tension this track and a belief. I did that with this. Just have a look and have one of these examples. So I think it's the same note a D and a B flat. So a lot of it's just fine and what notes fit in the scale also need to go through and write down the notes in your major scale or your minor scale work out which chords to use. Have a look at the previous lectures about that. If you don't know that already and then just go through and working at shapes a melody that you think will sound good and experimenting there's no rule that you must use the fourth the fifth and the third to write a melody right. Every sounds are good. But think of something in mind. If you want to have something a lot of attention don't use the predictable notes take you to the root third and the fifth. Use the more less common usual notes and this will create more tension add more notes in the chords, make it more jazzy. I guess this can create more tension more dissonance. That's about experimenting really. Let's have a look at this riff as well. The chords into hear, so let's just have a look for some of this. This is a kind of repetitive riff that's changed slightly every time and it adapts with the chords of the first one, I will fix with the G minor. So we have the note said the G the B flat right or A sharp C D and then we go up to this D sharp here which actually fits in a six chord, then we have the F, So the base that goes down to the F, we have the A sharp as well. So we have a few notes that just fit in the scale already fit and adapt with the chords. When the chords changes, the riff changes slightly. That's really what's about the base no changes and a few that note change. But it's also quite repetitive. So it can be quite catchy and memorable but the chords behind it change the few the notes change so it's not too predictable. That's what a lot of it is about in my opinion. Now we have a few more riffs here. So we have this baseline plan. Let's have a look at the bass line. So playing the root note which is the G. We'll go up to the third, and the F, playing the bass note, and then we're going up to a third which is A flat. So this is actually an F minor we found now. F minor sus4, because we're finally here in this third which establishes the note or the chord as a minor rather than a major, so it's a major a B this note I think could work as well. . . . So it could be a major or a minor. I just suggest to choose a minor to make it sound a bit deeper a bit moodier, as previously we wouldn't we weren't actually hearing the third note which is establishes the chord as a major or minor, so we have got this bass note, and then for another song, we have got a few more riffs as well. For it's a kind of a long held notes which are very delayed also. This is playing the D which is the fifth of G. We played an F and few passing notes and then we go to the C which is the fifth. So these are basically just plain fifth notes which obviously fit in the scale. Then we have this horn riff, and we have this reamp here as well. Reamp mean basically, we take the signal into an amplifier and rerecord this back in so you can get some sound from the amplifier like distortion sounds of the room. But for music theory sake let's just have a look at this riff. So if you recall where in the G minor. So we have the notes there. B flat or A sharp G F which is the seventh, so we have around the bit more colour with the seventh G, a few more notes here as well. The C so we add in the fourth and then we go down to the F but we're also establishing this fourth as well quite strongly, so if we look at the chord, we've got a sus4 with the F, but we're also establishing this fourth as well quite strongly, so if we have a look at the chord we've got a sus4 coming in it as well. This A sharp, it's basically based around the notes of the chord that the tried of the chord a few blue notes in between. That's basically how I've written the refs. So I've written the chords and now thought of something that's quite catchy and melodic repetitive but also follows the notes the chord there's a few notes that aren't the root the third the fifth or whatever the chords playing for example this chord is more based around the fourth than the fifth or the third. This was more based around the six than the fifth. So still following this traditional root third and fifth and I might follow the root forth and fifth for the root fifth and sixth. So the notes are really based around the chords but at the same time I want to have an interest in rhythm something that's quite catchy some that kind of thing people could sing along to a listen to this riff here. I think this is quite catchy. I think people could sing along to this. I have different octaves of notes going on than not all the same octave because if they're all in the same octave it can quite get quite muddy, can clash but you've got different octaves your spreading out that spectrum of sound so you can create a lot more going on. So listen and you can pick out different parts so obviously you get the bass notes to get a lower F will get higher F, we get the held notes the chords the drum reverbs. So there's a lot of different stuff that the listener can actually listen and pick out. But that's basically how I created the melodies I thought of something rhythmical that's quite catchy no, so follows the notes in the scale and follows the notes in the chord. Sometimes you can put notes that are slightly at scale or slightly out of the chord if they're passing notes. This can work but wouldn't really hold or stay on a note that isn't really a strong established note of the chord. So depends on what the chord is. For example the G minor. You really want to kind of establish the riff or their chords or the pattern around this root third and the fifth. So the G B flat and the D, the six you want to establish it more random six rather than the fifth, and the same with a sus4, few established more than the fourth note and the third note. So this is kind of how I wrote my melodies. A lot of it was just by ear and just playing what I thought would feel right and also thinking about music theory. Thinking about the notes and the chord thinking about the scale and combining this all as one. So thank you for watching this lecture. I hope you found it useful and I'll see you in the next one. 29. Song 3 Analysis - Chords: Hello, in this lecture, we're going to be analyzing another one of my tracks. This one is called Angels Prey. I do believe it's a bit more intricate there's a bit more going on than in the other tracks. It's really just based around the same four chords. Then I have different melodies that come in. Then different textures a lot of work on arrangement this tracker a member I've spent a long time arranging this. We look at the top the whole piece was about an hour long and I arranged this to just over three and a half minutes. So arrangement was super key. This however is not a tutorial about Ableton live or mixing or plug in tutorial this is about music theory and working out the chords and the melody so we're going to be looking at my chords how I constructed the chords and also how I constructed the melody. Also have a look down here these red lines. This is tempo so tempo changes which is part of arrangement and texture which I believe is really important. You want to create some more interesting music. You can always put some tempo changes in. So let's have a listen to this. It's quite a big project to consider a lot of different instruments but it's really just based around the same four chords and I add a few different melodies in use different orchestration so. But these breaths on different instruments. Mean just try make it turn into more of a journey for the lessner and really just. Then these four cores into a lot more than just the same four chords but it started off just were four chords and a few different riffs. I mean going to work out how I did this the rest of it was really arrangement and mixing. Like I said we're not really going to be looking at mixing but I will go into a bit of detail about how I actually arrange this so let's have a listen. The. Boom. Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. So there's really a lot going on in terms of arrangement for this track. It's just based around these four caused a lot of tracks just based around four chords and that's well the idea started was a huge arrangement and I stripped it back down to just over three and a half minutes, and then what I basically did is I wrote these four chords and I wrote loads of different maladies that go with these four chords. That worked out which melody's I could play at the same time which ones are locked together. The bass lines the pad's different octaves. I can put together trying not to class sounds too much and then it was all about mixing and plugins but it all started off just with these four chords. So let's actually work out the four chords. I don't think the best thing is to find the bass notes and then once you've got the bass notes it's quite easy to work out what the chords are. Let's have a look at this. So we've got G F C and C as well. So let's just write this in the document GFCC. Bass notes. G F C C. So the first one probably going to be some kind of G chord. The kinkier we've got this D sharp or E flats, so we know it's not going to be G major because G major does not have D sharp or E flat. Maybe it's a G minor might think are the key. Who knows maybe a C minor doesn't necessarily have to start. On the first note So the key doesn't have to be the first note. So that's basically the bass line the feel or passing notes. So let's have a look at the chords. Now we know the bass notes is G F C C and they use an arpeggiator for this just plays for the notes. So let's have a look. So we have G. A sharp or B flat. Then D. So instantly you should know that this is a G minor chord because of the gaps here. Theres no inversion going on. It's just a reposition so it's one two three four, and when you have an interval of four notes like this or four semitones between root and third and then third and fifth of five. One two three four five. So four and five. That's a minor chord so we know instantly this first court is a G minor and work at the second fours so the baseness f this one we can tell straight away isn't as common. You can do it by listening to this as well. You should know that the first chord is quite a regular chord. Second, the curve drops down with the arpeggios as a bit of a different sounding chord adds a bit of tension. So we have an F B flat and a D. Let's just write thIs down the F B flat D. So F B flat and the D. This is kind of a B flat chord surface what these notes are and bear and put the B flat in the base. We can actually create. Different kind of chords. So let's just so if the B flat isn't a base that's B flat D F is the B flat major chord because the gap between a B flat one two three four five in a D is five and a gap between a D one two three four is four. So this would be a B flat major. However, we have this base in the chord to this earth bass note which. Didn't really a B flat major chord so it could write as B flat slash F. So this would be a B flat chord an F in the bass. Or we could write it as. kind of an F sus 4 slash six. So this means we're playing the fourth note. Which would be the B flat instead of an A, and we are playing the six instead of 5 which is the D, so we could have it as F sus4 slash 6 or B flat slash F. It doesn't really matter too much it's more you know what the notes are what's going on. I quite like the B flat slash B flat slash F, F sus4 slash 6 a little bit confusing. So really we just keep the same notes and we just drop the bass one. That's pretty much what's going on so notes are the same drop in the bass from a G to an F just adds a bit more color and movement to the chords. If you don't write the chords exactly like B flat slash F or B sus 4, 6 it doesn't matter. It's more about knowing what the notes are doing and knowing how this sounds we just know it drops down the bass adds a bit more tension. That's all I'm trying to create. I wasn't really thinking I'm going to have a F sus 4slash 6. I just think I want to add a bit of tension and just change this very so slightly and change the bass at the same time. I got this one. Which is a G B flat. Oh a slightly different chord here. So this is the G minor. Instead of playing there the D we have got this D sharp instead. It's a bit different this chord, and the G minor is the relative minor of B flat major and in B flat we have two flats, E flats and the B flat, so this is in key. Just I like this chord. Sounds a bit more interesting than just a different tone different feel so this is really just a G minor six because you're playing six note instead of the fifth one. So the next one is G minor six and then we have got another one here is kind of the same thing. Ah so we got this G minor again. But look at the bass note it's a C. We've got the G minor which is looking at this G B flat D one two three four one two three four five it,s You think it's a G minor but there's a C in the bass. So what is it. Kind of hint the first chord change the bass note as well. So if you were a hint in backed the first chord change in the bass note just to mix it up a little bit. That's kind of how I was feeling at the time. So we've got this C in the bass, then we got the G, B flat and got the D. So this could be here. Perhaps C sus2 some because we're playing the D instead of the E flat which is the third of a minor chord so C minor sus 2 seventh chord could write like that. So now you know the sus 2 we are playing a D an instead E flats and a set of because he's got a B flat. Or we could just call that. G minor slash C and probably in the chord. So I just know. Oh it's the G minor chord. There's a C in the bass so now and those G minor B flat chord F in the bass. There's no G minor but replace the E flats there the D and then G minor with a C. I also listen to the same time and look at the piano roll. If I was trying to jam their live situations say, add a band together want to play this live, I'll probably give the musicians just a lead sheet of chord chart. Maybe a few of the notes of the melody and some chords and listen to the track. Work it out. Then I'll have to work out the parts from these chords. That's kind of quite a common thing for lead sheep or remixes if you do a remix or someone sending you a remix. A lot of time you get some chords you've got work the rest of it out. But I would say this is pretty standard for me to work out the chords. Most of the time I wouldn't even work at the chords. I'll just write it and I just kind of do it by ear. But it's good to know. Work out how I did this and the different elements the ingredients I use it's like cooking or baking really if you're baking a cake it's great to taste the cake but knowing what exact ingredients you put in for the cake and the way we've got this that's kind of what the chords are based on the track. Next we're going to have a look at Melody. In a different melody used and how I use these to kind of create counter melodies and interlock the melodies together. So in this lecture, we've gone over this track and also have a look at the different chords used as a slash chords a lot of movement in the bass while the chords are staying the same. The bass is moving. I'll do a lot. The time adds a bit more colour to your chords and it makes it feel like it's staying in the same place. But it's moving at the same time so you can add a lot of tension doing this. 30. Song 3 Analysis - Melodies and Arrangement: Okay, now we're going to have a look at the melodies in this track. Angels Prey, and the way I wrote the melodies was thinking first of all what other notes in the chord when no notes and these chords are basically based around a G minor so it's a G minor scale but we're kind of changing the different chords. But it all fits in G minor. There's no modulation believe all the melody is just in G mind. There's no real clashing notes here. But I'm also thinking what could the right that's melodic. What kind of write that's catchy, What can I write. The listener will enjoy listening to so it's not just all over the place it's quite repetitive. It's also I think it's quite interesting because if it's too repetitive too predictable they think it can sound a bit cheesy it can sound a bit boring. So once to create a few different melodies that lock in with each other a few different elements This track is very heavily arranged as quite a lot going on. It's only really based around for causing a few different melodies. That's the way of put together. Let's find a few these melodies and explain how I actually wrote this. So you can hear there. There's this one melody here. Then there's another melody that's lower believes kind of the same. Try and find this. So this bass melody really and then locking him with as high a melody. So first of all I play this just the kind of hint in see know whats going to happen if you fill all this ref coming repeats again. Then it repeats with a bass melody. Then we have the big huge melody with her hands in the air section. So let's have a look at this part first of all remember the first chord was G minor. So we have the root third is just a G B flat then we have the fifth which is a D back to the roots. It's really simple stuff and then up to the D again down to the C which is the fourth. So just root third fifth fourth simple stuff then. This ref repeats. But on the third chord this time. Third chord of the third base note because there isn't really established chord. It's just the bass note which I believe is a C. Bass note is a C third time. So it played the same ready but so if there. G. Which fits for the C as a fifth B flat which is the seventh note of the C minor scale or C dominant scale because we don't really have a chord yet just the bass note and the riff. So this kind of hints as towards C dominant or C minor may have the D. Then we have the c. Then the B flat it's kind of a ever. Because we're not playing this note. Even a c dominant or C minor. It's kind of a standard riff but we're hinting towards the seventh to add a bit more flavour bit more blues sound bit more colour. For me, we have this kind of countermelody or second melody-based melody. Just the same but just lower really. So just drop it in the octave, have a look and that's really it's quite simple. So this is plan G to this one is playing. G to believe in the in the synth fits jumped up and active as well. So that's really all I'm doing it's not that difficult. So this is in their synthesizer thing to see it's octave. Don't really worry about this. This is just for me just to work out exactly how I did it. But synthesis and that kind of stuff I recommends checking out I can play Abletonton live goes. So yes it changes the art another and basically. So he can tell I've got up the octave of these parts and hear where it is. So if ever stops with harmonizing parts just use octaves you could do a lot of different keyboards sound you can pan the sounds, you can change a sound. You can do some EQ. You kind of change the sound frequencies the space for each part to be heard but octaves is it's really easy if you just want to create a really simple harmony that's already dead that's just base this around notes of the scale add a few kind of colourful notes like they're the seventh and that's really it. then we go a bit lower as well so we played an octaves That's bass around the G. For the first chord it was the G minor. Then we move to this F the second chord has a root note of an F and a B flat using that F and the B flat to sticking around the notes in the chord mainly around the root third and fifth the next one is c we have some B flat as well. So we're kind of hinting towards. Just kind of a C seventh chord. Boom boom boom boom. Boom. Mr. Conan. They're kind of the same but it's more about creating some from memorable. I like to think of rather than thinking I'm going to stick to the chords. It's a lot of time it's about yes thinking of something that's kind of catchy and just comes a practice and lesson to a lot of other music. So this one I've just realized has a C in the bass note. So it's kind of a G minor 6 sus C. I don't really worry too much about the technicalities but for my own sake. So to put the sense of the bass that is a C. But really it's a G minor chord and have a B flat with an F in the bass. Kind of a different kind of G minor so I'd just put the fifth up to six were seeing the bass and never G minor with the C in the bass. So it's a lot of bits create the tension and then release create tension and release and then the whole track is really just about arrangement some intricate parts like a love washes tempo changes effects different kind of instruments a lot of instrumentation and this or this. Maybe 30 inch comments quite a lot go numb but they're never all playing at the same time it's parts where. But one instrument playing or maybe five infants playing and then one instrument a play and the other instruments part and the other is from that plane the interest part of obstructive down a harmonized then different kind of sounds going on but all based really around the same kind of thing. Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. These vocal samples planned. I really like this part. It's called the Rift spacy. Let's work out what I'm doing here. I remember right this and thinking this is a really nice part. This has come over. We noticed a lead in. So lobar Choon sounds a bit strange but. Give that kind of leading up. Play in the seventh and the root and the third, the first chord which is the G minor second chord which is the B flat of an F in the base were played the D. So this is the fifth then we have got an A sharp or B flat. The third chord is kind of G minor of a C in the bass we are playing the third and then we are playing the roots so it's just really simple root third and fifth. I think sounds really nice with the rest of the track. Just layer on the melodies making sure they don't clash too much. I'm not trying to play different melodies with the same frequencies at the same time to think of that. Like I said this isn't really a mixing class but when you write in different parts trying not to have them clash or to muddy because you want have space for every instance to be heard. So if you do want to play several different instruments think about solo in different octaves different harmonies and fifths that kind of thing. So there's space for every instrument to be heard. Bring back the over a riff from before you recall a different instrument. So just is really about layering new things in hinting different instruments and this time I actually had it for an amplifier to get more of a crunchy sound. That's a technique called relamping something you might look into if you have created some more unique sounds. But that's more about mix and rather than arrangements. But it's different things to think about. Of course you want to think about straight away what notes can you play what chords can you play how can they make this work. How can they not catch you. How can they make it as memorable and then you want to think about more the intricate parts like layer and different sections in different melodies or riffs on different instruments and not making it too predictable. You want a constant sound for out something the listener can latch on to but at the same time you don't want it to repaste if you want it too boring. Which is where arrangement comes in. So I'd recommend if you are new to write music start of a chord sequence of chord progression then write a few melodies on top of this and then think about stuff like drums bass parts and then mix in a plugins. Think about that after but what about the core fundamentals of this chord progression and these different melodies and this track wouldn't really work and Ableton live. You can write in the session but you can see here there are tons of different parts so each one of these it's basically just a little clip and then you can just go free and play the lot clips some of them work some of them dont work as well. We don't really know about experimenting what I basically do a lot of riffs those different melodies those different drum parts. A lot of them I don't even use. See, I didn't actually use this on the track. So another kind of arranging and record that too. But then I went through and changed all of this but it all came from right no nice chord progression I think is a nice chord progression right load of different melodies and just arrangement arrangement arrangement. I know this is a music theory class but the arrangement is so important. But you need to know what notes pitcavage need to train your ear to realize now also what fits well together what you think sounds interest and what the listener what latch onto what the listener will be humming in their head after be singing along. But a day later after hearing your tracks so it's really a combination of knowing what works and thinking of the lessner thinking what would they want. How do I make this interesting. How can you make this. Exciting for the listener and not for them not to get bored and to be locked in for the whole 2 minutes 10 minutes 15 minutes of your track. So thank you for watching this lecture. I hope you found it useful and I'll see you in the next one. 31. Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 1: Hello in this lecture, I'm going to show you how I build a song from scratch. So there's one thing knowing about music theory but there's the other thing actually putting this into practice building your song. One of the most intimidating thing is can just be seeing your DAW or digital audio workstation completely blank with nothing to work from. So I'm going to show you a few of my techniques that I use personally for actually building and writing music, so these techniques are going to be building a song from a drumbeat building a song from a chord progression and building a song from a melody. We're going to start off with a drum beat and I will show you the technique I actually use for creating a song. The digital audio workstation that I'm going to be using will be Ableton live really all the DAW have similar kind of thing. So if you're using FL studio or maybe Cubase or Logic pro it will be similar to there. The main difference in Ableton live you have the session view which is this view here but you also have the arrangement view which looks like this which you're probably more familiar with. If you use any of the digital audio workstation. So I've just created a few different tracks created a drum track. So were a few different drum hits like a kick drum snare cymbals that kind of thing a bass sound with a synthesizer called serum. Don't worry if you don't have this sympathizer you can use other ones. But I like this one at the moments. Then a keyboard part with serum a block sound and a riff where we are gonna be based around a drum-beat. So that's the main way I write music is around from beats. Now a lot of people use different techniques and different styles for this example I'm just going to be doing get with a drum beat. Really. So like I said in Ableton live you do have a session view and an arrangement view. I normally write in the session view, well before I do it in the arrangement view this is what most people will be using if they don't use Ableton live if don't use Ableton live dont worry. I still use Logic Pro and actually started off using a digital audio workstation called Cube basis which is kind of a really basic version of Cubase and then I went on to read them and then GarageBand and then Logic Pro and now Ableton live also. So it doesn't really matter and they have a lot of producers who use Pro Tools. Well if you want to make electronic music. It doesnt really matter which digital audio workstation you use. Its all about what the music sounds like and a good foundation of music theory or really help you. So Ill be using some of the techniques that we've been using. I've showed you in this video class as video course but hopefully I might be able to teach you a thing or two about my technique and how I actually create music. There's one thing just learning tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semi-tone and about the scales and some of the theory. There's an old thing actually creating music. You might be the best person that will memorize in theory memorizing different patterns and workarounds but it's actually about creating music. You wants to be a music producer want to be a music composer. You have to write music. That's really why it's about. So let's stop this drum beat. I also got a MIDI controller here so it's a MIDI keyboard. It's the M-audio oxygen 25. People ask me all the time which midi controller do you recommend. I like that oxygen series just because it's really easy to use and in Ableton live it's really easy to map so you can basically assign some of these pads and dials knobs really easily for different synths effects and automation and that kind of thing. But if you don't have a MIDI controller don't worry I will show you how you can do it in musical typing as well so you can type in the parts. So I've got this. Drum rack yes. So I'm just gonna arm this one. So here's my kick drum, snare. hi-hats. open hi-hats, crash cymbal, right cymbal, splash cymbal, ride cymbal, and a clap. So one thing I like to do is just drop jam in a pattern. But that's one thing me saying that kind of a thing actually doing it. So just think of the kick drum rhythm to start with or if you really start you can just have a straight kick from rhythm. So an easy way to do this in Ableton Live or any digital audio workstation is to just record apart in and obviously you might want to put the match the minimum and increase the tempo to one to two. See her there might not it wasn't exactly on the beats. Let's us have a look at what actually played. So having a look at this rhythm it wasn't one two three four because if we look in here one two three four. The kick drum isn't quite on that just gonna quantize this. Yeah, commanding Q commanding u. That's the thing about using multiple digital audio workstations. A lot of times you can get some of the key commands mixed up. I used the key command for Logic Pro rather than the Ableton, But let's work out what I did with this kick drum pattern. So if you count one two three four one two three four one, okay, let's loop this, one two three four. One two three four one two three four one two three four. So I'm actually playing on the one and on the end of the two. So if we count if he split upsets 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 you hear that second kick drum lands on the 1 and 2 and 3 and I'm not just counting one two three four because we have four crotchets or four beats in the bar. Splitting up. Basically you 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 or 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and that and the end is in-between the beats 1 and 2 so 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and three, so they can work out I am using the kick drum one the two and the end of the two. Well the four starts the pattern 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 2. So we can just write the same we don't need to play. We know now its one and then two and. And then four so one two and then four, 1 so. And then 2 and so there's 2 and then between 2 and 3 is this beat. So one two ands. Strike this back to the right place and now with a play this back would be one and two and number two and of the two and the end of the two, you can even play in a MIDI keyboard in C. Playing there because I'm playing. Or you can draw it in. Now we can put the snare and so say you can even play on your MIDI keybord, Or you can just write in, and I'm just going to have the snare on. Let's try on the three, That sounds good. Because there's a bit of space there is no kick drum on the three so four put the first name there allow the snare to be heard and the kick drum and also I am gonna try the snare. Second time around on the end of the one to just the second time around. So it's one and so we have space as well. And at the ends we are gonna have the four and just to mix up. I'd give it more. And again add another kick drum here on the one and of the third bar. So here we have bar one. Ba two bar three and bar four. So this isn't too repetitive. We have a strong pulse but slightly different if we turn off the metronome. So a lot of this experiment in building allowance space each instrument to be heard. You're going to play some of these with a rim sharp. This one here. Add in some rem's now just why the space I think I give a good groove. It's all about allowing each instrument to be heard and also compare. Writing some something that's repetitive and writing something that's kind of memorable and catchy but not too predictable not too cheesy really. I'm just looking for space. So here we have a on beat two and a 4 beat 2 and a 4 beat 2. Split up even more and split the beat up even more so not on the end, and the anyone do so that are another part of the beat further along. So I am just allowing the space really just try this. So just kind of pushes a bit more because it's not exactly in the right place or in the bang on the bang on the beat so it's kind of still alive and a bit of a shuffle. Learn a bit of flavor to our music now I am gonna add some hats. This is going to be really straight and gonna zoom in a bit here. Create a few roles as well. This kind of truck feel light to write has a lot of rolling hi-hats so you can kind of build in this kind of thing as well. Add a few more hi-hats. We have space here so I can add in a few more. Maybe not that small but try this. Think that's a bit too busy and might save that right for the end this. Look for some more space. It's all about creating space. But some space there have that they're going to copy this rhythm over. And then I'm going to mix up a bit. So basically what we've done is have created a strong kick drum rhythm. So that's the one and the end of two and the four added in a few extra ones the kind of mix up and the snare is pretty much just done free and every other time the end of two and then they've added this rim just some space. So it's about create something that's unique different but also repetitive at the same time because you want a strong pulse that's repetitive that basically for dance music you want people to dance to it so it can't be too over the place. I'm gonna copy this hats now, just have this repeat and really the last time you gonna have this role and I am just gonna place this then slowly one beat at a time. Fourth time's going to be here and also I am gonna add an open hi-hat there and then. My adding crush. Just on the one. You have turned that cymbal down a bit those bit too a loud. So this is the kind of drum rhythm we've got so far just from blowing a room of that dance. Adding some more roles in these hi-hat says the best space so I am just gonna add a roll a bit more. It's going to get to that last snare and in a few roles here just to create a better space. A lot of this is about create in space. Try that. This drumbeat might look super crazy and super complicated but it's just about building less starting off with the kick drum and adding the snare adding the hi hats and adding FX like rimshots and symbol. So bit too busy at the end. Okay. So there's the drumbeat, it's built up around this kick drum really. So it's 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and math them same on 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and the first things to do, it's kind of 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and they can find the end of the beats you dont just stick on the kick drum it is a bit boring and add a bit more, so that's the drum-beat. There is like these drum loops I like to write on myself. I find it a lot more satisfying now we have got a bass part. So let's on the bass track, and now Im going to be listening to this kick drum. You could even lock-in with a kick drum or play where the kick drum isn't playing to create a bit more movement and space. Of course we think about what notes you're playing. I'm going to use the key A minor so it's basically the white notes but starting on the A. So it's the relative minor of C major, so C major which is tone tone semitone tone tone tone semi-tone all the white notes the six note up just A, do do do do So I am basically just try to play in the spaces. So have a look here. Some learning on the forth. But playing in the spaces here and here do So you can even play in if you use a MIDI keyboard or you can just manually go in and draw it and it's really up to you I am just gonna record the technique I like to do. Just recording. 32. Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 2: Basically that, let's have a look. Let's have a look at what I was actually doing there a lot of the time it will play this just free to feel listening to a lot of music from a lot of music. So there's in the end and ear. So quantize this is basically. In time. Sometimes when we quantize it doesn't always get it right but it can mean you make a few mistakes which can sound goods or sometimes stuff not going exactly how it planned can't sound nice. We can just drag it around and find the exact place. One thing you can do as well. You can actually, add this to your drum parts. Just the kind of find a good rhythm find some space so we could add it. Say on this hi-hat. So if you look on this bass part. Here it starts on the end of one. So we could drag all this over. I don't normally do this but this is a technique of saying people do so you could drag this over. Then go on to. End of one here and they can just match up and see where the space so this one the space there. This one it's a little bit space. Move that then there'll be more space and then we have the rimshot. You can move the rimshot. So that's that pusher's we have the base there. Then we could move this here. Then we've got a rolling bass that we want to create a bit of space on the rolls to be here. But they're there. We had the four to choose. This is the main rhythm really. So remember the end of the one I've just cut that's so it's not there. Let's go back in this space part. I just delete this and paste this in. So now for listen to this space for the base to be heard and the drums. We don't need to have it on the floor. That could basically be the bass part. Really simple doesn't need to be too complex. So zoom in, we can change the bass note doesn't have to always just down the one note so I could change this down to. Let's try to C just the third of A minor. So this will be a C major chord. We could put. Then we go back to the A minor. I like to color these as well so I know the different parts. This is basically how I create an easy beat. There's plenty of waste it's just a really simple way kind of groove in by feel and then go for incorrect it look for space allow space to be heard in your music. Of course, you can lock in. You can use techniques like side chain compression. So when the kick drums played anything else goes that is compressed of side-chain goes down in volume, so there's not too many clashes of frequencies so the kick drum can easily get heard. Let's try this on a G which will be G major which the seventh chord of A minor. Let's color this, slight different color. Then we can just loop this. Yes let's just hear what this sounds like doo doo doo doo. Some keys parts. I just like the two chords for now or so just A minor C major really. So the first one I'm playing a C and A Minor reposition so A C and E the second one just moving one note down just A to G. So doing an inversion of C major. All so that kind of thing really. So really just playing the Simba feel a bit too much going on so much simplify it a bit more. That kind of thing. So you might think ah what are you going too fast. All I'm really doing is just playing the chords that fit with the bass note if you were in the key when the key of A minor so all I am doing is playing A minor chord I made a mistake there and a C major chord C major chord. Using an inversion, so it's not the C at the bottom. It's the G and the A minor is just A C E and the C is G C E quantize this I can tell. And that's just. Over to here and like all digital audio workstations, you can just drag stuff around, copy and paste it's amazing. I remember using an old 8 track recorder. We had. Yeah, record without copy and paste then say the times we live in now a lot better. I remember even using the 4 track cassette recorder it's the long time ago even before the 8 track they had a digital 16 track. Where you could just about copy and paste if you played it perfectly in time there's no quantizing so what we have now of our digital audio workstations is incredible. Stuff this is just too busy. I'm just really just going to strip it down even further because this drum beat if you playing quite a complex drum beat. You don't really want too much being played because it depends if you want the drum beat to be heard clearly. Kind of want to strip everything else down if you just have a simple drum beat. You can put stuff a bit more complex. So good things that just listen usually listen I can hear. Listen for space what's going on there. I want this to be no chords. Bomm and there I want the C. So I can't really tell you this certain technique for writing music. It's just trial and error and experimenting. just listening for the individual parts. So what. The snare really just punch out of these chords also. I might just put an abrupt start just before just to make this the snare here and this chord with us now. It is stand out and copy it over it can do because I know there's just one note difference. I can just copy this over hold down Alt. So and then just move this to a G, So all the D just move this A to a G. Might create a bit space though I also think on the end of four I am going to play this note again. Okay, same here. and the four. At the end of four a lot of space and I don't want anything else really playing. So let's go into a drums here. Instantly here. That wasn't dragged in the right place. So we have an E C. So let's go to the bass note because we had the super run that. We can always go into the synthesizer find out if it's the notes where the synthesizer. do do So we have some equal detuning here. We can change the tuning, add the bigger chorus effects. Yes. Be careful of this as well. So there. This kind of a live feel you get from me right now. But this is generally how I write music. Just kind of commenting as I go along so end of four. Just get rid of that rimshot. Dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot. And then the end its on the four feel, So that's some beat for what changes to the end and get rid of this. So the first time I saw this A minor wanna change this to end of four not beat four slightly wrong because it wasn't zoomed in there. It wasn't the tune it's because I haven't got a loops in the right place. It's playing this note again which is the G. Sometimes you're not always sure what's going on make sure loops in the right place. Because I got a bit thrown off because of what the tuning was wrong. I put this down as a G rather than A checked. Didn't sound weird. Therefore the synthesizer and then it was actually the loop wasn't set up in the right place. They all sound like you can use something called that one point one one from here. Then you won't have that issue, that's the thing there's no exact rule wouldn't create music like this. Cause you never know what's going to happen really but once you know the fundamentals of music theory and building music from certain chords it makes a lot easier than just relying on ear because I know this first chord isn't A minor, the bass note isn't A I'm using the chords. And then it moves to a C C major. Really basic stuff allowance space for the rhythms to be heard and all fits harmonically. Still going to move this round a bit a lot is about rhythm. Change just keyboard parts this tune in this you and this is from me up quite a bit. No dot. Just messing around with the LFO it's a low-frequency oscillators create a pulsating effect but decide not to use it. That's good, so I am gonna delete this one and change this. C to the end. Okay. We can do in Ableton live it's just the same copy and paste. This loops that up again you can just drag it over. That's just a copy like this. Really basic grooves. The drums are still a bit too busy when they go through the strep a few things out. That's a bit simpler. I'm happy with the kick and the snare just then the hi-hats a bit too much going on. Oh. Let's hear this. So there isn't really an exact formula I am doing here. It's more just experimenting around with what I think or sound good and training your ear from writing music a lot. So this is the kind of the main basics that I can add a block or build around this drumbeat and here the second time there's no drum beat. A lot more freedom for stuff to go on. So you can strip out the drum beat if you writings as well. You don't want to just stick to the drum beat. Now you've got the main rhythm section so rhythm section of a band is the bass guitarist the drummer and the keyboard less. Now you've got the main rhythm section with that on the lead parts so we can add on basically the high synths, the synthesizers and just give me playing around the chords so that, we can do a little cheap thing in Ableton live and a digital audio workstations that might just play in the notes and then we can just add on an arpeggiator so let's do that so let's find the notes here. 33. Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 3: All we have to do just drag this over. Stick it up an octave. It doesn't clash too much and then a nice little cheeky trick he can do sometimes. We know that A minor and C has two of the same notes for the triad but there's a G instead of an A, so we can just do like this. Drag it over. Okay, copy and paste this or hold down alt and then you can just add on the arpeggiator. This isn't a tutorial about Ableton live. So if you're using say Logic Pro there's also a MIDI arpeggiator on that. Stick on an arpeggiator and now let's hear this. The tempos all over the place here. So let's just go in and fix this tempo. Sometimes when you write in you will do stuff by accident or just mess things up but you can always just fix it. A lot of this is just trial and error. They can just make it sound good. You're never going to write a perfect song straightaway. Even now I always make a lot of mistakes but sometimes mistakes can be a good thing. There you go, you got the tempo set and wanted to. Just go and play around the arpeggio a little bit. Okay, we have got like going, add a bit of distortion if you want. Like I said it isn't an Ableton live tutorial. Just think a bit distortion would be nice. I am gonna add this in the synthesizer. Increase the reverbs, then we have delay. Now we can add a riff on top of this we've got the main rhythm section done we have got an arpeggio just the kind of give a bit fellow. Find the right sounds in version 2, obviously, the theory has but it's a combination of getting the right notes. Knowing what you writing and find some cool interesting sounds. The kind of thing, so I just play that in on my MIDI keyboard. Just gonna go through now and chop this off and move around and in Ableton live you hold down command J, it will consolidate just turns into one track. So let's hear this. The first note to me it didn't sound quite right. That's because I was playing before. So if we have a look. This fourth note and the way we're in the key. The chord of A minor, the fourth will work, I think the fifth will sound nicer. Let's just listen to this back. Also with that note. To me, I can find a better note in this, I have got kind of a basic pattern now. Lot of it's about. That A sounds nice. Try the G which is the seventh. So a lot of it is trial and error. You're not going to get it perfect first time. I like this law partner did here this lesson 1. So I am just gonna repeat this. I don't like the ending. It's find the right note as well E. So you got the E which is the fifth of A minor and then G which is the seventh kind of a leading note that passes into the F which is the root. One is what's the C this is the third of C the fifth of C and then the sixth of C. So it's a bit of a different effect. When you go to C we have got the D which is the ninth for the second then we've got C which is the root. Still not sure about this first note. So, let's hear this back. So this is the kind of thing after, I think this will do from now this E and copy this riff. Obviously, I am gonna quantize this so it's in time. Doesn't think I didn't like. I want the rift to be kind of a stronger landing note and now it lands on the snare and the chord hits. It sounds a bit stronger now. Theres again I want this landing on the third. So if we go back to the drum beat we know in the third there's this snare and if you go to the base there's a lot of space but if you go to the keys find the key part third has this chords as well as the chord played. So we have kind of a stronger pulse now. So let's try this. I am gonna try a bit of a role in effect on here as well. See if you are getting something a bit more, a bit more rhythmical. Now this kind of shuffling effect. So we have got a bit more of a rift over this. So let's hear this back. So a lot of it's by finding the right notes and I like to put in a can of shapefile effect as well or you can do the same with these parts here. Let's just copy this over. Add a bit more of a shuffle kind of jittery sound to the riff which I personally like, let's just copy this rhythm here. So it's on the of one or end so it's end here and then here that's. Experiment really. and I am gonna kind of do the same, but just remember It starts on the D goes down to the C, so I am gonna copy this pattern starts in the D and goes down to the C. I am gonna copy this pattern as well I think really the first one been doubled, let's just copy this over notes aren't they end. So that we, I am using my ear to just remember what notes were. You can just look over as well. So it's the same, so copy this over. You also add a harmony as well to our melody if we want. So we know the first chord is an A minor. Let's try this. So we've got the C and the E going, so we have got the minor third harmony over that A minor which works and we go so D, so we could try. When try the B that clashes quite a bit You could try the G, we've got this A again try the C, G let's try a D then we have got this A, let's try a C again D again we mean sorry. Oh let's just try E, let's try E. So I am just creating harmonies. These are notes that fit in the scale also but they're also I'm just training well I am just playing around and kind of going by ear and see what I think it's sound right. So it's a combination of both. This E here, so we can put this down to C, I want the top notes to be the melody and then the harmonies to be below, these notes to D, so we go to an A, That's. You are gonna try G, because we changed to a C chord, so this is the C chord also , so let's try this C to a G keep it going. Copy this harmony over this harmony has a C a D and an E which fit's in both C major and A minor perfectly fine. So it's from this note here. This is about the harmony. I'm going to bring the harmony back here. No it repeats around a bit of variation. So it's about creating something that's memorable also something that's a little bit different a case so now I am going to add a few effects. Well the drum rack. There you go. So I'm going to add a few effects to affect to the riff. So I open up Serum synth. They don't get this of Ableton live unfortunately so when you have to buy separately. But it is pretty awesome. Like I said this isn't an Ableton live tutorial but this is important for your music theory to make electronic music. Sometimes you know I am going to get the right strokes. and then go to the add on another MIDI track. This let's just a duplicate this. Yes. Command D in Ableton live then put this up an octave and not play the harmony. Just play the top notes. Then choose another synthesizer another sound just a little up. Octaves are a great way, a great way to layer any synthesizer and it's really easy as well. Well this is basically what I do this is how I create music a lot of time all start from a drum beat all locking in the rhythm section. Put this up an octave now, the pans as well so i put it left and right speaker, let's try a different effect different sound. This is all about arrangement. So I could take out the bass part there. I could add in the bass part here. I could add the drums then as well, turn off the loop, the drums, and the bass and there could have it with a no keys the start of bringing the keys in here just chop the riff to have the whole riff in yeah. So at the start you could just play part of the riff. 34. Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 4: Again then just go through arrange arrange arrange arrange arrange. Also save your track. So Drum Example. Save this onto your hard drive I think it's better to have a hard drive for your music rather than saving it onto your desktop personally. Got something called splice which is automatically saved your music and also it's quite useful if you do use serum. You can set up a payment plan C play ten dollars a month rather than buy it straightaways the splice has a few different options which can be quite useful for music producers. But let's hear this. Like I said this is more about music theory these are also important tips like where to get your plug ins from how to mix your music. It all kind of links in music theory and writing music. So here there's no bass if you listen. Bring in the bass. Now reggae. Riffs all chopped up. Chop up there as far as well. So this color thing. This is basically how I write a song based around the drumbeat. The most common way. I actually do this. So let's have a listen again listen for the space you can hear all the instruments quite easily spaced evidence to be heard. Of course I'm just making this on the fly. I didn't plan this because I thought it better if I just go through and write. So it's more realistic of what will actually happen. Made a few mistakes now and again but that is as expected it's not going to be perfect when you write music especially if your brand new and especially not very good at music theory. So learning your music theory is really important because I know which chords fit where also writing melodies can be useful when you know which notes as fits again a lot of it's had to do with training ears to know what they fit together and also knowing In theory which notes fits together so it's a combination of the two really. Of course, because I was going through, copy this over, I like to color them differently if I add a different part. Now I am gonna take out the kick drum and the snare. Then they're going to add the kick drum and the snare and after. Some interesting tricks is all about arranging and not just doing the same thing over and over again and then have actually chopped up this riff you can see here add in this chopped up riff towards the end. Let's hear what I've got. This is just the track in front to go with this tutorial this lecture. I think it's really useful to know how you can start making music just from a blank slate. Then you can go through and add stuff like automation. If you are interested in that I recommend checking out my complete Ableton live 9 course which I'll go through automation how to use Ableton live in detail but this isn't really an Ableton live course. Now I'm gonna actually change the kick drums at the end to make them straight. So you can go through and change the kick. See if you notice. So straight means spacey just means on every beat. Four beat in the bar. This one's different also so this one is. One beat in every bar. Add a different kind of flavor and feel. Good I am gonna actually double up on the base as well. So the bass is going to be playing twice as often here. So to adds more movement. So you can just build and build and build and build. There you go. There's as many as forty songs I've made just off the cuff right music based around this drum beat. So it starts off kind of shuffle beat then we slowly adding more elements but it's all built from this drum beat that's here that's what's more and try and pick out the different elements of the drums the bass the keyboard parts the arpeggiated riff and then also the keyboard part. So there. The regular riff and then the harmonized reft which is the octave lowest is quite a few things going on. It's all based around two chords A minor and C really really simple I think works. No kick drums. Bring in the kick in force before every beat ready. Building up. Bill in their song. We can move staff around as well. There's no second time around. Starting over now that's worth a try. Okay, so that's how I created the song built around a drum beat. It's pretty simple. This is all completely improvised I had no plan when I did that. So I know for a lot of people just looking at that blank screen of your digital audio workstation can be really intimidating. Hopefully I'll just give you insight how I can build music. A lot of this is a combination of learning music theory and training your ear. But you won't be able to train your ear as efficiently if you don't learn music theory because when you learn music theory you learn the building blocks of what chords and what notes go together and then the ears will kind of recognize the patterns recognize whats going on and then when you build in the right music eventually you might have to think about what chords you plane what melodies. A lot of this is subconscious to me now because of internalized the chords of internalize the harmony of and tell us the theory that we need to do. But the best way to do it. So of course, go through these lessons learn what the chords the scales melodies how to write them, and then you need to just go and experiment experiment experiment write and write and write write because a lot of the time it's not going to be perfect you can make a lot of mistakes as you saw during this time I might had quite few mistakes really. But sometimes these mistakes worked in my favour sometimes it created something a bit little bit more colourful that I wouldnt necessarily think of. So you always have to stick to the exact rules of A minor. I must use the A the C and the E, the root the third the fifth. You can try different ideas try different melodies rhythms and just train your ear at the end of the day. Write music that you like. So thank you for watching this lecture. I hope you find it useful and I'll see you in the next one. 35. Create a Song from a Chord Progression: Okay, now we're going to look at building a song from a chord progression. So we've gone through the music theory of what kind of scales and the chords. Things like that but now it's really about writing the music and actually looking at a blank slate and writing music. From talking to a lot of producers who are new to actually writing music. The blank slate is the most intimidating thing. So open up your digital audio workstation and nothing there can be really scary for a lot of people I'm using Ableton Live right now. You have the session view which is like this and we have the arrangement view which might look more familiar to you if you don't use Ableton live. I will be using the arrangement view by often use the session view as well. However, this is not an Ableton live tutorial, or if you want an Ableton Live tutorial make sure we check out my complete Ableton live tutorial but for this. It's going to be about the theory really and explain what about put on the screen. I got an instrument called chords which has this kind of the eighth note feel, it's cool a low-frequency oscillator I have basically created a pulsing sound and so we're going to be looking at the notes and then this pulsing sound will go on the notes and then I have got a few of a keyboards here as well with the serum. This is going to be my bass sound, I am gonna rename this bass and then I'm going to have a riff just I have named this riff and then drums. But previously I built a track from drums. Now I'm going to build a track from the chords. so that's kind of it really. Of course you can. Create it several ways in Ableton live and you can do it the session view like this. You can draw it in or you can do it in the arrangement key. Well you can do as well. You can also copy and paste clips from the arrangement view to the session view and then you can kind of go between them both. Like I said this isn't really Ableton live tutorial but some of the stuff I'm going to talk about will be specific to Ableton live but I'm sure you can use them in digital audio workstations too. So I'm going to use the key of G major. So the first chord is going to be a G. Why not. So I haven't actually planned this a thought would be better for me to just write music and explain as I go along rather than have the structured format you've had previously which I think is great for learning from but when someone's actually in the flow and doing it as they go along you get to see that mistakes as well as what they're doing because it's not always perfect right. Music stuff can go wrong. So I am gonna use a G first of all. Then we've got this here. Make this a bit longer. Then I'm going to drop from lessons that I want to drop this G to an F but keep these notes here. This could sound kind of strange. This technique of writing really does allow you to kind of create more intricate chords than writing from a beat writing from a beat you're more thinking about the rhythm. But this way your more thinking why to think more thinking about the chords and the harmonies they have advanced UN disadvantages. So let's hear this. So this is kind of a G slash F. So we're changing the bass note to an F but that's kind of new detention because we have this for fear. But I don't know if it works. Let's try on a E no the day. Bye Bye Bye bye. Bye now. That didn't work. So let's go and try different chord progression. A lot of time it's just treading your ear. It's the fear of work. For example, I try the F, knew that wasn't the key but it's nice to show you what music sounds like played in real time when it's not in key. Though think about superimportant let's try a D, D major which is the fifth of G. So if we go major minor minor major major you know it's. The major. So, got the D in the top already. So you can just extend this. Then we have an A here, an F down here, I can try never inversion. When I try something a bit different. But that's nice having the higher pattern. Okay and now extend this out. It's a four-bar phrase a lot of time and just stuff four-bar phrases. I actually create an eight bar phrase. Two bar phrases, sorry I might extend this to four bar phrases maybe even an eight phrase. But a lot of time it's just about writing and playing it by ear. Just enjoying what you're doing. But to get to that point you kind of need to know the theory, the theory does really really help. Okay so to start with you've got this. By filling go lower note that ten ten ten ten. So we need to stick to our theory but also use our ear for writing our chord progressions. So we can't, we can't but want to stick in the key of G. We can't use the F. There's no reason why we can't modulate. So looking at the circle of fifths we go up a fifth from G it's D, so we can't modulation into D off we go backwards a fourth down from G B C. So it's a few different options we can use here. That's. I am filling that modulate to D major so we're going to have the C sharp in here. This could be quite interesting because of the C D down to C sharp. So using or you could look at this as we always be in D. But we're starting under the fourth since a few different ways you can look at this without knowing about music theory it would be quite difficult. Okay so we count up with one two three four five it's A to C sharp. That's the fifth and then one two three four so this is a A major. Now we have got a G major a D major and A major but let's just extend this out. Okay, I am gonna copy this over second time round and gonna add in a bit of a moody a chord. The second time as this is going to be a bit different I'm going to color it differently and this time let's change this. Modulate the other way. Crazy stuff here. Back to C Major that has changed this from A major to an A minor. Okay, so some interesting stuff. Let's hear this and then put it back to. Yeah, you can consolidate this in Ableton live the bass you put as one track command the J. So remember we've got G D A major G D A minor because a modulation going. So if I wrote this around the drum beat it might not be thinking about the chords detail out there. But as this is based around the chords thinking more about what chords fit of what a modulation system sneaky tricks get on here is a list that might not even realize I might think it sounds nice or interesting. Back again. Okay, that's moody stuff going on there. You can also got the notes that are continuing to turn them into one note because we have this LFO low-frequency oscillator. So the pulse continues so we don't need to have separate notes there so the bass notes is the same it's. Really a G D and an A. But then the harmony changes. So that's create a bass part now. Well we can do is just copy this over. Here delete all these and just leave the bottom notes and put them down an octave, now this is down an octave. Pretty much the bass part obviously it won't have that low-frequency oscillator that pulsing sound. So try a high octave, no lower octave was better just the sound isn't very good but you can change that to create some a bit straighter because the last lecture is more of a trap kind of hip hop feel. Now I'm going to make this more IDM kind of dance feel. Noticed there isn't. On the beat. So it's on the end or free. Remember previously one and two and three and four. Ba ba ba might just keep it straight really simple for this. So remember it wasn't a G and A because we had the inversions. So if I remember it was a G D. Then A, okay get back to the E, up here, But the thing about dragging these chords down if you using inversions is gonna sound different but. To be honest I think this bass sound is quite. Unsuitable. Boom boom boom boom boom boom. So you might have all the music theory might have the notes fitted in maths something cool and interesting but if the sound is bad it's not going to work. So let's try a Deep house bass. That's better. Okay so turn the loop on. Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. This is from the bass part as well. It's called offbeat since that having one two three four you know one and two and three and four and so we just playing on the ends to create a more of a dancy feel. Bang. Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. But this so far it's just better bass running the chords of the modulation so if we starting in G major. Then we go to D major. Then we go to A major, so very happy, and then we have the G major and the D major. Then they might see might I think and that could even change this F sharp to an F the second time I could even do that. I said this now it's modulating to the A major then modulating back to the G major then we modulated the C earlier. There's a few options we could have or even we can have this later on the song. We could change this to different modulation. There were loads of different options. We can do in the bass note will stay the same. This worked at the bass which is great. All. Here we go, I am gonna add a really simple drum beat, drag over actually its bass notes so I can see the rhythm. I have to do this I know it's off but it's nice just to see what's going on. So no here. These aren't actually triggering at the end so I can just drag these down. To C. we will G sorry because the G isn't triggering them and then now I just know the bass notes I can kind of lock in a bit easier. but during this the space for the base to be heard on the kick drum. See, this is why the off beats really really useful. It doesn't need to be this long. I can make it shorter. The drumbeat kind of a long drum beat. And this kind of Elektronik TDM star music A lot of the time, the drumbeats very repetitive that we can add on a clap. I don't snap. Um, some high hats Turnley fund refusing able to live soon We just drag it out like so in summer remain shots here just to make it more exciting. Add a bit of a kind of percussive elements. You can break it down. Just have a kick. Yes. Now through this time slightly different color it differently bring it back. But about the progressive elements. So arrangements important. But this is kind of ah, a lot the way All right around cords So we've got there first section where modulates later the second section that modulates earlier sneaky pits. You might not realize of a color that up so, you know, instantly blows the blue and the of yellowy Grey is the ever bet it's killed the drums as well. And then I'm gonna have the drums. Actually, I'm gonna have it Vice versa. So I mean by this is I'm gonna have the percussion, the collapse, but not snatch. Then I'm gonna bring it all. And so just a little bit of arrangement for you. Just understand arrangement is important. So you're gonna start actually without this and bring in life. So then bring back the section. So this section, if you recall, is the later modulation. The first section is the first modulation. Okay, so this just built around these calls Really, really simple drumbeat space Evans be heard, Bring the codes and add some melodies. Remember about the modulation of the melodies Could be in a different key. Now we really have to think about the notes when you add in the reference. So this kind of yellow grey section has to recall enough sharp on the blue section has never natural, so changes key easier earlier. So remember that basically, we've got an f sharp the first bet. Second bit we haven't But where they have sharp changes is important to the blue one. Their shop changes earlier. There isn't f sharp the key changes on bar free on the gray one that key changes on bar force. It's just something to think about when you're writing this in. Remember the great gray one, while the first bit doesn't matter, because we haven't got the cord so you can play anything. The key. Really. It's strange, but what I like still a lot of times fingers are really simple, repeated and then change. Modulate the notes as you go along that that wasn't very good, but it's just experimentation. So what you do is record some stuff and now shop at the bits that I like and then move the notes to fit in key from there. - So , like that did you do did, too. So maybe I could use that. We're just the first bit on really that fits and pull the keys. This fits in the key of D major. If it's in the key of C Major and G major, let's just check. So I'm just really just playing around. Some notes in the courts have gotten a fits. A jail It's fits in the sea, so it's just much this up. That's the thing. Go when you who's unable to life on logic pray Come on. Cue. Yeah, isn't Kwan ties? It's quit, so just remember that. So I'm playing to see here, so let's just check. We've got five point free five there, so it's good to check the notes. We have got to be there in a sea of what that sounded A little I see. No, that's seeing the f sharp kind of clashes a bit because we play a scene. F Sharp is a non augmented fourth, which isn't a very nice interval. So might change that. So let's change that to a C Sharp doesn't quite sound right to me. - Um , these the ones that kind of wanting to avoid. So it was Just have this then the second time because we've got a little key change. I can always sneak in the ah, the scenes that the day de works. I was just about knowing what the cords are. Also training your years. A combination of two. We got the Fed called to check shut. These notes fits with a G and a day that's for gone from here. Half a day energy. That's fine. Dana J. Said. F Shop is a minor third of the day, which fits perfect. And even if we do this key change early here, let's just check. So we have the a d Jay here f shop. She's a major fed, which fits. Yeah, so we can use this riff over the key changes and it'll fit fine, which is really nice. So initially, people won't probably realizes some modulation going on. They just think, Oh, this is a nice song. Unless you're a musician, you probably don't realize this. Let's hear this buck. Listen for the modulation. Not so sure in this precaution, I think it's a bit a bit rubbish to get rid of that. It's, uh, I think it's just pointless personally. So, yeah, this is just them really easy way of building around a core progression. The difference between this and the drumbeat is, I think, where I do it I built like this. I'm thinking more about for chords and notes of the chords of modulations and sneaky tricks , the cords rather than the beat. But what you really want is combined them both think about a drumbeat. Think about the cords. All right. - So really, really simple. I just need some of these riffs around. Just there wasn't rest the whole time because it might get a bit boring and repetitive. It comes in now and again. Not always. The same point puts a list on the toes a bit. Could do the same in the dramas you could chop up, move around same of the cords. It doesn't have to always stay in one place. The notes that always have to be the same because they always have to be the same. You could just repeat certain parts of over and over again. For example, like this. So we have that second caused repeated doesn't have to be same all the time. This is really arrangement. But this kind of comes in music theory as well. It is important to know just to stir it up a bit. So we've got the same ref going, but the course of different release. So you have that tension built up from the second cord says building, building release little tricks like this. But you won't really know this straightaway to experimenting. Trying new things. Don't be afraid to try stuff that doesn't necessarily fit in key control. New ideas like modulations. A good way to kind of had, if you look sneaking notes, they weren't necessarily thought of, but this is really is built around a core progression of built up. I thought about modulation of thought about the notes in the courtroom, right in the melody, the rift in the baseline. The baseline can stay the same, but the cords could modulate and change. Staying with the same with the ref terrific and stayed the same is longer to use, certain that it's as long as you're smart, what you're doing on that. It's about arrangement, chopping stuff, up effects and that kind of thing as well. So I hope you find this useful. This was completely on the fly also. I didn't plan this, I thought, because you to see how I write music around. A core progression on Yes, sir, mistakes certain techniques on the flow that I use when creating music this way. Next we're going to look at writing music, starting from a melody which is a never way and every useful way of creating music. So thank you for watching this. I hope you found it useful. It's not strictly music theory, but there's still lot of theory elements around writing. I'm kind of working out what you can do in which direction you can take your music. So thank you for watching, and I'll see you in the next lecture. 36. Create a Song from a Melody: Okay, now we're going to look at writing a track from a melody. So what I'm going to do now is just write a song play it fresh because a lot of people I've noticed who I've talked to who are new to music theory new to music production quite terminated by this blank screen this blank slate. So I'm going to do the same thing with the right from nothing. Hopefully you'll be able to get a few ideas tips and techniques from what I'm doing. So writing from a melody. Well think about the key. First of all with a stick in G. So this is kind of a C but an F sharp. Stay in an F, so do tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semi tone from G to find. All the notes in the scale. I'm using a MIDI controller as well as M-audio option 25. You can write this in the Piano roll. I like to write with a MIDI keyboard and then go in the piano roll edit change around move stuff about. That's just how I like to do. I recommend trying this way but of course you could try with a different control like a push to using Ableton live or you could just write in The piano roll editor. It's completely up to you. Depends on what you've used to this the technique that you use MIDI keyboard and then edit and manipulate and change the different chop, chop it up to arrange arrange arrange arrangements so important in writing music. Obviously this is music theory course not Ableton live course. I recommend having a look. My complete Ableton live 9 courses you want to learn more technical elements of Ableton live. Because I will be going through a lot of this quite quickly. It's more about theory in the writing. I want emphasizing this. So let's create a melody. So I've got no ideas but I know the. The scale of G. The root the third the fifth and the octave. Well that I'll use this blue note. So when it's a D really. Maybe I could play in D. Let's try that I am going to play this in and I am going to analyze what I played after C you can see, also on a turn on the metronome. Because a bit faster. Well so I want to change the speed of the song from the start as I did a lot of times I changed the metronome mid flow and that rerecords the whole thing. So let's just about to start now I am going to change the tempo too so fast the one wants to wait. EDM tempo because before we had a kind of a slow hip hop tempo and then a housey tempo 1 to 2. Now again our faster tempo of 1 to 8 is kind of traditional EDM tempo. Obviously, that was wrong but when you play then you always make mistakes. You can check in and change it. That kind of thing I think I can make it work. Let's have a look. Now explain exactly what I did and the notes are used. So at one point one from here. So if I move this over in Ableton live you can change it so the one starts there so to have all the old information. Okay. Get rid of all this as well. So I am going to quantize this to put it and time command U, obviously feels it wrong note. Just gonna use these patterns I think and just work around this. So I can use this, so we have got to start with this. So what you need to do is really just go through. Work out what these notes are. Zoom in a bit. So we have got a G B D, and this kind of funky C sharp. I'm still a lot. I quite like to think what it's think and this obvious one will be a G. So G major. Not the C sharp though someone is. So think of a chord underneath. I kind of goes around D major but then has this. Passing note it's a bit long for a passing note. Maybe think of a chord that has. It's kind of a diminished feel. I think personally. Or you could try a B minor. Which is. Go over let's just build it below for now in the book and change the notes after. Keep this up here then build a b minor here it sounds like it might sound terrible might sound really good. So let's draw the sense of B. Than we have. We can always change this also so if we start with a B or even a G. Let's start with a G actually because we have G major change of our mind as a go-along. This is not how I write music a lot of time is quite sporadic. I think new ideas new things pop into your head constantly. So this note here is a G. This note here is B. This note here is a D. So one two three four five major one two three four two three four. The first one is a major chord a G major we could put here just awesome so let's add in a G B and a D basically just the notes that we play in. Then we have this new funky note here. This so we can change the chord here so let's change this to. I think a B minor because a B minor has an F sharp. All of that is changed. This G down to an F sharp and this will create a B minor. So in the bass. If we have a G and I write in a G as well. So this is the bass note go through and change this of the instruments after into a B this is the bass note. Let's hear this and now we have a bit space. Then some of our own chords I think were in the key of G. Got an F sharp. Now we have got count up we have got the root so the major one, one two three, remember it's major-minor minor so this is a B minor. So we have got root third op so major then we've got the third of the chord which is a major also let's add a minor and here I think it might be nice maybe E minor which is the six notes. I think E minor just fill in that. So stop the bass note the E, and then go back up to the G. B. D so it's very similar. I thing that sounds too happy if we keep this D here. This will be the E minor seven because if we go up E minor. This is the seventh note off we counter the seventh note that's much better. Listen this is the happy, too happy with me put this down to the seventh. So much better and they naturally feel like it needs to the dropdown. So let's try a D major. So D in the bass. F sharp A still too happy. Maybe I should try major seven. So we have he C instead of a D. Didn't really sound very nice. So it's quite harder to find something that fits well it doesn't sound too cheesy. So I don't want to play a D. Let's try another chord, let's try an F sharp. So which is the one. The dominance. Maybe not the F sharp. Got C laughs C major. Try this. So I am gonna change this Just the fourth. So perfect fourth so fourth. So as major minor minor major so it's a C major remember right in a major scale. C E and a G. So this is a C major but different inversion. It works but still like it. Why don't we modulate. I've run out of chords ready apart from the F sharp. I don't think I work because it's the dominance and they're diminished seventh So I think of G. Let's go to D. Okay, so D we've got a few actual chords. Major minor minor maybe an F sharp minor. Then you've got this. C sharp as well. So F sharp. Okay so let's try this. I don't think that works ever so it's just about experimenting and finding what works or it can be as well. You can just hold the note chord before if you can't find somebody if you don't modulate just do this then repeat. If we repeat this I mean look at what's going on. You can also change it the last time so that's close the sound. But that's what happens when you move it. So this riff here we go to an F sharp and it's called here. we have got an F sharp. So at this time I want to change the last chord. So it's not too repetitive. So let's try and I am gonna try a D. This time a D minor because I am gonna modulate from G to C, all funky than the usual. Well, you can do that when we're right now in music until we've want really. Kind of predictable but it works. It works well and the melody can always go from and add different chords. Now there are so many different chords we can choose from. We can use pretty much all the chords in the scale maybe not the diminished. It's a passing chord and then if we don't like this chords we can modulate backwards or forwards. If we look at the circle of fifth and so much to choose from. Now I'm gonna dio to take these bass notes, stick them on the base. So easy way to do this to actually just copy the whole thing. Then go into the base pop, then just really everything apart from the low notes That's the base Pretty easy. Yeah, that's the base. And then do the same for the courts we have today is just delete everything apart from the courts, which the middle ones I've got LFO It's the low frequency oscillator set on. And if no itself does bob pulsing feel which I think works and then go to the riff on delete them all apart from the high ones That's why away you can see everything in one place. You can quickly see what fits and what doesn't. Because right in the round melody is about to seeing what courts fit with the river as well . Okay. And that bass part is a bit boring. So we want to really add a little bit river into this. Okay, So what could do is just Ah, I really want a lot of some of the drums, but I can put something For now, I have a different kind of feel, really to make it a bit more exciting because it's a bit dull at the moment. But the great thing about write music, really, in the digital audio workstation like this, if you make a mistake, we got dio command and said that I do and does it remember using cassette recorders, the first going to music production? He made a mistake record again and that the Foo Fighters still record on tape because they're adamant to play everything in perfect, which is cool for session players offer for bands like that. But if you are so low electronic music producer yeah, right like this is so much easier, right? Let's have a listen to this. Now you can just quickly add a drum part in. Well, I've done is I've just direct over the bass part for the drums just so I can actually just see what's going on, really? So I can see the ribbon. So what can do? It's just Zuman, Then that's just them. It's the same rhythm all the way through. Some just in a copy and paste. One of these notes, G copy and paste their second just see the bass rhythm with the drums. So it's easier to lock in what I'm actually playing. Rather, them kind of thinking. I know what the drums doing when sometimes a day case. We got a kick here, Get this nice and simple tough. The Mets Ramos well before it drives us insane. Really simple for no tightness and drum parts just on every beat for the kick on on the two on the four for the snack. Just a bit of variation for the clap. Then add a bit of a high hats. A copy of this rhythm over get really G's here and then just copy this over. You have a high hat on every 16th. I think from that. Same good. Just keep it really, really simple about that. No hard. Oh, this is basically how have built start of a song from a melody. Like I said, if you didn't make a mistake in a digital audio workstation we have today, Presque Commanding said Net and does it, which is pretty cool. Or you could just hold out hope to drag stuff around this hold on hopes. Okay, I'm just going to add on open high hat the end Stir up a bit. Can that setting just repeat this turn on the boom? That's kind of it. Really. This is a really simple arrangement. Have done just from this melody writing around this melody. Then you can quick arrangement. I'm just gonna take away the hats apart from the open Hi hats at the end. I'm also gonna take away the snow as we leave the collapse arrangement is important. And then I'm gonna leave the cords or the LFO cords going on the ref get rid of the base, and I'm just gonna bring it back after really, really simple arrangement and bring it all in here. That's kind of Ah, yeah, quick arrangement allows you to think of new ideas you wouldn't necessarily think of. Because you know what I was doing that I was thinking of the notes in the melody. And then I was thinking, what cause could have fit under here when his freedom and space and you melody If reads modulate, try new ideas, trying new courts that you wouldn't always think of if you're writing around courts or if you're writing around a drumbeat. So these different methods have shown you just allow you different techniques for writing. So the 1st 1 was right around the drumbeat. This allows you a lot of time to create more of a funky grooved river to keep more grooving . Yeah, be. It's more beat driven. If you want to write a song, be written around the beat The second way it was the right around courts. This is great for finding some call modulations and interesting cause. The third way it was right around the melody, which is great, gives you more freedom and flexibility than just writing round a strict idea that you've already got. So let's hear this back in this third way just really quickly, just off that off my head. Because I know a lot of producers, especially the newer guys. They get a bit intimidated when they stood up blank screen. Where do I start? Where do I begin? So if given your free techniques here right around the drumbeat, writing around a core progression on writing around a melody, obviously the fundamentals off knowing music, various super important bunch of kind of cut is drilled in and internalizing from the techniques have showed you a recommend going into your digital audio workstation on. Right on. Right on, Right. It's not gonna be perfect Straight away. You're gonna make a lot mistakes, but it's fun as long as you enjoy it. The mistakes are a learning curve. As long as you learn from your mistakes. It doesn't matter that you make mistakes. So let's just hear this once more and thank you again for watching this lecture. So it's really simple, but the building blocks are there. You could change the melody. Expand analogy, move the melody. Could use the musical typing to change on, add a new melody or go back to your MIDI controller and right in new parts, right. New courts around this or you could stick to these cause and use their techniques and the cords that showed you for right new chord progressions or change up this drumbeat and lock all in and combine all free off these songwriting techniques that showed you thank you again for watching this lecture. Hope you found it useful, and I'll see you in the next one 37. Modes Intro: Okay, now we're going to be looking at something called modes. So every scale has seven different modes. We've actually already looked at two of them which is first one and the six one. So basically we can play every major scale start on a different note in the scale. So C major For example if we start on C the notes will be C D E F G A B C but we can also use these notes. But start them in a different order. So we can start D E F G A B C D. So it's still the notes C Major we are starting them in a different order and we're having a different root notes so the song is based around this D root note. But the notes are notes of C major. So this is one example of a mode. You can go up every single note in the scale and start from this point and this will be a different mode. So this is basically what the modes are. You have different names for each one. They are a little strange. I do believe they derive from their Greek tribes. They've been going for thousands of years. But basically these are our modes. If we start from the first note which is just a regular Major scale is called Ionian. If we start from the second note is called Dorian. The third note Phrygian, fourth note the Lydian, the fifth Mixolydian, the six Aeolian which is the same as a natural minor and seven Locrian. So I've got a little pattern to remember. This is a bit strange. I've always used this. Just remember these names of the modes. They are quite complicated. Some of these names like lydy in the Mixolydian and get in the order because this is the order only Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian, so to remember this. I use this little pattern If Dora plays like Me, All's Lost. So this is from playing the piano so when it plays like me that means playing the piano. So if Dora plays like me all's lost you can make up your own pattern. But basically the I is If, the D is Dora Plays Like me All's lost so If is Ionian, Dora is Dorian Phrygian Lydian Mixolydian only in a locker and so that's the little pattern I used to remember the names of the modes in which order. I still use this today because I sometimes do get a bit lost of the order because these are words that I don't use in everyday language though. Just remember for example the fifth one is Mixolydian using this little pattern. Or make your own pattern can really help. So these are basically the modes. And there is a pattern or yeah. So for example. The second one which is a Dorian. There is a set and pattern to work this out. Of course you could just play the notes and move it to the second. So Dorian is the second if Dora plays like me all's lost. So you could just play every single note and shift it up to the second note. So for example in C major you could play the notes D E F G A B C D. This is Dorian just quite literally just start on a different note. Or we can use certain patterns for each one. I'm going to go through each mode now and all the different patterns you can use for each one. Or quite simply the easiest way to remember no modes is it's just like a child of the parent scale so we have the scale which is the parent and it split into seven different children and these different children are the different modes. Just only Ionian Dorian Phrygian Lydian Mixolydian Aeolian and Locrian and it's just the scale. Starting on a different note, it works for all the major scales not just C, I am Just using C because it's a really easy example because it's just quite literally the white notes. So next we're going to have a look at Ionian and then we're going to continue looking through the other modes. 38. Ionian: Okay, Ionian Is quite literally just the major scale. It's called Ionian before it was called the major scale because these modes from a really really long way back and going back to our modes Ionian it's just number one which is also the major scale which I'm sure you already know. So in C major so C D E F G A B C remembers the pattern tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone to work at the major scale. That's basically. So yeah it is commonly known as the major scale, so in C major. if C Ionian no one really says C Ionian which is just say C major. That's basically it's a really really simple one and next we're going to look at the Dorian scale. 39. Dorian: Okay, now we're going to have a look at the Dorian mode. So the Dorian mode is the second mode. The first one is Ionian and the second is Dorian and the easiest way to think this is just to play the major scale but start on the second note. So looking at C Major if we use D Dorian it's quite literally C Major but we're rooting around the second note the D. So the notes are D E F G A B C and D. So this will give a different flavour a different sound. There is a way we can actually work this out. The easiest way to think of it is just the major scale but kind of shifted up a rooting round and of a note. But for a major scale we can flatten the 3rd and the 7th and thus create a Dorian scale. So if we look at D Major so it's D E F sharp G A B C sharp D, just flatten the third which is there A sharp to an F and the C sharp to a C. Or we can actually sharpen the six note to create a Dorian scale so D minor as a B flat. Now, we have to sharpen this to a B. So let's have a look in Ableton Liver or a digital audio workstation. Just go right out of the D Dorian scale. So what we can do is quite literally just write out a C major. So we have one major. So of course for a major scale its tone tone semi-tone tone tone tone semi-tone you probably really sicken me saying that but it's the easiest way to work it out. Of course in C major is just the white notes so this is the notes the C major. So what we can do is just shift the ball well. They start the D. Or we can actually flatten the third and the seventh of the major scale. This will make a D Dorian. We can hear it gives a different kind of sound. Or if were in D minor. This is the relative minor of F major. So that means we have a B flat or an A sharp so to turn this D minor into a D Dorian. All we have to do. Sharpen the sixth note. So this is a D dorian. So it's kind of the same as a C major but starting on this different note and this being. In the same notes of the scale but starting on a different root note and having this different root note makes such a big difference. So let's just go back in to C major. It sounds very different. Alternatively we can just get this C. I move up to this D and just drag all of these. So you can really create some different interesting music if we build the chords up from here. So we have one two three so if an F. Then four five of the A. It's, of course, it's different from the major minor minor major major minor diminished major chords we get on a major scale because it's a mode it starts on the second so we start in a different kind of notes we start on the minor so it goes. Minor minor major major minor diminished major minor. We have different orders of notes so effectively the same notes on the major scale. The O. The Ionian But because of the order it creates a really different sound it feels like it should be rooting around the C as it's rooting around the D. It just gives a different kind of sound. So this is the Dorian mode. and like I said you can flatten the third and seventh to create Dorian scale. If you are in a major scale or for a minor you can sharpen the six or you can just play on the second notes and just route around this second note so gives a different feeling a different emotion and your scale. So yeah, thank you for watching this lecture. Next we're going to be looking at the next mode which is their Phrygian. 40. Phrygian: Okay, the next mode is the Phrygian mode. So this is the third one after Ionian and Dorian we have Phrygian. So if we're in C Major we can say E Phrygian which quite literally means. The C major scale starting on E. So we have the notes E F G A B C D and E. There is a way we can work this out. So for a major scale we have to flatten the second the third the sixth and seventh. Quite complicated to remember or for a minor scale. This is a lot easier which is flatten the second note. So in E minor, we have E F sharp G A B C and D because it's the relative minor of G major which has an F sharp. So all we have to do is flatten this F sharp to an F and this will give us the Phrygian scale. So it's a lot easier to remember the pattern for the minor scale which flatten the second note rather than the major scale flatten the second, the third, the sixth, and seventh. You can do it like that. That's a bit more complex or quite literally just yeah play a major scale but root around the third note. That's kind of the Phrygian scale. This will give you a different sound as well. So let's hop into Ableton Live. So all we really have to do is just play. As C major scale. Start on the E and just root around the A, it gives a different flavour, a different feel. I just have a listen to this. Instantly tell that second note. Sounds a bit different because when we hear a minor scale we're used to this second note. Being a bit higher it's just a semi-tonal movement. I think it creates a nice interesting sound. This is E Phrygian. Of course you can use it all that other scales as well. I'm just using C as an example because it's really easy because of the white notes. Yeah this is E Phrygian. Next we're going to have a look at the Lydian. 41. Lydian: Okay, now let's have a look at the fourth mode which is Lydian. So the first one is Iolian which is starting on the major scale starting on the first note, Dorian starting starting on the second note, Phrygian third, Lydian fourth. So if we say F Lydian we just count that four notes and then we know this is the mode for this major scale, so F Lydian would be all the notes of C major. So an easy way to work this out if we don't want to count back is we just sharpen the four for a major scale. So F major for example the tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone we'll have a B flat or an A sharp or we have to do a sharpness to a B and this will make a Lydian scale. We can play the major scale and start on the fourth note, of course, that's the easiest way of doing it or you can just sharpen the fourth. So let's have a look in Ableton Live. All we have to do is just sharpen the fourth note and this will give us a Lydian scale. So if we have a F major scale, you have this B flat or A sharp. So if we sharpen the fourth. You have this B and now just listen to the semi-tonal movement between B and C. Just gives a different flavour to the music and Yeah. That is Lydian. 42. Mixolydian: Next is Mixolydian, So this is the mode. And it starts on the fifth note of the major scale. So we have Ionian which is one, Dorian which is two, Phrygian, Lydian now mixolydian. This is quite popular in a lot of jazz music and blues music because actually flattening the seventh notes flatten the seventh note. This is quite similar to the dominant scale or the dominant chord where we have a flattened seventh. So it's very popular in jazz and blues. Just remember that and here we go. So G Mixolydian would be the fifth note up on the scale. So if it was A Mixolydian we would know it has the notes of D major starts on A and G Mixolydian means it has the notes of C Major starts on G. So we have G A B C D E F G. And if we have a look at G Major Scale. You know as there's an F sharp, do tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitones and that is an F sharp to turn this major scale into a Mixolydian, all we have to do is flatten is F sharp to an F. It gives us quite a jazzy blues sound. That's basically what Mixolydian scale is. So let's have a look in Ableton Live. Just move is up to a G. So of course it can just be the fifth note of the scale and root around this so in C major it would be G Mixolydian or you can just flatten a seventh notes a G major has an sharp. So this is just the G Major Scale. Really simple. Or we can flatten this to an F and listen to this movement at the end as just hear if it sounds quite Jazzy to you. Give you a different kind of sound using this in your music. So if want to create something quite jazzy or quite bluesy. Maybe have a look at the Mixolydian mode. 43. Aeolian: The next mode is a Aeolian. This is the six mode or the sixth note of our major scale. So we have a look at C Major we go up six notes. This is. A Aeolian so one two three four five six. So it's A B C D E F G A. Hopefully you recognize this already. It's the same as the Natural Minor scale. So these names just been changed over the years and now it's just called the Natural Minor scale. It's a really simple one. So you can just play the major scale. Start on the sixth note. Or you can just play a minor scale. 44. Locrian: Okay, now we're going to look at the Locrian mode. So this is the seventh note. Our seventh mode is basically a major scale starting on the seventh note. So if we have a look at B Locrian or B C D E F G A B. This is a kind of a weird mode won't really use it very often maybe in jazz maybe in experimental music if you want to have a crazy experimental section. You could swap to Locrian and then swap back. But I wouldn't necessarily use it very often in electronic music be making music for film or TV. You want to have a crazy like the declare section. Maybe you could use Locrian but it was not really going to sound very nice of a pretty start on the diminished chord. But it's good to know. Just in case you want something really crazy so you can look at it as a minor with a flattened second and a fifth or you can just look at it as the major scale but starting on the seventh note. Let's have a look in Ableton Live and this is a B Locrian, it's not the nicest sound in the scale in the world but it's good to note in case you want something a bit weird a bit crazy and a bit experimental. Feels like it needs to go back to the C. But it doesn't. So it really feels like it needs to resolve but these are the modes befor I tell you about them it's quite useful to know. So these are the ones in every single major scale has seven different modes to of them we already know which is the major scale and the minor scale, then we have the other five. Good to know. You can even work out the patterns for each one or just remember it's the major scales starting on a different note. 45. Dorian Mode Example: Okay, now I'm going to write a song based on a modal scale. So it's still the same scale. It's still one of the major scales we choose but it's just starting on a different note that's basically what a mode is. It's not really a completely different scale. It's just kind of a new scale based on a major scale. So for example D dorian will be C major starting on the day and kind of rooted around the D. Let's use Dorian as an example but just thrown together some loops here just some drums and a tabla effect just to make it a bit more interesting. And I've also got a bass sound a pad sound and a lead sound. So let's just draw in a bass line remember D Dorian is the notes of C Major but starting on the D. So the difference between D Dorian and D minor is instead of this A sharp or B flat we have to be natural. So all we really do is sharpen this 6 note here so one two three four five six. This we sharpen it to a B natural instead of an A sharper a B flat and that's basically the difference between a minor scale and a Dorian scale. Easiest way to think of it is it's just the second note of a major scale. Now of course we need to include the sharp and sixth note to make it sound or and if we don't even have this sharp and sixth note just stand like a minor scale will sound slightly different and slightly out of key or out of tune. That's because the mode gives a new flavour a new colour but it might not necessarily be used to but it can make some interesting sounds. So let's choose D Dorian and just go right in a bass note really quickly and just write in a few really simple bass lines. Du, du, du, Okay and now I'm just going to copy this over to the pad just so we can write a pad sound based around these bass notes. So I am just going to build some chords now and then I'll just put up an octave. So we have the D, so I am just going to start with a D minor and then I'm going to include this B. So let's go up to an E, and then we have this D again, so I'm just gonna try a D, but I'm going to keep the B. So you have a D, 7 and the F And then a B. So we're kind of using a six instead of the Fifth. I'm just going to repeat this. Okay, I am just going to stretch these notes out a bit. So yeah this B sounds should really give that modal D Dorian feel but out of this is really just a D minor. So let's hear this now and of course, I'm just going to pull it all up an octave and I'm going through this quite quickly as this is a music theory class not a Ableton Live course if you want to check out my complete Ableton life course if you want to know more about Ableton Live, But this can be used in any digital audio work-stations, just more about how to write the song and the sound of modal scales. Just going to go into the synthesizer quickly make it a bit less harsh. Okay, now I'm going to take these chords and drag them above into a lead instrument and just go in. Tennyson to lead instrument release. I'm just going to put this up an octave as well just so it stands out so I can hear the instrument clearly. And just going the bass the lead instrument around its top note of the A and the B especially want the B to be heard because this is the note that differentiates a minor scale and that's will Dorian scale so we can't hear this b. It's not a Dorian scale, it's a minor. So let's just. The few notes here. A passing tone there. Then I'm just going to base around this B. You just see the chords. So we have a G and an F. It's as good to have the chords up why writing melodies just because you can know what it actually fits, so at the moment. I'm not actually hearing any notes but I know from the theory that this will actually work. This is kind of how a kind of how Beethoven broke when he lost his here and he knew his music theory so well he could write music. We've actually been able to hear it which seems absolutely incredible now. But obviously I'm sure his music theory knowledge was really top-notch. Okay so let's hear this, I'm just going to go into the synthesizer and just change the sounds around slightly just so I can hear this a bit clearer. So you can hear now sounds kind of weird but I think it works. It sounds nice it doesn't sound like a major. It doesn't sound like a minor. It sounds like a minor about something slightly off but in a good way. That's what modes are really it's slightly off but in a good way. And this is an example of the Dorian mode. Let's just have a listen to this loop again. So you can write music completely the modes we don't have to use the major in the minor scale of course they are types of note, But it allows us to write some interesting music that sounds slightly different and it uses a new way of writing but all that really is the major scale at rooting around the other mote of the scale. So thank you for this lecture all about writing music in the Dorian mode. 46. Pentatonic Scales: In this lecture, we're going to be looking at Pentatonic Scales. So we do have major pentatonic scales and also minor pentatonic scales. So these are different from modes. We don't have notes for Pentatonic Scales. It's really just a different way of writing riffs or different lines or solo parts with a major or minor scale. It really does have a lot less emotion but pentatonic scales are great for solos or riffs. So what since solo or you want to add maybe a guitar solo or that kind of thing a pentatonic scale can be really really useful. So it's really popular in blues music is basically it's really simple to play on the guitar. So it's become very popular in blues. You can also use this electronic music you want to have like a sad keyboard solo or simple sound like penta means 5. So the pentatonic scale has five notes instead of seven notes. So for the major pentatonic scale we leave out the fourth and also the seventh. So if we take a regular chord progression we can just play. Notes and the pentatonic scale over this regular major chord progression. So all we have to do is take out the fourth and the seventh. So let's go in to Ableton live now I've got a drum beat here. Let's just write in the chord progression. So let's try. And a few notes now to make. A stock of C Major with C E G. And then that's half. A minor. C E a different inversion to A. Now we just have this two chords. Okay let's try in F and also a G, it's an f with inversion we can use a C, an F , A and the last one it's a G, which is the fifth, we start of a D using inversions here G and also a B. So C A F G we are going to add in the bass line C F A and G. Let's go down to A minor. So the basement would be A. And then that's just add an F and also G. Really simple. Add a few extra notes in this case that is a bit boring. Just a few pason tones in. So just mixed up added a few extra notes them and just wrote in a few passion tone just some notes in the scale. Let's change this loops. And now we can just add in a riff and remember to make it a pentatonic scale. We have to have 5 notes instead of 7. That's basically it. So. For major pentatonic scale, we just have to live up the fourth and the seventh. So in C Major the fourth C D E F, the seventh is C D E F G A B. So no F and no B. That's basically it. So that's adding a riff and just leave out the F and the B. That's that's really, it's quite simple today. Let's just add a really simple riff. Like I said this is great for solos, riffs and you can pretty much just put any note you want. So let's start off with the C and let's add a few more notes since there no F. And there no B. So put this down an octave. You can't use the F. This has to be in the keys. So let's try C D E and go up to G and hold on G and go up to an A. remember no F cause don't want the flow off. No B as well. No F , it's a G. Let's hear this and all you have to done is quickly thrown the same. And because of the Pentatonic scale, it will fit. It is the most exciting part in the world and that works. So we could just copy this first part over again and this slight change a second time. Some really fast pace riffs that you might hear about heavy metal, blues rock. Just using the Pentatonic Scale so no B, which is the seventh and no F, which is the Fourth. Some big jumps. Big leaps. Just just see if this works. Let's change the keyboard sound a little bit because this one's a little kind of hard to hear. So let's Go to a different lead. So when the fast pace riff, I think this is best already rather than slow melody riffs. It really quite really Coplin and blues doesn't have much emotion a lot at the time because it's so fast but it's useful if you can create some fast runs. So is that B. Would you go to the extreme just add a lot of notes really just wants to be crazy fast post thing finds some space. But you know it's fit. Like you said Pentex 5. We really need to remember it's five notes. So in a major scale there is the fourth. There is the seventh. That's pretty much it. Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. Just use of a non western music as well. Now a lot of Chinese music uses pentatonic scales and pentatonic scales have been around for very very long time. It's not something new. Boyd Nope. Sort of the blue note they might have heard. So this is G sharp. G C you don't have to necessarily stick to the rules all time because in blues they do a lot of bands on the guitar. It's kind of trying to up a base there. That is major pentatonic and how you can use it in a song. Like I said it is normally on a guitar but you can do this with a synth or keyboard. We have to remember to leave up the fourth and the seventh. So yeah just take a regular chord progression. Play the notes in the major scale for the chords and then riff over with the pentatonic scales. So here it really is hard to play a bad note because all these notes fit perfectly which is why it's so popular on the guitar. Sometimes a lot of guitarists dont necessarily always know what the playing but if you just play a guiter and shredded through riffs you can't really play a bad note. Let's have a look at the minor pentatonic scale now. So this is kind of the same but you leave out the second and the six. So the major leave at the fourth and the seventh and the minor leave up the second and the sixth. That's kind of it really. So we just have to put some chords in, in a minor progression. And it is more common than the major progression. I think this is because on the guitar the minor pentatonic scales are actually easier to play than a major pentatonic scale so it's become more popular in a lot of blues and pop music. There's no reason why we can't use this in electronic music too. So just remember to leave at the second and the six and just play over a minor key. So let's go back in to Ableton live and just remember to leave at the second and the sixth to make it penta five notes. So let's stick with this key which is A minor. If we use the relative minor because at the moment in C major we have got change for few of these chords around so let's start of a A minor. Second one again is the F major, Then again use the G, G major. And then just repeat it and really really simple. So all I've got here is a minor. F major, G major really really simple, so it,s A minor, F and G ,so just go change the bass notes. This is the most exciting part in the world in terms of the bass but it fits live that affair for better flavour. And then G at the end. Leave that as a plus no miska the bass line. All we have to do just remember delete that second and the six. And then we can play. It's really easy for a second. E minor is the B and the six we got A B C D E F and F is as well. We think about it the second the sixth are the same as the seventh and the fourth in the major scale. Just the different orders because in the minor scale play differently. So all we have to do is leave at the B and the F which have a look at the riff before what we did we left at the B and the F. This is the drum beat here. and look at the riff, we look left out the B and the F, so it's fix as well. Obviously the chords are different this gives a different kind of feeling now because it's more maybe more minor, the major because before we started the major chord now was started on the minor chord. Gives different feelings different flavours but the fact of the same thing. So all we have to remember pentatonic penta means 5 in the minor scale you leave out the second and the sixth and in the major scale you leave the fourth the seventh and that's pretty much it. So you like I said the minor pentatonic scale is more commonly used. You always have to play over a minor key. So it's really really common in blues music. That's pretty much what the pentatonic scale is. Like I said I wouldn't necessarily use that apart from a solo section, a solo section, we won't be fast and powerful or in a keyboard fast and powerful. Rather than showing a lot of emotion can be really useful. Want a quick riffs quick runs. Pentatonic scale will really help you with that. So thank you for watching this lecture all about pentatonic scales.