Transcripts
1. Intro: Setting the Tone: Discoveries Ahead in This Chord Masterclass: Welcome fellow
musicians and creators. My name is strange out
have been making music for well over 25 years of leases on established
international labels such as hospital recordings, metal heads, and critical Music. And today I'm honored
to share with you my masterclass on
chord progressions. Understanding chord progressions
can often seem like deciphering an
intricate language. However, with the right
tools and techniques, it can become a universal
language that anyone can speak. This class, we'll dive into my personal streamline
method of creating Chords, simplifying what
might seem complex, while our main tools will be Ableton Live and
it's Scale Feature, the concepts here can be
applied across any platform. So even if you
don't use Ableton, the knowledge here
can be relevant. In this class, you'll
learn everything from building basic minor triads, and then we'll
build on top of it, learning how to
create a sevenths, 11th, and even ninth chords. Then we'll take a step further. What's a technique called
parallel or chromatic chords, which is used a
lot in '90s music, especially in jungle
house and even UK garage. Finally, we'll dive into
more advanced topics such as chord Inversions
and Voicings. By the end of this class, you'll be able to make your
music sound more rich with more deeper emotions
was Simple techniques. So join me as we navigate through it as
thoughtful approach to create an chord progressions together with both
fine structure, their freedom within
the world of music
2. Unlocking Ableton: Master the Scale Feature: Hey, welcome to ableton Essential
Exercises, Level seven. Today we're going to talk
about writing chords and melodies on top of baselines. So if you haven't done
the baselines class yet, make sure you check out
ableton Essential Exercises, Level four where I show you basic tips on how
to write baselines. We're gonna be building
on top of this skill set. So I've a basic beat, his ear, drum and bass beat with a
four, no baseline here. This is all written
into key of a minor. So if you're using Ableton and easy way to identify
that you're in the correct key is you can
choose scale here on the top-left and then find
the key that you want, which I usually teach a minor
because it's really easy. It's all the white keys. So here are all the
keys on the Scale, and we have a minor selected here on the top-left panel here. Now there's a
second Scale button up here in the top
left of the key role. What this does is it hides a new key that does
not belong to a minor. So subsequently if you hit it, all the black notes are hidden because as
I just mentioned, a minor only includes the white keys on your
piano or a keyboard. So by doing that, we now can see these, all these nodes
belong to a minor. Let's say I had a note
that doesn't belong. Let's say this F was F-sharp. Instead. If you
hide all the nodes, show that F sharp. You see it. It's, it's, there's
this gray color here, indicating that this key does
not belong to the Scale. So that's a quick indication. If you have a note
that does not belong, then you may want
to correct that. So we'll bring this
back down to F. Now, most of the time when
we're writing Bass signs, The Key of your scale is the
first note of your baseline. However, in this baseline, The Key of the Scale is
actually the last note. So sometimes that does happen. There are no hard
rules and Music it, you don't have to start
with first key in your scale as the first
note in your baselines. Sometimes it ends out
as the last note. Sometimes it could be
even in the middle. It just comes down
to the baseline, your writing and divide
you're going for. So let's hide the notes again. And I'll play you this baseline so you
can hear to the Vibe. So we're just keeping
a basic right now, one note every bar. So, just so you can
get the basics of writing a chord on
top of the baseline.
3. From Reese Bass to Harmony: Crafting Perfect Sound: So the approach I take for writing chords is a no-brainer, almost no Music Theory approach. Essentially, what we're
doing is we're building harmonic layers on top
of these root notes. What I mean by
harmonic layers is keys that play on
top of the root. We say Harmony because
these keys just play and Sound good on
top of the root node. So that was what we
mean by Harmony. When things are not in harmony, they're at peace with each other when they
played together. There's consonants as
opposed to dissonance. So things just sound, right? So what we can do is we can
populate another Instruments. So I pulled in Ableton
is Piano here, so you can, if you
have Ableton sweet, you can simply go under the sounds category
on the far left, the browser and type in Piano. And it'll be easier to find
is usually found under the group called Piano
Keys if you scroll down. So there's a number
of Piano Instruments, so we'll keep it at
stock Instruments, so it's easy for you
to find as well. I'm using a very basic serum
patch for the baseline. All it is is a saw tooth
with a unison mode at five, and we're adding a high lowpass. So I'll just show it
to you from the start. So this is a sawtooth bring up to five to add
some detune fatness. And you can play with
the detune amount. Now, we can filter it using a low-pass filter and that
just the cutoff to taste. I usually bring up the
drive to add some meat to this very simple patch and you can follow along and recreate it and
create your baseline. So simply what I do it
when I write the chords is you can copy the base clip into your piano or whatever
instrument you're using. For this particular example, we're just using Piano because a simple
Sound, every know, everyone knows what a
Piano generally sounds like and it's easier
to hear the note. The notes are very clear in a
Piano so we can hear what's going on with the
additional notes on top. If you can use
whatever you like. I just think Piano, piano
is a good place to start. Of course, once
you find a Chords, you're always allowed
to change the Sound, switched a preset to another science such
as eye pad instrument. What we're gonna do is
copy the base clip. You can Control C
and then Control V, or use Command C and
Command V if you're a Mac, right, and paste it in. Another trick is you
can hold Control, click and drag dot
copies as well. And now we have our Piano, we're just going to solo, but the piano instrument can replace this with Piano chord. It's always nice to rename your clubs for
organizations sake.
4. Triad Magic: The Key to Simple and Powerful Chords: There's less same
chord progression we were playing
with the baseline. Again, if we turn
off the Scale was seen every note in the key. But just to make it easier, we're going to hide
the unnecessary nodes to make it easier for
us to write it chord. So what we're gonna
do is we're going to add a note on top of
each of these root notes. So remember the first note of your chord is known
as the root note. So F is the root note
of this chord here, D will be the root note
of the second chord, E for the third
chord and so forth. So the very first I'm most basic chord is called
the minor or major triad. Essentially, what a triad is, is it plays every other
note in it scale, right? So if we're looking at the a minor scale F
chord, it wouldn't be F. Okay. Stretched us over. It has that DO Re Mi. So when you hear that DO Re Mi, that's the major chord. The reason why we have majors
and minors is all just, let me exemplify what
we're hearing here is a major because
it sounds happy. Do Re, Mi, see how it
sounds nice together. If you were to bring, we call this the, the third ray. This is the fifth. This is 135. If we were to hide
unnecessary notes, again, we can count in a scale. If you're counting
up to write a chord, this would be 12345. So let's create a scale. It's always note 135, right? So this is a major because
that sounds happy. Now, if we were to bring the third down by a
semitone like here, now we have a minor
triad. Listen to this. To make it more audible. We can move the
chord up an octave. You can hold Shift and up
while selecting all the notes. We just moved it up. An octave. Doesn't change the core because we're still hitting
the exact same notes, just an octave up, right? As opposed to where
we had before. The major chord, FAC, mean it back down
to D minor, Re, Mi. This one sounds a
bit more sad because this third is diminished. It's a flattened, right? So that's just so you know, what is a major, a minor chord. Now, if we bring to scale back, we can see that this G-sharp, it's identified that
G-sharp actually does not belong to the Scale. So into key of a minor, F minor triad does not belong only the major
triad, so this belongs. So let's hide that again. So in the key of a minor
adjustment, repeat myself again. There is the F-Major
chord, right? Let's were pete this process
and write D minor chord. So immediately,
just from instinct, I knew that the D chord and a minor is actually
a minor chord. So this is a major, and this one's a minor. So let's shows that
in every scale, there's a combination of major and minor chords for
each key in the Scale, okay? That's right, the E chord, which would be E, G. So that's also a sad chord you can tell about a Sound
is just sounds cider. You can expand just
to test it out. If we bring this up by one, we have that's happier
sounding, DO, Re, Mi. But this chord does not
belong in the a minor scales. We bring this back down. Okay? Finally the last chord. Okay, now let's play it
with the baseline just so you can hear it in context. Alright, so that's Sound good.
5. Masterclass in Extensions: Crafting 7th, 9th, and 11th Chords with Ease: Let's make another copy and
let's build on top of this. Okay, so I'm going to
call this assay triads. Alright? I'm going to
call this sevenths, okay? Now the reason why I called
the seventh is I'm going to add onto them triads here. So remember, we
have a count 12345. So I triad is the
135-13-5135, right? Counting from the root, the root is one and
the count up, right? So there's another
really easy chord that's used a lot
in drum and bass, jungle and old school music, even an R&B and hip hop. It's got the seventh chord. If you add an additional note, not this, not but you
see the pattern here. We're skipping every other node, so 1356 or seven. So this is why we call
this a seventh chord because we're adding
a seventh on top. Right. Listen to how
jazzy that sounds. So let me solo the track again. That just sounds so good. We can repeat this process. I had another one here, here. Here. That's just give me, giving me the fields. We can take this even further. We can duplicate this call this, let's call ninth now, right? What happens if we
add another note on? Let's keep going. So
run number 135789. So let's add a nine. That deaths one doesn't
really work for me. It's doing something
weird when I hear it, but we'll just keep going
as we build onto it. Let's just see what happens. But the baseline, it sounds funky. You can keep it if you
like or if you don't. It's totally fine. Sometimes you can have a
combination of ninth and seven. For example, you can mute this one's on test will be a seventh. Sometimes you can
double up notes. We'll get more into this later. But for example, if
you see a G down here, you can also add a G up here. This is still playing a seven
is just that there's adding additional notes from the
common chord of notes here. Okay, Let's do one more. Let's see if we can
find some 11th right. Now, the reason I'm doing this, This show you the
concept of this. It may not always work. I'm going to show
you something cool once we get through this. So we have 13579
and let's add 11th. Oh, that sounds great. Let's just keep, keep, delete this note here. Let's put on a 11th
for each chord. That one sounds a bit odd. I think we have an extra
note here, 1357911. So I had an additional note
there that didn't belong
6. 90's Vibe: Chromatic Chords & The Secret Sauce: A couple of these chords
were some are a bit odd. However, it's all
about experimentation. The reason why I'm showing you this is we're
going to now move on to a concept called
parallel chords. So just keep note of our original baseline
which went from F D E, K. Remember our baseline
here, F, D, E. This is the root. This is the main
foundation for our Chords. There's an old school
way of writing chords. I'm gonna just call
this old school board. Other way of calling is
parallel or chromatic chords. Okay, just expand on this. So the way the concept
of parallel chords is, instead of using the Scale and finding the chord for
each root note session, what we're going to do
is I'm going to remove all these midi notes
here from the chord. So now we only have the roots and the Scale from here, right? Actually what I'm
going to do, Aisha, I'll keep this concept of parallel chords is instead
of using this scale feature. But it gets rid of
any notes that don't belong where simply copying this chord and then transposing the chord based on the root
node of each baseline here. So I'll just show you how
I did that. I'll undo. All I'm doing is I've slackness. First chord, this first combination of notes,
I'm holding control. I think on Mac is
Command or Alt. Click and drag it into place. So drag it into the root node. So DIY, do it again. Select these nodes, *****
control or the MAC alternative, click and drag it onto this
root node, which is E. This is where you
get this jazzy five. You're playing
chords that don't, may not necessarily belong
to the a minor scale. Watch when I hit Scale
and hide denotes, you'll see there's
a bunch of nodes that don't belong
because we're simply dragging this first chord and moving it and
transposing it. So because of that, certain notes may not
belong to the Scale, but it gives us
funky, jazzy Vibe. We'll try another variation of this. Let's try this again. Okay, let's start over again. This time I'm going to start
with the a minor scale here. So all I'm doing is writing
you seventh sus time because seventh seemed to work a little bit better
for this technique. So we have a seventh chord here. Okay? What we're gonna do is unclicked
scale, drag these notes. Click, drag, right? So we're copying
and transposing. And that sounds much better. All we're doing this and
we're putting This Chord, which I believe a seventh,
minor seventh, right? My good friend, zero equals
zero is the coldest, The Jungle method of writing chord progressions
because you're not really respecting the traditional scale here by including
those that don't belong this old school
way of writing chords. I'll show you where this
comes from momentarily, but it just sounds very
sweet in nostalgic. Let's add it with the baseline. Let me, let me play this against the traditional seventh
chord combination, which is over here. Versus this almost this nostalgic vibe with this version because there's these
notes that don't belong. Add that jazz. Let's
kinda what jazz, there's these kind
of really toying. He knows that may not belong. It gives it that Vibe. Again, process, I call this
chromatic or parallel chords. All you're doing
is you're trans, you're taking a chord, transposing it along
different keys to create a chord progression. Let me call this a shot, and that's parallel
seventh chords. What if we try with a
parallel ninth chords? Will that work? Let's say, you never know until you try. So again, the process, I'll remove all the top
notes from the chords. I'll keep this last
one as a basis. The reason why I'm keeping
this one as a basis, as we know that we're
working the key of a minor, one to the main chord, to be the deep a minor chord. Just so things are
in harmony that way. What the key of a, so I'm going to add a seventh. Here's a ninth, so now
we have a ninth quarter. Let me just solo it again. That sounds super sweet. Unclicked Scale again. Select these notes and then
copy to each root node. Let's check that out. My gosh, that sounds so good. Let's hear what the baseline. Let's try transposing
this one octave. Select All, so Control a
or Command, Shift and up. I share. Sounds good down here. Let's keep it as is. Save this file just
so you guys have it. I'll just save it over here. Make a folder for Skillshare. I'll call this
class seven Chords. Loving the sound of that. So let's take a step further
and build on your skills.
7. Elevate Your Progressions: Mastering Inversions and Voicings: You know how to build
basic triads, seventh, as well as the concept of
parallel or chromatic chords. I'm going to build
your skill set here. Once you have a chord
progression locked in, you find something
that sounds good. We can play with what's
called voicings. And we're going to
teach your voicing with some basic triads first, just so you can get the idea. So I'm going to call
this triads voicing. Okay? So back here, I'm just going to hide
all the unnecessary nodes just to make this
simplified for you guys. Voicing, all this means is changing Order of the
notes in a chord. So although this is an F triad, F major triad, it doesn't mean a has to start at F, right? Order can be changed
or inverted, right? So for example, the F can
be at the top like this. That's still an F major triad. It changes the vibe of
it versus this one. Right? We could do this The,
each one of these nuts, just select the note. I'm going to select all three. So select Shift, hold down Shift and click,
Shift and click. And you can then hold Shift and hit the up
arrow to move these up. So all we're doing is
moving the bottom or rootNode up the NAACP
death, boom, like that. It's the exact same chord, but the Voicings has changed. Or another way to say is
we've inverted the chord versus just changes the vibe. And really, there's
no right or wrong. It's what sounds good to you. Here's another inversion. We can continue playing with
the order of the notes. Now, we're going to
play the order of debt. The third, remember, this is the third of, remember 12345. This is the third of
the F major triad. Select each one of these thirds, and then hold shift and up. So now there are an octave up. In actuality, let me undo that. So you guys have all the files. I'm going to call this first
voicing or first voicing. You can go first and
Voicings, Inversions, right? I'm call this second
voicings are Inversions. Just so you had all
the midi files. Again. Take note here. Shift up. Alright. Now watch what happens if we take
this bottom node, which is actually the
fifth of the chord, the third note from the chord. We shift it back up. Now we haven't the
regular voicing again, we're back to F, a, and C. So every chord with respect to triad
has three Inversions, or there's normal and then the two Inversions,
that's what I mean by that. There's three different voices. We call each one of these are different voicing of the chord. So there's the regular voicing and there's the two
inverted voices. So that makes three Voicings. So this is the same as the Chord way down here,
just an octave up. So just as a review, take the bottom note, select and then hold shift
and lift them up. You can again keep doing this. Okay, So you've learned
about the three main voices of a minor or major
triad, you can take It a step further and play with the alternative
voices for chord. So don't have to belong
in the same range. You can actually
take the chords. We're going to take the
root note this time. You can remember F is the root node here because
we've inverted, right? So we can take this one. So the root node would be the middle note this time
because of the Voicing, Let me just make a
copy one more time. We go Hall this third
voicing, right? There can be so many
different alternative voices. I'm just going to make sure just call it alternative break. Let's say, you know, and
I'll call this Main right. First voicing. Just so you guys
don't get confused. I'll call this second voicings. And this will be third voicing. Write B for 44. Okay. Dissect an organized for you
guys so you can review it. So back to this. Remember this note
is the root because we've inverted
this chord, right? So we can actually
move the root down, down an octave here. So this is an
interesting voicing. And does it makes
the chord a lot more richer because it just has a unique tone as
the to the basic 135 with adjacent nodes, it just sounds that Simple
triad that we had here. Nothing wrong with it, but it does sound
a bit, I guess, for lack of better terms, Juvenal, because it is so basic. Once you get more advanced, you can play with these
interesting voicings which adds depth and richness to
your chord progression. Now here's a tip that some
chord writing and Music Theory teachers advise is that typically within a
chord progression, you'll want the
range of notes to be in a call mature age. So looking at this,
it looks like this. A is a bit far down from
all the other notes. So what's the way you
can do is take to say, move it back up. Now, that sounds
a bit too close. You looking at these, you want to maintain
something that just by visually looks a
bill market together. So it was down here. We moved it up here. Looks a bit weird.
Moved out here. Now, this looks a
lot more cohesive. Now, let's listen to it. That says, very interesting. Let's take this bit further. Remember to root notes. It was also a up here. We can further add richness and depth to this core
by adding another, duplicating this an
octave down, right? Okay, at this adds
meat to the chord. Now this note here, this a as a bit too high for
here we can move it down. Can even move it one more down. So matches the baseline. Data is very rich. Let's hear it with
the baseline. Now. Remember these four nodes, FDA. Let's go back to the bit Bass. Fda is the same notes simply
playing the bass line. So what, sometimes what you can do is you can omit
the root note, the bottom notes from the chord, since at the baseline
is playing it, you want that Bass to
fill that, that range. But sometimes keeping
that Piano there is a nice complement
to the baseline. It's really up to you and how you want your core to sound. So let's hear it without it Here's another tip. You can play with the velocity of each one of these notes. Not every node has to play
at the same velocity. Remember, velocity is how hard
you're hitting that note. The harder you're hitting
a note, The louder. So sometimes we want
that bass note, that bottom note
to be a bit lower. So we can select
those root nodes at the bottom and just bring
them all acini down. A bit less audible
and it doesn't interfere with our
baseline as much. Still there to add
better beef to that chord is not as
upfront like here. Alternatively, any of these other nodes can be altered in
terms of the velocity. If you want certain
notes to shine, make the velocity a bit louder. If you want certain notes
to be muted, bring it down. Sometimes they want the
high note to be muted. Let's take the
voicing a bit further just to really nail
this point down. So remember, our chord is F a. Alright, so we
have an a up here. What happens when you can Aimee, one of these notes
can be duplicated and added on top of the chord. It's still a minor
or major triad because there's really
three notes here, is only that some
notes or duplicated, F is duplicated here. But the general tonality of the chord is still
F, a, C, right? It's just that some of
the notes are duplicated, but still playing a triad, although there are certain
nodes are duplicated. So for example, the sea can
be copied up here, right? Or we can move the C out here. It's really up to you. Or we can add another F on top. Remember, our chord is F, a, C. So any of those three
notes can be added on top, and it'll still be
the same triad. Kinda like the sea on top. We can do the same here. So now the chord is
getting a bit complicated, so I'm starting to
forget where we are. So this is the eat D. So, so we're going
to duplicate the a. And this is E chord. So we're going to sit, there's already an a G here. Let's duplicate the
beat. Dad, over here. We have, so this would be
the a chord, a, C, and E. So is there an a here? So we can either add a
C or an E depending on how the sense nationally, I don't like to see as much
up here so you can remove it. Not every chord has
had the same voicing. Each chord can actually
add different voices. One I'm gonna do is I'm going
to take this top notes. Random velocity down just a bit, just these three top notes. Sounding super sweet.
8. Ultimate Nostalgia: Crafting Ultra-Thick 90's Chords: Let's take this home for one
more experimentation here. Remember we're playing
with the parallel Chords. Let's go back to the
parallel chords here. Bring it down, will make
a copy and we'll call that alt and Voicings. Right? And I'll just hide, unhide, the Scale Mode. We start from scratch again. We have the main chord here, so we're not worried
we can start with the F chord here because this chord was basically
based on a chord. So this exact same thing if
you copy, paste it to a. So we're not worried that we're starting with this
chord this time. Let's just remove it. And let's play with the
voicing of This Chord first. I'm just going to unhide
to scale feature for now just makes it more visible. So I might want to
shift certain notes. For example, I might want to
bring this F note down here, so make a copy of the F note. That's how super thick. Now, let's maybe
shifts this one. We can. It's all about
experimentation, to be honest, I'm not even
sure what I'm doing here. I'm just going to
mess around and see what chords we end up with. We maybe shift this
G-sharp up here, right? That sounds interesting. And maybe you can bring
this xi back down here. Right? I'm just
playing around here. That's interesting. Maybe this F We don't
need anymore and we have an F down here, right? But remember our options are F. Well, I kinda forgotten
now because we have this crazy chord,
but that's okay. We'll just play
around with the notes we have. Duplicate them. What about adding a C here? Since we have a C up
here, kinda fills it. Kinda like that. So let's
just, you can zoom. So once you have a chord or
the high range of nodes, it may start becoming
difficult to navigate. So you can hover over to this area where you see
the microphone magnifying glass click and drag to
the left to minimize, to click and drag
right to maximize. Alright, so bring it down so you can actually see
what you're writing. I'm just gonna keep this muted
note here in case when we want to bring the F
back, another tip here. You can also double
up the fifth. So remember our largest scale. So you remember our F chord
would be at C, right? We can also double up this
C here on the bottom. This tends to thicken
up the chord. Super sweet. Okay? We can now
copy This Chord. Click, drag, and copy to chord for every root note of this
baseline now will have this. Now that we've copied the chord onto every root note here, where it's starting to send
that this one sounds a bit too low in comparison
to all these other chords. So remember, we can
shift notes and Voicings to get them all
towards a similar range. So this is where we
have the experiment. This here is way too high, so maybe we'll meet
this eighth notes. Because we already have an a down here and down
here and this F note, perhaps we can bring down. So just select the note
hold, shift and down, maybe down here because having adjacent nodes like this
sometimes doesn't sound good. Let's just hear it. Sounds okay, but let's
bring it down here. I said it's a bit
more harmonious. And let's play with
these ones up here too. We need to be,
maybe we don't need to be so we can remove it. Just remove this note here. This G, right? Perhaps what we need is double
up the bass notes here. Remember it's F DEA starting to, so D. Let's just hit the
Scale Feature. All I'm doing this, adding
that extra fifth, 1, 2 3 4 5, 1 2 3 4 5, 1 2 3 4 5. Let's save that, fills it up. Now these chords are
signing super thick. Once you get through
this, you're gonna be a mastermind or writing chords. So once you find a Chords, Let's play with
different sounds. We can pull in
another instrument you can love her
pad sounds as time. Perhaps this Sound,
Edison New tracks. So we can just simply click and drag the clip and
hear how it sounds. Wow, old school
retro Django vibes. Now if you don't like
this preset and you simply choose hot swap. So this icon on the bottom right or top
right of your device. If you hit that, you can try simply swap it with
another preset. Now once you start
stacking notes, it's got to be a lot of gain. You might notice
that your instrument is red lining because all of those nodes are
playing to gather. So now you're adding so much
input into that instrument, you may have to adjust the
gain of that instrument. Now, this note here I'm
just going to hide, I'd like When it sounds like
it's going 123 and a down. That sounds a lot better. Okay, Remember it's all
about experimentation. Just got to tweak
as you go based on what you're feeling and that
note just didn't seem right. Let me just play
it back up here. Just didn't make sense. It felt more resolved
once and I hit go down 123, down. Amazing. Peer jungle vibes. You may know that my
master's red lining. I'm kinda notorious for this. If you're noticing your
music as redlining, just bring down the levels. Sasha, better as a practice to, instead of changing the gain, the gain fader adhere to, adjust it in the
actual Instruments. So we're going to bring to
Bass down on the master here. The drum, this can
be brought down. Easy way to bring the drums. Then if you have
this instrument, just pull in a utility as
an audio effect and then this game be brought
down the negative two. And then same for this pad, we can just adjust the
volume on this top. Bright perimeter. I'm starting to feel jungle vibes just so we
can feel this in context. Why don't we look for
some break beats? And by the way, I'm using some breaks from the
acid labs sample pack. You can find it a deviant
audio.com if you're interested. But basically there's some
nice AM and breaks here. You can also check out the OG jungle sample pack and
I Siemens on there as well. That sounds good. We'll just add that into the truck and wonder how I'm slicing these
breaks, checkup, my ableton Essential Exercises, I believe it's Level four with where we talk
about chopping breaks. A sense, a bit messy
and it's got clean up the notes just quantize
this aim in here. So it's in time. I'm just going to
duplicate this, crack, this aim and just get
rid of the car crash. And a second instance here