Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hey, everyone. Welcome
to music theory for electronic musicians Part five. In this class, we're going
to focus on structure. Now, structure can
also be thought of as the ultimate cure
for writer's block. I've been hearing from a ton
of students that are saying, I'm working on a
track, and I'm stuck, and I can't finish a track, or I can't come up
with another section. I can't figure out
what to do next. That is what this class is going to address all
of those issues. Going to analyze some tunes. We're going to look at when we're here in a song,
what comes next. So we're not going to
look so much at harmony, although harmony and
chords and things will play a role in that because we have to decide what
to do with our harmony, and that's one option that we can consider is how to
change up our harmony. But it also has to
do with texture and style and even the beat. There's all kinds
of elements to it. So what I'm going to
do is walk you through how we think about
form and structure. In a tune, I'm going to tell you my tricks for coming
up with a plan and then sticking
to that plan or decidedly not sticking to that plan and going
somewhere totally different. Those are both good options. This is all an element
in music theory. Form and structure
is something that you always study
in music theory, whether it's traditional
music theory or not. So this is kind of a
whole new can of worms, but I've adapted it for
this music theory for electronic music
producers format. And I think it's really going
to help all of you that are having trouble finishing a track, coming up
with new tracks. And even if you aren't one of those people that's having trouble coming
up with stuff, this is a great class to
examine how you're making tracks and how other people make tracks so that you can maybe achieve a certain sound that
you've been looking for. So, that being said, please jump in.
Let's get started. Forms that people have been
using for hundreds of years. Some of these are the
most basic kind of forms. Some of them are a
little more complicated. But what I really like
about them is that there's a reason these have been around for hundreds of years.
Like, they work. And it doesn't the
genre doesn't matter. Like, yes, Mozart used this
same form in his piece or, you know, in a symphony
or something like that. But you can use it
in a techno track, and it's going to work. Like, this is just how
humans like to hear things. They like to hear things in
certain patterns, right? We like to hear something, and
then Okay, the next thing, the next kind of parameter that I would look at is density. And another way to think
about this is texture. So with density, what I mean is how
much that's happening. Imagine that waveform. That
waveform is nice and thick. Can I thin it out
without affecting the? So far, in this class, we've been talking
about form and structure as it applies
to the whole track. Now I want to zoom in a little bit and
talk about form and structure as it applies
to a melody. Now,
2. Tools You Will Need: Alright. Part five, here we
go. Tools you will need. So in this class, you're going to want some kind of DA. It doesn't
matter which one. I'm going to be using
Ableton, but really, you can use whatever you want. Totally doesn't matter. This class is going to be a
little bit different than the other classes in this series in that
we're not going to spend a lot of time on harmony. We're going to spend more
time on form and structure. This is something I've
heard from a lot of people in the Q&A that they
really want me to cover. So Um, we won't be
spending a ton of time on the Mi grid like we have in the other classes in this
series, although a little bit. We're going to be looking
at some waveforms, though. So having a program up and
running would be a good idea. Also, you might want to
use I am going to use, I think, audacity a
little bit in this class. That's like a free program
looks at one big waveform. Don't really need it, but that is the program I'm going to be using a little bit just to
look at some waveforms. Otherwise, I think that's it. You should be good to go
with tools you already have. Okay, let's jump into
another section, and let's talk a little bit
about how to use this class.
3. How to Use This Class: Okay, what I want you to
be doing in this class, while you're learning these techniques that
I'm going to be talking about is thinking about how you can apply them
to your own music. That's the most important thing. So we're going to do a good amount of
analysis in this class, but it's going to be structural analysis, not harmonic analysis. Structural analysis is
actually much easier, and you can do it by
ear pretty quick. So when I do analysis projects, when I look at a track and say, Here's the structure,
what I want you to be able to do is not you don't need to memorize the
structure of tracks. That's not important. What's important is that
you memorize how to find the structure of tracks so that you can listen
to any track and say, I really love the way they go from this
section to this section. What did they do that
makes that work? And then you can do a quick
little analysis of it. You can see how it works, and then you can say, that's what I want to do in my track. So the important thing is in memorizing who does
what in their tracks. The important thing is to
memorize how to figure it out so that when you're listening to tracks and you hear
something you really like, you can seize that thing and
use it in your own tracks. Cool. So keep that in mind.
4. What is Form?: Okay, so structure. Here's
what we're talking about. We're talking about a term more commonly used in music
theory aspects as form. So form and structure and structure mean the
same thing, really. Structure is a term
that we see more being used in kind
of electronic music, but I'm probably going
to say form more than anything because when I
learned all this stuff, I learned the term
form. Same thing. Same thing. So when
we talk about this, what we're really talking
about is sections of a tune, and what makes it feel like we moved from one
section to another. When should those
sections change? When should we have
a change in section? And what kind of
story can we tell by adding a change
in section, right? So on the one hand, you can see form fairly easily if you just
look at a waveform, right? Like, here's this track. Let's try to get the
whole thing there. Okay. So here's an entire track. You can pretty
easily see one, two, three, four, five different
things, maybe more, right? We can see this is
a kind of music. We can see this is
a kind of music. We can see this is
a kind of music. We can see this is
a kind of music, and we can see there's
something extra here. Okay. So we can go a little
deeper with that and we could say stands to reason
that this kind of music is probably related to this kind of music
in some way, right? This music is probably
related to this music. And this music probably is
really similar to this music, but especially this music. I can tell that just by
the waveforms, right? You don't need to know anything about music theory to know this. You need to know a little
bit about pictures, right? This stuff looks
similar to this stuff. We could go deeper
still and say, in all of this stuff, I kind of see three different
things in this stuff. I see something here, and I see a little
break right there. Right? There's something
different right there and same
thing right there. There's a little break in it. Now, that's a really
interesting clue as to what's going
on because I see the same thing over here,
although slightly different. This first one should
be right about there, and there is a
little break there, but it's smaller and
different. Okay? This break is probably this one. So this chunk of stuff is probably really
similar to this chunk of stuff. This chunk of stuff
is probably really similar to this chunk of stuff. And all of this is
similar to this. Probably. We really need
to listen to it to know. I'm just saying first glances. First glances. Now, I know that the sections
I highlighted and said, these are similar to this, for example, they're
different lengths, right? And that's totally okay. We'll talk about that shortly. For example, this one looks
to be twice as long as this. Which is a totally
normal thing to do with form is to take a section. The first time we do it,
I'm going to do it twice. The second time, I'm
just going to do it once. It's totally okay. Those are the kinds of decisions
that we're talking about in this section or in
this class, actually. So we want to look at what's
happening and why it's happening and what exactly is different between this
section and this section, for example, so that when
you're working on your tracks, you can say, Okay, I'm in
this kind of a section. We're grooven, we're full on. How can I make something different in order to extend this track
out longer, right? Because if I just do this
groove for 5 minutes, it's going to feel stale. I need something different to keep things moving forward. That's what we're
talking about here. Okay, uh, next, let's go
into a little bit of lingo. And then we'll shortly, roll hear this tune and do
some analysis. Don't worry.
5. Verse, Chorus, Bridge, Break, Drop, Etc...: Okay, so when we look at a tune, words that you're
probably familiar with that we would use to talk about the structure of a song or a tune or
a track or whatever, there are some that
are probably familiar. Verse chorus, bridge, those
are pretty standard terms. But they have a problem. So let me just kind
of walk through this. Let's say this is our intro. Let's say this is
our verse Well, let's say, just hypothetically, this is our verse, and
this is our chorus. Okay? This is a bridge, and then we get another verse, another verse there, and
another chorus, okay? Another chorus. And
then in some kind of outtro Alright, that works. So basically, let's slice that down to just two
things I want to look at. Let's call this our verse
and this our chorus. Those terms, verse and chorus are a little
arbitrary, right? Have you ever heard a song that had a verse that turns
into the chorus? Like, you thought it was
a verse, and then, like, they do it again and
again and again, and you're like, Oh,
that's the chorus. Maybe you don't think about
music like that, but I do. It's actually very common. So what I might call the verse, someone else might
call a chorus, what I hear a a chorus, someone else might
hear is a verse. Um happen. Also, when I said, This is the intro and
this is the bridge, those terms have problems too. The problem is, that
doesn't really tell me. That makes it sound
like they're two totally different things, right? And I don't think, in this case, these are totally
different things. I think they're different,
but I think they're related. So I really want
a term that says, This is a thing, this is a variation on that thing.
That's what I'd rather have. Rather than saying, This is the intro and this
is the bridge. So you can call these intro and bridge
and verse and chorus. You're welcome to do that. But when it comes to
analyzing the structure, we're going to use a little
bit different terms. Similarly, if we get into more kind of electronic
music centric terms, things like the break, the
drop, stuff like that. Those have the same problems. They're somewhat opinionated and they don't exist in
all tracks, right? Not all tracks have a break, not all tracks have a drop. This one, for example, has, I guess what we
would call a drop, it has a spot where
the beat enters, but it's pretty weak drop. It's not really like a,
you know, kind of thing. So so luckily for us, we have some other terms
that we're going to use, and these are actually
fairly easy to understand. So let's go to a new video and talk about the lingo we're going to use to analyze these
kinds of projects.
6. Using Letter Names: Okay, so what we're gonna do is we're going to use a
series of letters for this. Now, we're going to use ABCDEF, as many as we need
up the alphabet, G H O, whatever. Very important. These letters have nothing to do
with pitch, okay? These are not pitches. These are just the
alphabet, okay? It's a little confusing that
we use letters for this when there are also letters being used
to talk about pitch. So normally for this, when we're talking about
form and structure, we use big, big, big capital letters
and nothing else. So don't think of these as pitch. We're
talking about structure. Okay, so what we do with these letters is we
use them sequentially. So we say, This first
chunk of stuff here, I'm going to call this A because it's the first
thing that happens. Okay? Oops. I don't want that. This next chunk of stuff, I'm going to call B because it's the next thing
that happens. Let's call if we want to call this something different, we would call that C. Okay. Now, let's
get to this part. This looks different,
so I would call it D. However, it also looks
similar to this in some ways. I think these are related, and we'll do an analysis of
this track in the next video, so we'll get to the
answer to that. If these are related, I could say, Well,
this is A again. I don't think it
is A again, right? I think this is like A, but
I think it's different. So what I would do is I
would call it a apostrophe. Okay? We would
pronounce that A prime. Okay? This means A prime, and it means a different. Okay? A variation on A. Okay? So keeping going,
I think this is B, and I don't think this
is a variation of B. I think this is straight up
B again, copy and paste. Okay? I don't know, these
periods are driving me nuts. C again, and I think it's
C again straight up. Now, I should point
out the length thing. Let's assume that C is this, and this is half of that. In that case, I
can still call it the same letter because
really what I'm saying is C is this, and we have it twice here, and we have it once here. So if it's not
different in terms of any of the musical elements, it's just I just happens twice. We could say, This is C twice, and this is C once. We could do that, or we
could just simplify it and say that's C and that's C. It doesn't need a prime if
it's just doubled in length. Okay. So that's our Normenclature that
we're going to use here. So, A, B, C, anything can have an
apostree after it, a prime. And we can even do more primes. Let's say we want to put a
label on this outtro thing. I think this atro thing is related to this intro thing
and this middle thing, but it's different again, right? So I would call
that A prime prime. Okay, so we will call
this a double prime, meaning it's like A, but it's different from A, and it's different from A prime. So it's a double prime. So if you get a
track that repeats a lot of stuff over
and over and over, but changes it every
time, you can end up with prime prime prime prime
prime, like that. But that's not likely. Okay, so any letter
can get a prime, and letters can keep going up. It's just every time
there's a new section, something totally new,
it gets a new letter. Okay? And the letter it gets will be the next
in the alphabet. Alright, so let's finally listen to this thing and
do an analysis of it.
7. Analysis No. 1: Okay, I think I'm going
to get in trouble in this class for playing
tracks that are not mine. I've gotten in
trouble for that with this class in this
series previously. So we'll cross that
bridge when we get to it. But for now, this
is a track of mine. This is actually a remix
of one of my tracks, a remix by someone else. But I'm sick of
hearing the original, so we'll do the remix. Okay. So I'm going to hit play and I'm going to
analyze this in real time. And you can really do that
because the best way to figure out what to call each section is just by
listening through it. And unless you're
listening to something really crazy that changes
all over the place, you can pretty much do it in
one pass through the tune. Now, you're always
going to start with A. The first thing in the
track always gonna be A. So here we go. H
8. Analysis Detail: Okay, so let me explain
what we found here. There are a couple oddities and a couple of things
I wanted to double check, like this one. This one, the reason I put B question mark is just
because I wanted to hear this section and this section and
this section again, to determine if this
is different enough. Okay? So let me just
hear this again. Okay. I'll be prime. Alright. Okay, so it depends on how
granular I want to be, but I am going to
call this for now, B double prime, which I'll
make this be triple prime. Think of that. Okay. So Okay. So other things,
you'll notice that B without any prime
happens here again. That's because this one sounded to me to be exactly
the same as this one. So I'm going to
call that B again. Similarly, this one B
prime happened here again, and these sounded
the same to me. So I called them both B prime. That means that these two
are exactly the same, I think, or close to it. You know, sometimes it depends on how granular
you want to get. And what that means is sometimes it can be
all the same music, but there's, like, a high in it now, and it
wasn't in it before. Could call that a new section. You could call that
a modification, like a prime, or you
could call it a same. It kind of just depends
on how you want to do it. There's no real scientific
way to do this. It's really what you hear
as different or the same. This section, I heard
is something totally different and only
happening here. And it's because of that
melody, that high melody. And we don't have
the piano stuff. I think I think it's the only spot where we don't
have that piano stuff. Another thing that
I did is CODA. So a lot of the
time when we have an outtro we don't
if it's short, we don't really need to
give it its own letter, even if it's related
to other stuff. So this Otro is obviously
related to A and A prime, but it's really short. It's really just kind
of three chords. So we just call it CODA. CODA means the end. Literally, it means tail. But it's just kind of the
end little piece, okay? So I'm just gonna
call that CODA. Okay, so now what I could do is get a little what I like to do is take another look at the track but get less
granular, as I said. In other words, this is looking really
close at the track. What I want to do next is take one big step backwards
and see if I can kind of get a larger picture of
what the track is doing. Okay? So let's try to get a kind of I don't want to say 10,000 foot view of the track because
that's too far, right? But let's take one
step backwards and get a wider picture of what
the track is doing next.
9. Taking a Step Back: Okay, so what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna put this under, and I don't even need to
look at the track now, although I might in a minute. So here's
what we're gonna do. I want to say, Okay, so here's the kind of close up
view. Let's step back. Let's say B and B prime. We could say, we're going
to call this just B. Okay? Two Bs in a row
that are modified, okay? Is now called B. So two Bs in a row
that are modified. These are different.
So let's call that B. Okay? So now what we have, that's only prime now. That's a prime. And I have two Bs next to each other, but
they're not different. So now I have something a little easier to wrap our head around. I have A, B, C, B, A, B, B. Now, sometimes you can find
more patterns in here. Like, for example, if B and C always happen next
to each other, right? Then I could just call B a
combination of B and C, right? That could be my new B
is that big section. But that's not true here because
here B is followed by C, here, B prime is followed by A, and here B is followed by B. So there's no other
difference here. A is always followed by B. A prime is followed by B. So we could call A A
B could be called A, but this is A prime. That's B. So I don't
quite want to do that. C is by itself. So I think this gives me a little bit better
picture of what's happening than this, whoops. This is what I would
want to know if I'm trying to kind of copy
the style of this piece. This is what I want
to know if I'm just listening to the piece and I like the way kind of time
unravels in the piece. So this is a bigger
picture view. This is a smaller picture view. If I was going to go an
even bigger picture view, which I could do, If I was going to go
up one more level, what I might do is say, Okay, we have A. This whole section,
we're going to call B. That we're going
to call A. We just have a straight up repeat there, so I don't need to do that. Okay. So now I could say the whole piece can kind
of be summarized as A, B, A, B, coda. Um, that would be like, A, B, A, B, CODA. That's kind of the first
way we looked at it, right? So three different
ways of looking at it. Focusing in more and more and more as we go down here, right? This is the view from the sky. This is the view from the trees, and this is the view
on the ground, right? All three of these have uses. Okay, so the next
thing I want to do is let's do another track. I think we need to do
another analysis here in order to kind of really get this to sink in. So
let's do another one.
10. Analysis No. 2: Okay, let's do one more. This is, again, another
remix of a track of mine. The reason I'm using remixes is because I'm sick of listening
to these tracks of my own, and these are a
little different. So, okay, let's do it. So I'm going to do the
same thing as before. I'm going to do kind
of a form analysis based on what I hear
one time through, and then we'll walk
through and kind of do the different layers again. Here we go. To Stop the nods. Stop. Stop the Stop the. Stop the words. Stop the stop the
Stop the nodes. Stop the notes.
11. Analysis Detail: Okay, let's take a look
at what we found here. There were a couple
oddities, primarily, whether or not a bee
is worthy of being called new because
there's a lot of bees, especially here,
and calling them, you know, what's
different from this bee to this be what's
kind of tricky. So I might need to
double check that. I do want to point out
one thing here, though. If you heard this, You
were maybe you thought, why not call this
a new letter once this snare came in or
the claps came in. So that gets us to a good
thing to talk about. And that is what makes a section different
than another section. Really, what we're looking
for here is something that feels like a new section. It feels like new material. It feels new, right? So what we have here is
we have this kick going, and then the clap comes in. That's not new section, right? That's building of a section. So that's the old section
with more stuff on top of it. That didn't feel, to
me, like a new section. Okay? So that's really the bar that
we're looking for here is, does it feel like a new section? Um, okay, so back to this. So here I felt like, I'm just going to do
that for a second. So this is definitely B. Here, I called this
a direct copy of B. The dynamics are a
little different, meaning, like, the sinth kind
of ramps up a little bit. You can almost see
that in the waveform. But the rest of the
material is the same. Technically, we should
probably call this B prime. And I guess if we're really
zoomed in here, we will. That would make
this double prime. Okay, this was
interesting because I said this was a
variation on this, which is really just that kick, maybe that kick and clap. Right? Yeah, and I think
I stand by that. It really is just that with kind of a sustained
synth in there. So I think that I'm comfortable
calling that A prime. Okay, so now this B, I said, was different than
these other two. Yeah. We really that really, like, Kylie Minogue
key sound in there. Okay, let's go for this. Okay, here comes this. Okay, so is this the
same as this? Yeah. Okay. Yep, so I'm good with that. Go call that straight up B. How do we get it again? Right here. Yeah, I'm good with that. Okay, this, I think, should be called the
Triple Rhyme now. Yeah. So this is a tricky one because I can think of three different
things to call this. I could call this B
triple prime because it's B with everything stripped away except for the
baseline and the drums. I could also call it A
triple prime because it's the drums
plus the baseline. So it's really similar
to A, as well. Or I could say, screw it and call
it just a Coda. Um, I don't love calling it a CODA because it doesn't feel like something
additional tacked on. It feels like the song
could actually keep going. So I'm not in love with
calling it A CODA. I think I'm gonna stick with B triple prime. But I
could go either way on. Okay. So that's kind of a clarification
of what we found here. Now, do we see any
patterns here? We do see some
patterns, actually. So let's take our big
step backwards, you know, climb up into the trees
and look at it from the three different perspectives from the trees and
from the clouds.
12. Taking a Step Back: Okay, so when we look at this, I see A, let me
keep the waveform up here because I do want
to see that for a minute. I see A as being a pretty
significant chunk of the tune. Even though it's
really simple music, it has a lot of time to it. So I'm going to leave A
as is. So A is still A. Now, all of this B stuff, we could really call just B. If we're going to kind of be up a little bit
higher into the trees, we could just say, the
second section is B twice. So B and then a variation
on B means B now. Okay? And then we have
another version of A, which is really just a bridge. And then we have
B in a variation. So we're going to
call that B, and then we have B in a variation. So we're going to call that B. Right? So what we have now is A, B and a variation of B, a bridge, B, and
a variation of B, B, and a variation of B. So A, B, A, B, B, okay? Interesting because now we're getting actually really close to the next thing I want to
cover. Let's go way up. Here's what I'm gonna
do if I go way up, and this is going to sound
weird, but trust me on it, we're going to call
this A, B, C, B. Okay? Now, where did
that C come from? Here's where that C came from. So here's A, A, B, B. A prime, I'm going
to actually call C now because it's a bridge, and I want it to
look like a bridge. So it is related to
this intro music, but it's really kind of serving to break up the Bs, right? So the Bs are being
broken up by this A. So I want it to kind
of look like that. So I'm going to call that a C. I'm going to say
that's different. And then this last B, I'm
going to say is two Bs because I'm on the view
from the sky here, okay? So I could sum up the way this whole track works in
any one of these ways. Okay? I could say, Well,
it's A, B, then B prime, then A prime, then
B double prime, then B, then B then
B triple prime. That's a bit of a mouthful. I could say, it's A and
then B and then A prime, and then B and then a second B. Or I could say,
that's A, B, C, B. Cool. Now, these are
going to be useful. Don't worry. Right now, you're thinking, that's
a neat party trick, but how is that useful to me? It will be useful.
So, what I want to do next is I want to talk
about kind of standard forms, forms that are common to use, almost like form templates, okay? Forms that we
see all the time. And then we're going to talk about how to apply some
of this in your music. So let's go on to
the next chunk and talk about kind of
these standard forms.
13. Binary Form: Okay, in this section,
I want to talk about a couple standard forms. Now, these are forms that people have been using
for hundreds of years. Some of these are the
most basic kind of forms. Some of them are a
little more complicated. But what I really
like about them is that there's a reason these have been around
for hundreds of years. Like, they work. And it doesn't
the genre doesn't matter. Like, yes, Mozart used this
same form in his piece or, you know, in a symphony
or something like that. But you can use it
in a techno track, and it's going to work. Like, this is just how
humans like to hear things. They like to hear things in
certain patterns, right? We like to hear something, and then we like to hear
something different. And then we like to hear
that first thing again. That's just, like,
the most fundamental principle of making something that people enjoy is
give them something, give them something
different, give them the first
thing again, right? It creates a sense
of familiarity, and that's what we like. So that actually
is our first form. This is a standard form that has been around
for millions of years, and this is called binary form. There are two variations
of binary form. Let me actually write this
a little bit differently. Binary form, colon. It could be a B, a a BA, or it can be ABAB. This, if we want
to get technical, is called rounded binary form. This is just called binary form. So this is rounded binary. They're both types
of binary form. Okay, so what do we have here? So we have some music, the same music again
repeated, right? So this music
repeated again, okay? Then we have something different, something
totally different. But still related
somewhat, right? It's the same piece of
music, so it can't be just, like, totally out of left field. It's related somehow, but mostly it's a
new kind of music. And then we have the
first thing again, right? So the most common thing
you'll ever find something, something again, something different, and you
have first something. Now, the other way you
can do it is something, something different, something, something different, right? That's what this
is really saying. It's saying give me
something, change it up, give me that first thing again, and then give me the
second thing again. The reason that this
works so well is that there is a
certain gratification when we recognize things. That's what people want out of music, whether
they know it or not. So when you play them something, the first time here, it's new, and they're like, Okay, this is interesting. But then as the piece goes on, they might think, I'm getting a little bored, so
I need something different. So you give them
something different. But then they think it would be nice to give them
something that they recognize, and then they say,
Oh, I recognize that, that brings
gratification to them. So you give them the
A section again. And then you need
to change it up, so you give them the
B section again. Again, they recognize it and
it gives them enjoyment. So that's binary form. If you're working on a track
and you're like, Okay, I have this A section,
what do I do next? And you want to do
something really simple and something
that you know will work, you can do either of
those two things. Do the A section again or come up with a B section,
right? Very simple. Okay, let's go on to slightly different one
called ternary form.
14. Ternary Form: Okay. Now let's talk
about ternary form. Ternary. Now, you
would think that if binary form is called binary because it has
two different sections, ternary form would be called ternary because it
has three sections. And you would be wrong, in a way, but you would
also be right. Ternary form is A, B A. Okay? So this is has
always confused me. Whenever I when I was learning this and I had to take
this on exams and stuff, I'd be like, Why is that not binary or some other
form of binary. It just gets its own word. It's weird. So we would
call this ternary form. The theory is because it's
three different chunks. One, two, three, right? Um, whereas the others are both four different
chunks, right? So they have two
different kinds of music in binary form
and in ternary form, but ternary form
has three chunks, and binary form has two or four chunks, depending
on how you look at it. So, in ternary form, again, one of the most simplest and probably the most
simple type of form. You have some music, something different,
and then the same thing again, the first thing again. As simple as it sounds, depending on how you're
looking at a piece of music, I think that probably
a lot, like, a very high amount of the music I write
falls into ternary form. If you're looking
at that, you know, from the sky level, this is how I think about
music when I'm writing. What I think about is I'm
going to do some stuff. I'm going to make a
lot of music here, and now I'm going to
pull you away from that, and I'm going to do a
lot of something else. And then I'm going to go
back to the first stuff. That's what I do in pretty
much every tune I write. I might have other tricks
within each section, but really the way I'm thinking in the big
scheme of the Ps, you know, from the sky
view is something, something different,
the first thing again. That's really how I think
about all of my music. So now, sometimes I
combine the B and the A, and I'll talk more about
that in just a second. So in a minute, I'll say, Here's a trick I do in just
about every tune I write. And it's a variation on this. But you'd be surprised at how common this is if you're looking at it from
that 10,000 foot view.
15. Rondo: Okay, next slide I want
to talk about Rondo. A Rondo is a form that is not super common
in electronic music, but I kind of think
it should be. And I think if we analyzed a whole bunch of
electronic music, I think you would
find this, actually. If you analyze the DJ set, I think you would find something similar to a Rondo happening. But, I mean, over the course of, like, a four hour Dj set. So, here's what Rondo is. It's fun because it's a form
that can go on forever. It is a B, A, C, A, D, a, E, F, et cetera. So the pattern here is A. This is called the Rondo
and it comes back. So the Rondo
something different. The Rondo something different. The rondo, something different, the Rondo, something different, the Rondo, something different. And literally this
can go on all day. Um you can think of it as, like, a chorus as the Rondo. And then imagine a verse, but every verse was different. Or if you're thinking of, like, something more kind
of dance music related, you can think of like a chorus, but then a different track. And then the same the
chorus and different track, chorus, different track,
chorus, different track. What's key here is
that these sections don't need to be
related at all, right? They're just totally
different stuff. But they always go back to
the Rondo thing, the A. Okay, that's a Rondo form. I find it fun for when I'm working on a piece of music and I'm
just kind of stuck. It's fun to think, Okay, well, I've done an A, a B, A, but there's more here. Like, what else can
I add to this piece? The think, Well, I'll do a C. And then we'll
go back to the A, and then I'll do a D, and then
I go to an A, and then E. Because basically you can write half as much music and
be done with it, right? Because once you
write the A section, you've got half
the piece written, no matter how long it goes. It's kind of a good
trick. For when you need to write a lot of
music really fast. I'm not gonna lie.
I've used that on some projects that had a
tight deadline. But it works. Okay? So Rondo is a good trick. It's a good way to kind of think about music when you're
working on a tune and see how it comes together. Let's talk
about a few more.
16. Theme and Variation: Okay, the next one
that I want to look at is theme and variation. This is, again, not
something that's really common to do in
electronic music, but is a good way to
think about music and a way to generate some
ideas fairly quickly. So if you're stuck on a track, if you've got something
where you're like, I've made a minute of music, and it's really cool and I'm
really happy with it, and I just have no
idea where to go. Try this. This might be
something that works out well. Theme and variation
is really simple. A, A prime. A prime prime. A prime prime prime. A prime prime prime prime. A prime prime prime prime prime. A prime prime prime
prime prime prime. Et cetera. You see
the pattern here. So it's just it is what it is. It's a theme and then a variation on it,
another variation on it, another variation on
it, another variation, another variation, and
another variation. We just keep modifying A. Now, what I think is
actually interesting, and I've talked about
things like this in my composition class, but theme and
variation actually is a really good thought experiment because here's something
that I like to do. When I'm working on a
piece and I'm super stuck, take a section and treat it
like a theme and variation, but then you're going to throw out a bunch
of the variations. So here's what I do. I say, Okay, I've got this section
written. It's pretty cool. I'm happy with this music. What else can I do
with it? I'll be like, Okay, here's a variation. And then here's
another variation. Here's another variation. Here's another variation.
Here's another variation. Here's another variation. So then what I'll
do is I'll say, Okay, I've made six
variations of this. I'm going to throw
out these five. And then this one
is probably goofy enough to call it a B, right? So just make a ton
of variations, and then by the time
you make the sixth one, you're probably
thinking so far out of the box that you've made
something interesting. Anyway, that is totally different than using
this as a standard form. That's just a trick
I like to do. So theme and variation
is just a section and then an infinite number
of variations on a section.
17. Other Forms (My Secret Weapon...): There are a bunch more of these, and you can look
up a bunch more. There's probably 50 or 60 of these that are fairly
well known and standardized, but I won't bore you
with all of them. I just kind of wanted to
point out a few that I thought were
exceptionally useful. There's one more
that I use a lot, and I hear other people using
a lot in electronic music. It doesn't really
have a standard name. It's not a standardized form. It's just something
that is, I think, kind of popular and
something that I've really latched onto and
used a tone in my music. This is kind of what I was
talking about before when I was talking about
terniary form. So that form is,
I just call it A plus B doesn't have a great name, but
that's what I call it. So the form is an A section, a B section, and then A
and B at the same time. Or you can do it that way. Okay? So this is just kind of just one of my
favorite things to do. I make some music, and then
I make some other music. And then I make both
of these in a way that they fit together
like two pieces of a puzzle and make
essentially a third thing. So this is a C section that is a combination of the
A section and the B section. So you would think, Oh, that sounds really hard
because I have to write this in a way that it's
going to fit with this, and I have to write this
in a way that's gonna fit with this. It's
actually not that hard. Here's the secret.
Write this first. Um if you write this, then you just kind of
peel half of it away, put it there, peel
the other half away, put it there, and then voila. You have a really
smart sounding track. Here's an example. This
is a track of mine. It's all centered around
this little piano if. Right here. Okay, so here's the main
groove with the piano if. Okay. So then, so that's
the big A section. Then we have the B section that really focuses on this
more percussive synth sound. Okay? So then for a C section, I do them
at the same time, where I turn the
percussive synth sound into the piano if. It's a technique that I
really like because it gives that sense of recognition
that we talked about earlier. So I give someone an A section, and then when it happens
here, they're like, Oh, yeah, I recognize that, but it's
more complicated now. And it's I feel like it's a little more
rewarding when you recognize it. It's also double because they recognize both this and that. And maybe they sit back and say, That was a pretty clever
move, Mr. Producer. And I say, Thank you. So it's a good trick.
I really like. So give it a try.
18. How To Use These In Your Tracks: Okay, we've talked a little bit along the way here in these
last handful of videos about how to apply some of these formal ideas
into your own music. But I want to give you one
more way that you can do that. And that is start with a plan. Let it go off the rails, though. Okay? So here's what I mean. What I mean is when you start working on
a track, say, Okay, I'm going to make a track
that's going to be A, A, B, A, C, A, whatever you want it to
be, whatever you fancy. And then say, Okay, that's my goal. That's what
I'm going to do. You can even put markers in your session to kind of remind
you where you should be. So you start with
a plant, right? Then you get to the B section and you
say, wait a minute here. This B section is,
like, super ad. I'm really, really
into this B section. So what I really want to do is, I don't know, I'll go to
something different here, but then I want to go
back to this B section again and maybe do it twice. So let your plan change, right? Like, let it go off the
rails, let it meander. But starting with a plan
in terms of the form can really help you avoid any kind of writer's
block altogether. Just say, This is what my
plan is. Let it change. Don't let it, you know,
don't be bound to it. But if it doesn't need to
change, don't change it. I do this for every
track I work on. I always have a plan. I never stick to the plan, but I always start with one, just so that, you know, I get to the spot where I go, Oh, what comes next? I can say, Well, I
need a variation on A. That's what comes
next. Okay, cool. Let's get to work. Really
simplifies that process. So I encourage you to use
these forms as that as your starting plan
and a way to build up the track altogether. Now, let's get into the
weeds a little bit more on what makes the difference
between sections, right? We haven't really
talked about that yet. What I mean by that
is the A section and the B section
sound different. Yes, we can agree on that. However, why? What makes them sound different? What makes the
sections different? We've kind of talked about why
we use different sections. We've talked about why
we repeat sections, but we haven't talked
about what makes them different and how in your tracks you can make
sections sound different, right? Techniques you can use
to make this sound different than that.
Coming up next.
19. What Makes Sections Sound Different?: Okay, so the next thing
I want to look at is when we're going
between two sections, what is it actually that makes one section sound
different than the next section? So what I'm thinking here is, I'm imagining you're working on a track and you've got
something cool going, and you just don't
know what to do next. And as luck would have it, I happen to have a track that
I was working on recently, and I don't really
know what to do next. So I'm going to walk
through and take my own advice here and try a
couple of different things. The way I think
about it, there are basically five different
things you can do. And when I say five
different things, what I really mean is there are five different things you can use to make one section sound different
than another section. But there's 1 million
different ways that you could apply each of those
five things, right? It's not like there are only
five directions you can go. These are just five ways of
thinking about coming up with a new section that will kind of get you heading
in the right track, okay? So I want to go
through each of these five and talk about
kind of how I think about each one of them
and how I apply them. And hopefully by
the end of this, I'll have worked myself out of the corner I'm in
with this weird track. Okay, so the five things
are volume, harmony, density, instrumentation, and the most ethereal one,
absence of something. So let's dive in and let's
work on the volume one first.
20. Volume: So I have this track
I'm working on, and I'm almost embarrassed to show this track because it's just so much of a
mess right now. This is really just a sketch. Don't judge me on it. I like some of the ideas in it. I haven't really
refined any of them. I haven't played around with it. The mix is terrible. But I'm just kind of in
the composition phase. So I'm going to show
this to you anyway. My idea here was to apply
a bunch of effects and processing to this Bach
orchestral suite and see if I can do anything
fun with it. Eventually, I ended up
with this little loop. So, that kind of plays a role. And then I added this
really weird harmony to it. Anyway, let's just hear
it up to where I'm stuck, which is right here. I'm gonna put a little
marker and say, What? We don't know
what to do next. Now, I've added
something already that demonstrates what I want to
talk about in this video. But let's just get up
to that point for now. Okay? Here we go. On solo. That B, B, B, B, B Okay. So what comes next? Um, so, getting back to this kind of five ideas
of what we could do. The first one that I want
to think about is volume. So I can make a big
change in volume, right? I could get a lot louder,
I could get a lot quieter. Those are my options
here, right? Volume if assume volumes here, we can go up or we can go down. Now, when you're trying
to make a big change, usually the easiest
thing is to go down. Unless you're working on
a really quiet track, and then you
suddenly want to get loud to make a new section, that generally doesn't
work very well, actually. If that's your case,
where you're working on a really quiet track and
you need a new section, this idea of using volume to differentiate your sections is probably not the best way to go. You're working on something
like this that's pretty much the same volume all
the way through so far, then, if we looked at the waveform for
this, it would be like, just like a block,
aside from the intro. But even that is, like, pretty consistent volume, you
know, all the way across. So a good option might
be to get quieter, and that's a way we
can make next section feel like something
different, right? So that's what I actually
have set up here already. And what I did is a little
bit more elegant than just dropping down and getting quieter in
this next section. What happens is we still
have a good bit of volume. I used like 8 bars or
so this much time. To kind of slowly
get quieter, right? And so this is kind of a transition
down to a quieter sound, and it makes room
for this piano to come in and be
kind of the focus. So everything kind of so if you imagine the waveform
is going to look like, it's going to be a pretty consistent block all the
way up to this point, and then it's going to
kind of taper down. And that'll make it sound
like a new section. So let's just hear it maybe
right from where the violins enter and then we'll keep going into this quieter
section there about it. Okay, so that works. Okay. I think that's a
respectable idea. But in the interest of not
being totally satisfied, let's try another one
of these techniques. Okay? So next, let's
look at idea number two, and that is harmony. And
21. Harmony: Okay. Next, let's
look at harmony. So with harmony, what we mean is just
changing the harmony, right? Changing up the
harmony can really give something the feel
of a whole new section, even if it's a very
subtle change. You'd be surprised at how
little you can mix up the harmony and have it feel
like a whole new section. So what I've done here is here's our rather strange
harmony that's happening, and now I added a
new harmony here. I let the strings
just hang over on the note that they were on
just a little bit longer. I changed the bassline
to fit the new harmony, and then I just kept
the drums going. So the only thing that changes here or I added this
little snare hit in really what you're going to hear is the
harmony change here. Volume isn't going to change. It will thin out a little bit in this section because
the strings stop. But the main thing
that's going to make it feel like a new section right here is this
change in harmony. Okay? Now, the trick I did here to really make it
feel like a change is that this harmony throughout the whole track is
pretty dissonant, right? It's not really in any key. If we look at these chords, they're really bizarre.
They're just triads. So we have a G, C, E, so we have a C major triad. Then we have an E A C sharp. Then we have an A major triad. Those are not in the same key. Then we have a G major triad. Yeah, which doesn't
make a ton of sense. And then we have a
B flat major triad. So it's really just
moving around in planes. This is kind of the
Dabusi technique. So it's really kind of not
firmly in any real key. But what I'm going
to do here is make the harmony fairly diatonic, meaning kind of
stick into a key. So I kind of move over to a flat major just because I don't know, that
seemed like a good idea. So we're just gonna go B
flat major, A flat major, B flat major, A flat major is really all that's
gonna happen. So I guess we could
call that either key, depending on if we're
calling it major or minor. Doesn't matter.
So let's hear it. And you tell me if right
when we get there, does it feel like we
went to a new section? Okay. That's cool. I like it. You know, another
thing I did here that helps it feel different, not necessarily right
at the downbeat here, but the whole kind of
8 bars is that this is a This is a four bar or a four chord chord
progression, right? It's a loop with four chords. And then we switch to a loop
with two chords, right? So this is just alternating
two chords back and forth. That's something that
I found really works well to make a new section
by just using the harmony. Switch up the number
of harmonies in it. Go from a four chord progression to a two chord progression. Org or from a four
chord progression to a six or an eight
chord progression. Something that kind of changes that big pulse of the way the cords are moving can really help it feel
like a new section. Okay, so this is cool. This is an option. Here's my previous option. I just drug it out there, and I'm going to do the
same with this one. So I'm going to
say, that's okay. But I don't love love it. So, you know, in the
end, I should just do all of these back to
back and see what happens. It'll be funny. Okay, well, let's come up
with something else.
22. Density (Texture): Okay, the next thing, the next kind of parameter that I would look at is density. And another way to think
about this is texture. So with density, what I mean is how
much that's happening. Imagine that waveform, right? That waveform is nice and thick. Can I thin it out without
affecting the volume? And usually, this will
also affect the volume. But what I'm going
to do here is, I'm just going to keep
the same music going, but I'm going to
swap out the beat for just this snare hit. And then what I did is, if
you look at the automation, I ramped up the volume a little bit of that snare
hit right at the end, and I also automated this
filter to open up because this loop is a whole drum loop that presently I
have filtered out, so we just get
this crunchy snare and a little bit of other stuff, but it's mostly
just a snare hit. But then right at the
end, it'll open up, so we hear the full drumbeat, and then it leads us back
into the drumbeat we had. So basically, we're
going to have no drumbeat here and just this snare hit
going through here. And so the texture is going to thin because we're going
to lose the drumbeat. We' still going to
have a drumbeat, but we're going to have a
much thinner drumbeat, right? So let's take a listen to that. Ooh. So loaded still. Back to fire. All right. And then we're
back into where we were. So it's a short section, but it definitely changes
the texture, right? I definitely feels like
something different because we've really kind
of pulled a layer out. Now, this is a section that if we were
calling all of this A, we might call this A
prime because it's really the same music just with
a different drumbeat. But that's okay. It's still a different section. So, again, it's an idea. Texture things can be
really fun to play with, and I like it. It's cool. But it's not perfect. So
let's try something else.
23. Instrumentation: Okay, the next element that I want to look at
is instrumentation. That would mean adding
a new instrument, which in our electronic
music world, really means adding
a new sound, okay? So a new instrument could
be an actual instrument, like we could pop in a saxophone that would make it sound
like a new section. Or I could add a new synth, something we haven't
heard before, something to that'll make
someone listening to it say, Oh, that's new, right? That's what we want.
So, I tried that here. So what I did is I took
our main synth part here, and I added in three
new instruments, actually, to make kind
of one unified sound. So the first layer I've
added is just an organ. To the next chord. Alright, so a simple organ, this kind of backwards
piano sample. And then this kind
of choppy keyboard. Okay. Everything
else stays the same. So you're going to
hear that all of this stuff doesn't really
make a texture change, right? We're switching, but the density is still more or less the same. It's still like, if we look at the waveform of this rendered
out as a stereotrack, we probably won't be able
to see this change, right? Because this is going to
be sufficiently loud, at least as loud
as this one was, and it's not going to look like a change in
density of the music, but it'll certainly
sound like one. So let's see if we like. Oops. Something so low
still. There we go. Okay. Not bad. It's another candidate. But we still have one
more thing to explore. So let's take all of this. I'm running out of space here. And let's push it
over here to there. Um, I don't want that. Okay, one more thing to explore and then
we'll see what happens. We'll see what our favorite is.
24. Absence of Something: Okay, the next is
probably the easiest. Well, it's definitely
the easiest. And that's just to
take something away. You could do a lot
of different ways. So what I've done is I basically just extended the loop again. I let the violin stop. Now, technically, we're already taking
something away here, right, because the violin stops, but the violin only
recently entered. So I don't think
that's going to be enough to really feel
like a new section. So I want to take something else away to make this feel
like a new section. The most obvious thing
would be the drums, right? If we take the drums away, we don't put any other drums there. We just leave it empty. It's definitely gonna
feel like a new set. Right? And that's cool. That's definitely a very, um, good way to go. Take the drums away, let it
rock out for a little bit, then drop the drums back in. That almost always works. But let's try something a
little more adventurous. Let's take the harmony
away and the bassline. That leaves us with
almost nothing but. I still got baselines happening. Let's actually, I really want to feel if this is
rewarding in any way. So I'm going to take all of this and I'm going to
bring it back here. So a lot of the times, this is the best way to
test something. So we're going to
take all this away, and then I want to
see if it feels like even yet another section
when it comes back, right? This should feel rewarding
when it comes back. So let's try it from here. Oops, but I don't
want the strings to come back. Okay. Not bad. It's just a
little too empty here, right, for this to work. But there are situations
where something like this would work
perfectly well, right? But I don't think
this is one of them. But it's an interesting
option, right? Okay, let's go to a new video and kind of talk about what
we found in all of this.
25. Applying these Techniques in your Music: Okay, so having gone through all those options,
what's my favorite? Um, my favorite is
really none of them. None of those options were particularly satisfying
enough for me. So I need to keep working on it in order to really nail it. But let's try this. So here's what
we're going to do. We're going to rip
through all of them. So here's where we left off. So the first thing
we're going to do is get the absence, right? So we're going to
have just drums. But then when we
come back, we're going to have this section
with a new instrumentation. Then after that,
we're going to go into this section with
a different drum loop. So this would be a
different density. Then after that, it looks like we're gonna
have two of that. No, then we go back
to the original. And then this one doesn't
quite line up right. Then we go into the new harmony. That's going to sound
weird. Okay, so now we have the
new harmony idea. And then we're going to go
into the first one we did, which is change of volume. Okay, so wouldn't it be cool
if all of these just worked, and then I just
finished the track? That would be
awesome. Who knows? Maybe this will
sound just amazing. And I'll release this track. I kind of doubt it,
but let's find out. Here we go.
26. Making New Sections in a Track: Okay, so what did we think? It was more interesting
than I was expecting, and it actually gave
me a really good idea. You know, some of it
worked and some of it didn't work just in
a row like this, but it made me think I should
be treating this track as a theme in variation
because in that way, that's basically what
we've set up here, right? It's a whole bunch
of variations on this core progression or
this baseline, really. And that idea, I think,
works really well. It needs to be fine
tuned quite a bit, but that's what I should do. Now I want to point
out one more thing. When you're doing
this, in most cases, what you probably
want to do is think about more than one of
these elements at a time. So it's not just that changing
the harmony might help, but also if you really want
to hit it out of the park, change the harmony and
do a density change or change the volume and do an instrumentation
change, right? So doing multiple of
these elements is really how you make it feel like a really strongly
rooted new section. So and that can help you
when you're writing a track. You get to the end of a section, you think, Okay,
what do I do next? Think about these five elements, volume, harmony, density, instrumentation, and absence,
and then think pick two. Pick two, and that's
what I got to do. Pick three. Make a
challenge for yourself. And that'll make it so you've got some ways to think about music that you're making
that might be able to get you out of the
box that you're stuck in if that's what's going on. Okay. Enough about that.
Let's talk about melodies.
27. The Science of Melody: Okay, so so far in this class, we've been talking
about form and structure as it applies
to the whole track. Now I want to zoom in a
little bit and talk about form and structure as
it applies to a melody. Now, I know a lot of the music that people write in electronic music doesn't
really have a melody, and that's totally okay. You can apply this info to
other aspects of music. But a lot of you, I know, are concerned about melody and have questions about melody. We did look at
harmonizing melody, kind of what makes
a good melody in earlier sections of this course. But what we're gonna do
now is look at melody from a kind of classical approach.
Now, don't freak out. That doesn't mean, you know, we're gonna play it on violin and look at the notes
and all that good stuff. I want to do is look at how some of the best
melodies are structured, because there is
kind of a science to it when it comes to, you know, phrasing and motives, and there's these things
called sentences and periods, and there's this
whole science to it. And I want us to kind
of delve into that. We won't get really deep into it because it is kind
of a rabbit hole of how deep you can go with this granular picking
a part of a melody. But I do want to
introduce the idea so that you can explore
it more if you like. And if nothing else, it will help you when you're working on
coming up with melodies. Okay? So let's start with
talking about phrasing by and let's kind of put a definition
on this term phrase.
28. Defining a Phrase: Okay, so this first thing we're dealing with is called a phrase. Now, a phrase is different
than a melody, okay? Phrase is usually considered
to be a part of a melody, but a melody might be made
up of several phrases. The definition of a phrase
is really just any kind of small bit of material
that has a cadence. Okay? So we know what
cadences are, right? That means there's some kind of nicely wrapped up
bow on the end of it. So we're looking
for in a melody, a spot where it kind
of goes down and lands on tonic or maybe
it lands on five, but the harmony goes to tonic, so it feels like a cadence,
something like that. Anything that's a small
bit of info that cadence. Now, that small bit
of info, you know, small bit of melody or
something like that, that's very relative
term, right? That could be a bar. It
could be a half a bar. It could be 2 bars, could be 4 bars,
could be 128 bars, depending on how your
track is structured. It's probably not 128 bars.
That would be pretty weird. But usually, we have several
phrases in a melody. We'll do some analysis of
a melody in just a second. Now, the idea behind a
phrase is that we're kind of going back to that same idea
that we talked about earlier in this class with
structure and form, and that is giving the listener
something to recognize. So with the phrase,
what we want to do is we're trying to make kind of small units of stuff that we can use
multiple times, okay? So we might have
the phrase happen. Then later in the melody, that same phrase happens again. Maybe it's slightly
different or something, but when it does happen again, we get to have that kind of cognitive moment of
This is familiar. Like, I recognize this because
that's what makes things generally pleasurable to listen to when it comes to melody
and structure and form. So we kind of build
in that piece of recognition within the
melody itself, right? Um so with phrasing, we're going to make
a little nugget, and then later in
the same melody, we're going to use
that nugget again. It's reusable reusable nuggets. I should just adopt that as
my new definition of phrase. Reusable nuggets with
the cadence, I guess. Now, sometimes when we
talk about phrases, we talk about them
in terms of goals, which is a weird
thing, and I don't particularly like it, but
it's worth mentioning. A lot of the time, when people
are analyzing a phrase, what they're doing is they're looking for the
goal of the phrase, and that usually means
something like a cadence, okay? So it means that a phrase is
going so imagine a melody. It's going, and then where
is it trying to get to? Because where it's trying to get tells us the
story of the melody, because it either gets there, nice and easy and it's
a happy little story. I got to where it
was trying to go. It achieved its
goal, or it didn't. It didn't get there, and
something went haywire, and that kind of becomes a
narrative within the melody. So there's kind of things
like that you can do. I don't really like thinking
of phrasing in terms of goals because it just
feels I don't know, it feels a little too, like, utilitarian or something for me. I think phrases can just be but if you want to think
of them that way, you can. Now, one more thing
about phrasing is that because we have this kind
of cadence idea built in, we do have to look at harmony. It's really difficult
to look at a melody without considering
the harmony, right? Because we really want to know where those cadences are
because those kind of become the pillars that
are holding up our melody. So with that, I have for us a famous classic and wonderful
melody for us to examine. I'm probably going
to get in trouble for using it, but I'm
going to do it anyway. So let's go on and do
an analysis of that.
29. Phrasing in Hey "John": Okay, I have plugged in here
a melody and a harmony. So you've probably heard
this melody before, in order to maybe try to
dodge the copyright police. I'm going to call this hey John. And I'm gonna say it's by a
group called the Crickets. Okay. Here's what
it sounds like. Okay. So why am I
using this melody? This isn't very
electronic music. It doesn't really
matter. It's a melody. It's a very nice melody. There's a reason this is
considered a timeless melody. It's structured very well. It's got familiar motives in it. It's got a simple yet
interesting harmony. It's got kind of
everything we need. So what we're going to do is we're going to
try to pick this apart and look for phrases
in this melody, okay? And I'll try to give you this file at the end
of this section, in case you want to
just play around with this little melody. It's always tricky to program
in a melody in the Migrid. This is one of those
cases where Um, I would just so much rather
use traditional notation, because it's really easier for this kind of thing if
you learn notation, if you have a firm
understanding of it, you know, you've got these weird little
16th notes that are hard to click in just right
and make it feel natural. Anyway, um, okay, let's
analyze this sucker.
30. Finding Phrases: Okay, so let's find our
phrases in this melody. Okay? So the first
thing I'm gonna do is actually look
at the heart Well, no, let's look at
the melody first. So the first question
is, is this a phrase? Let's hear it. One more time. This last note bugs me. That should be one
note, I think. Okay, is that a phrase? Is it a chunk of musical
material that has a cadence? Well, let's look
at the harmony to figure out if it has a cadence. So, let me zoom in a
little bit here. Lovely. So what is our last chord, FAC? I'm just going to tell you
we're in the key of F here. So FAC, our chord
before that CEGC. So that is a five chord in F, and that is a one chord. That's a nice strong cadence. So yes, it has a cadence. Yes, it is a chunk of stuff. Therefore, yes, it is a motive. However, I'm going to
show you that there are actually two and
maybe three motives within this melody, okay? The first one is this. That much. Let's
see. Let's do this. Bloop. Uh can I That's not
gonna work, is it? No. Trying to just think of
a way to change the color. Let's do this. Okay. Yeah, that didn't help much. Um, so there's our first melody. So, if we look at the
cadence that's happening right there, that
would be right here. So let's just hear
the let's look at the chords while we're
kind of analyzing this. Okay. So is this a cadence? What do we have here first? Here we have FAC, there's our tonic chord. And here we have F, G A. That's actually a sharp. There we go. FGA sharp. This is one of those things. That should be called a B flat. And if it was, we would have C, a missing E, G, B flat. That would be a 57 chord. So that is very strong cadence, 51 with the seventh. So that is our first phrase
is this chunk of stuff. Now, the second phrase
is could be two things. It could be the second
half. Let's just hear that. Right? We know that there's a cadence at the end.
We've already heard that. So this is the second phrase. There might be a
third phrase, though. You could argue that there
is a phrase right here. That by itself
could be a phrase. Why? It's its own
little nuget of stuff, and it has a cadence. Let's look at that. Okay. So it's these two cords. Okay? So let's look in at those. So here we have FAC, okay? So we have tonic.
Here we have F, let's call that B flat, D. That makes B flat
D F being our triad. That's a four cord, which
now we know about cadences, that is a plagal cadence. So you could argue that
this is a phrase by itself. This is a nugget of information
that we might be able to use later in the piece by itself, right? We
can play with this. And they kind of do.
But it's really short. It might be a little too small for me to
call it a phrase. If I was analyzing this and this was a proper music theory exam or
something like that, I probably would basically say the first half is a phrase and the second half is
another phrase. This if a student said, this is a phrase, I'd
probably mark it correct. But the next question would be, can this be a phrase on its own? Yeah, I think it can actually, because it's just
kind of walking up in arpeggio or a scale
and then back down. So that could work. So anyway,
it's a matter of opinion. This is where that,
like, size of a phrase gets into
gets debatable, right? As a phrase long or short. In this case, I think that's
a little too short to really be considered a
phrase for my taste, but you can call it a
phrase all you want. Okay, so that's what a phrase is Nuggetive stuff
with a cadence, okay? I'm gonna velocity back up here so we can see
it or we can hear it. Um, Okay, so, before I forget, I'll give you this
little session to play with, if you want. And then we're going to
go into another term, and that is motives.
31. Definition of a Motive: Okay, so phrases are cool. It will help you when
you're putting together melodies to think about the
melodies in terms of phrases. Try to create phrases in
your melodies because, again, that's just something
that we like to hear. You don't have to have them. It's not, you know, it's not a bad melody if you can't figure out what
the phrases are, but it certainly helps to think about phrases while
you're writing a melody. Now, there's another
thing we can use also that works a
little bit different. And this is called a motive. Motive is a much more
kind of a fluffy term. It's not as strictly
defined as phrases are. Motives tend to be shorter, and the rule
actually for motives is the same as phrases
with two differences. One is that it does
not need a cadence to call it a motive, okay? So if you have a
little chunk of stuff, if it doesn't have a cadence, but it still kind of lives
as its own little chunk, you can call it a motive. Another hallmark of a motive, and this is an important
one is that they repeat. Okay? So if we're going to
call something a motive, we have to hear it
at least twice. Now, it does not need
to be back to back. You know, we don't need
to hear the same thing twice. It can be we hear it. We hear some other stuff, maybe even some other
stuff after that, and then we hear
it again, right? There can be stuff in between. Um, and it does not need
to repeat the same. It just needs to be
similar enough to where we kind of recognize it as
something we've heard before. Okay? So you could have
a motive in, like, a major key, and then something some other
music happens after that. And then you get
the motive again, but now it's in a
minor key, right? So there's some notes
changed that still works. And in fact, that's actually a great way to kind
of tell a story. It shows, you know,
we're in a major key. For simplicity's sake, we'll
just say, we're happy. Our melody goes
through something, this middle thing, and then it comes out the other side,
and now it's in minor. Now it's sad. So
that starts to craft a little story about
what our motive is or what our melody is and
what it's going through. By the way, we
transform that motive. Okay? So I want us to look
at a couple of motives, and then we're going
to look at kind of things you can do to a motive to make that second time that it comes a little different
and to tell the story. And this will help you
when you're thinking about writing a melody, right? A lot of the times when
you're writing a melody, it's just like, I don't know, there's a note, and
there's another note. What comes next? What's
the best thing to do? So thinking in terms of phrases and motives and
these kinds of ideas can really help you solidify
your thinking, right? Give you a roadmap to
what you're thinking. Just think, Okay, I
have this motive. I'm going to do a
phrase after that, and then I'm going to
do that motive again, but it's going to be twice as long this time or
something like that. Okay, so let's dig in a little bit deeper into
looking at a motive. And then we'll talk about how
to kind of mutate a motive.
32. Finding Motives: Okay, I have another melody here by that same
group as before, we'll call them the Insexs. This is a song that might
be familiar to you. It's called we're gonna
give it a fake name. It's called Eleanor Frisbee. And, um here's what
it sounds like. But Okay. So do we have motives here? Well, actually, first, let's see if we have any phrases here. We don't have really
strong cadences anywhere. We're alternating
between two chords. Let's see, CEG, C
major and E minor. C major, here, E minor, here. We're just alternating
between C major and E minor. So if we think our
key is C major, Then we're going 1-3. That's not a great cadence. We could also think of
our key as an E minor, in which case, we're going 1-6. Which is also not a
very good cadence. So no real strong cadences here. So the idea of these being a
phrase doesn't really work, or this being a phrase
doesn't really work. But we have two
different motives here. Okay? So the first motive, I'm going to call this
the first motive. Okay, that. There's
no strong cadence, but we do get it
again, right here. We get it again
exactly the same. It doesn't have to
be exactly the same. But in this case, it is. It
can be exactly the same. Now, there's another
motive kind of in here. That little thing. Those are also both
exactly the same. So two different motives gets
us four things of music. So one way that this
is handy is that you might think of this as
a chunk of stuff, right? Main the first motive
and the second motive. But it's actually in most cases, more musically interesting to think of this as its own
thing that happens twice, and this as its own thing
that happens twice. Because what you get then is more things
to play with, right? If you have this, as a single, let's call it a phrase, even though it doesn't
have a cadence. Or let's call it a motive. Let's say, if this
is our motive, then when we repeat this, we can play around with it, but we have the two
things together. But if I have this as
my phrase or my motive, I've got a smaller amount
of stuff to play with, but I can make more out of it. Think of it like this.
You've got legos, right? If you have nothing
but big legos, you're limited to what you
can build with big legos. You need small pieces in order to really craft
something great. So, the smaller our legos,
the more work it is, but the more detailed we can get with what we
can build from it, right? So we're thinking
about these motives in the same way. We've
got little Legos. We can build a lot of stuff
with these little legos, we're going to walk
through how to do that in the next section. To motives in this melody
both happen twice, and that note is in the
second motive also. Keep leaving that one out. One other thing I'll point out, you might think melodies
are single notes and this one is two notes
at the same time. Just to point out, in
case you're wondering, melodies don't need
to be just one note. Melodies can be single notes. Melodies can be whole
chords, if you want. The term melody doesn't really
have a strict definition, but it can be multiple notes. Really, what we're
looking for is a melody is something you
can sing, right? You can't sing two
notes at once, which is why we tend not to
think of these two notes or as a harmony being
a melody, right? Because you can't sing
two notes at once. But this still gets
stuck in your head, and you can still sing this. You're most likely going
to sing the top note. That tends to be what
we do when whoops, or I do. Oh, yeah. When we have a chord that we try to sing is we
generally sing the top. But you find melodies that are harmonized
like this all the time. So it doesn't mean
it's not a melody if it's got more than one note. Okay. Let me give you this file, and then let's play around with seeing what we can
do with motives.
33. Motive Alterations: Alright, so in these next, I don't know, five
or six videos, we're gonna walk through
how to alter a melody. And for that, I want us to go to a really simple melody because we're going to do some
kind of weird stuff to it. So I am going to go with a melody that we
probably are all familiar with. I think we're all familiar
with this melody. I mean, I would wonder if this is something that happens
in all countries. But let me just plug this in. If you can name it
while I'm doing this, just try to hear
this in your head. Oops. I'm putting in quarter notes. There we go. Can you name it? It's probably something that you
know. Here it is. Does it go up right there? What if it goes up to a G there. Sometimes people sing it going up to a G there and
sometimes they don't. Let's leave it going up to a G because that'll make
it more interesting. And let's not add
any harmony here. Let's just work with
the melody as it is. Okay, remember that when you're doing these
alterations to a melody, your goal is to make
it sound different, but still be familiar. Some of these things
we're going to do to it, like playing it upside
down and stuff like that, can result in it being so
bizarre that it's totally unfamiliar that is
an interesting way to generate new material, but generally loses
the motive, right? People won't hear it as connected to the motive
that we had before, and that will make
it less successful. So, you want to trigger
that familiarity, but show a change. So show something different. That's the goal we're
trying to achieve here. So here's a whole bunch
of ways to do that.
34. Motive Mode Change: Okay, the first thing we
can do is change the mode. Okay? So we've looked at modes. You know what modes are by now. So this is in the key of C major, the way
I've written it. There's a C. Let me zoom
in a little bit here. Okay. So C. So it's in C major. Let's put it in the
minor key, right? So I'm going to take all my E's and move them
down to E flat. Nothing else would be affected. In the key of C minor. We still have D, and
we still have G, and we still have C, obviously. So now we have Mary
had a little lamb, but in minor, right, which is inherently
darker and creepier, especially when you
take a nursery rhyme like this, put it
in a minor key. You have summoned
demons basically. Let's hear. Right? It's just sad and creepy, to put a children's
song in a minor key. Um, what else can we do? If we take this back to major, I could put it in a
different mode altogether. Like, I could put it in Lydian. Although what would happen if
I put it in Dldian nothing. Lydian would be no different
because what's different in Lydian is it has
erased four, right? It's a major scale
with raised four. That would be F. And I
don't have any Fs in here. So this might be in Lydian. We don't know because
we don't have any Fs. Um What's one that I
could actually change it to Phrygian would be
a flat two and minor? Sure. That's just a little
disheartening. But it's a simple thing you can do to change a melody
around. Switch up the mode.
35. Motive Inversion: Okay, this next one
is probably the hardest one to figure out. It's something that
whenever I've had to do this on paper in notation, I have to really
think hard about it. So I'm going to
try to do it now. I'm likely to screw
it up, though. This is called inversion.
And inversion is a term that we've used in
music for a long time. We have inverted melodies. We have inverted chords. You know what inverted chords are. This is a little different. We invert a melody,
what we're going to do. So we're going to take a note, and we're basically going
to play it upside down. But there's a very specific
way we're going to do this. So our next note, I'm
going to do this. I'm going to duplicate this so that I can come
back to it. Okay. So our first note is here. We don't do anything
under the first note. We leave that where it is. The second note goes down
a whole step, right? So instead of going
down a whole step, we're going to go
up a whole step. We're just going to switch the direction but
keep the interval. So the next note went down a whole step from the original
before I moved it. So we're going to go
up another whole step. Okay? This one went
up a whole step, so it's going to go
down a whole step. You can already see how this is an inversion of the other one. It's opposite, right?
It's upside down. Okay, so from here to here, originally, before
I moved that note, it went up a whole step. So now it's going to
go down a whole step. So that note is still right. These three notes are
going down a whole step, so they're going to
go up a whole step. And this note to this note, for example, doesn't move, so the opposite of that
would be doesn't move. Here, we're going
down a whole step, so we're going to
go up a whole step. Here, this is a tricky one. So this note was here. So we're going up a minor
third to get to there. Let's put that
there, and we need to go down a minor
third from here. I should be there. Oh,
that's weird. But cool. Then That note was here, right? Nope, it was here. So here to here is
down a minor third. Oops, that's going to be there. So then down up a minor
third is going to be here. See, now my E is no longer my E. So things are
getting interesting. It might be because I
screwed up. Let's see. This went one, two. One, two, yep, that's right. And then this would be
down a minor third. So this is going to
be up a minor third. Yeah, I think we did it right. And that's gonna be a
whole step. Whole step. So somehow because of
this leap, we modulated. And, you know, the
way I treat this is that when you screw
it up, run with it. Who cares if you transposed it wrong if you like
the way it sounds? So maybe I screwed up
back there somewhere. Maybe I didn't, but
I'm gonna run with it. So this is going to be here. Here, here. Here. So somehow I
moved to G from E. But, okay, so now we have
the melody upside down. Right? So even though
it's upside down, it still definitely has a
familiarity to it, right? I still you can recognize that as based on
what we were doing. It's getting a little
tenuous, though, right? Like, if we did much more to it, it would be hard to recognize. But you can invert things and still keep
them recognizable.
36. Motive Transposition: The next one, which
is probably the easiest is just transposition. That would be taking
the whole thing and moving it up or down. Now, this isn't gonna
sound like much to us here, but imagine this. You have the melody like this and you hear
it once like this. Okay, then the next time
you hear it, you hear this. All right, so it's
a little higher. That's something that
people would notice. It's not as dramatic
as we might like, but it is something you
can consider doing. Now one thing you could
do is transpose I mean, we have basically two
motives here, right? We have the same
thing twice already. So you could transpose
one over the other. So I might do, like that. Move it to F. From C to F. That'll be a nice
transition. Not too weird. And then if I really
wanted to be weirder, I could let these last few
notes drop back down to C. That'd be kind of fun. Oh, that messes with
your head a little bit. But you can transpose, you know, the two halves of it
differently, if you want. There we go. So
transposition very easy one. It's really just dragging
notes around to other areas.
37. Motive Augmentation and Diminution: Okay, so the next one is
augmentation and diminution. Now, we've encountered
those words before. We know what augmented
chords are and we know what diminished chords are.
But this is different. What we're talking
about here when we talk about motives and melodies in terms of augmented and diminished, we're
talking about rhythm. I know that sounds
weird, but we're talking about
augmenting the rhythm or diminuting is that
right? The rhythm. So what that means is basically blowing it up or
shrinking it in. So if we augment the rhythm, what we're going to do is,
this is a quarter note. We're going to make
it a half note, okay? So we're just going
to kind of move everything up a step
in terms of rhythm. Eighth notes become
quarter notes, quarter notes become half notes, half notes become whole
notes, et cetera. So now, normally, if we were working
in traditional notation, you have to work all this out and it can be actually
kind of tricky. But here, I can just do
this. There. That was it. I just hit this button, and it doubled the length
of everything. Now, this isn't going
to sound like much. It's just gonna sound
like it's played slower. Right. But if you have other music happening at
the same time as that, that music keeps going
at the original pace, and then the melody
doubles in length. That can be actually a
really, really cool effect. It's something that I like
to do in my own music. And then you can use
diminution also, where basically, it's just
gonna go to double time. Oh So it's the opposite
of rhythm augmentation. So rhythm diminution would be every quarter note
becomes an eighth note, every eighth note
becomes a 16th note. Every whole note
becomes a half note, I chop the duration
of each note in half. So those can be good. You can also do them
inconsistently. For example, let's do this. Take just these three
notes and diminish them and then scooch this over. We'll do that to that
one, too, right? So now we've we've shrunk down the second half of
the motive in both places. Doesn't have to be
in both places, but I thought it'd sound nice. Alright, I almost
sounds like it's got a weird little rush
to it in that way. So, again, that can
kind of be part of the story that is coming
out of the melody.
38. Motive Extension and Truncation: Okay, so, two more. What I want to
talk about here is extension and truncation. So what we're gonna
do here is we're really just kind
of kind of freely extend the melody or
freely shorten it. So extension and truncation. Um, so let's do
truncation first. Truncation would be like
chopping something off. Okay? So let's just
do that. So let's say now our melody ends here, right? That's gonna
be kind of odd. And that's the end,
right? Eave people hanging. That tells something. That makes part of our story. You could chop off
a whole bunch more. You could chop off all
of this. Watch this. If you've established this as a motive that people
are used to hearing, all you really need
to do is this. That will say to the listener, Oh, yeah, I recognize
this, right? You just need that little bit, and it's just as good as playing the whole thing
because they recognize it, and they know that is that motive that
we've heard before. So this could be fun. And let me just remind you, you don't want to
do these things to the first time you're
doing the motive, right? We've played the motive. The listener has
heard the motive, and now we're working on the second time the
motive comes back, and we're changing it up. That's what all these
techniques are doing. If you applied anything to the first time we
heard the motive, then people wouldn't know that you did anything
to it because it's the first time
they're hearing it, right? Um, however, you can use these techniques to help
you write a motive. That's totally cool, too. So this is kind of
the second time. So we've already heard
Mary had a little lamb in this hypothetical piece that we're talking about.
And now I just do this. And that's all
people need, right? Can I make it even shorter?
Can I just do this? Probably. They would
probably recognize that. So, that's truncation. Extension could be
something like this. Let's make a little
extra room here, and let's do this
and this and this. So I'm basically gonna repeat this first bar. I'm
gonna extend it. Let's add something else here. Let's take advantage of that G so I'm just going to add in
some extra stuff, right? So my initial motive
is this and then this, and then this, and then it plays out from
normal as normal there. But I've added in this and this just to kind of
extend it a little bit. Right? So I'm just kind of playing with each
little lego block inside of it and teasing it out and
building up a little more. So you can just
kind of make space, add some extra notes in there, and that can extend it out. So extension and truncation.
Chop some stuff off.
39. Motive Fragmentation: Okay, last one. This one we
call motive fragmentation. So I'm going to do here is, I'm just going to
look for something in this motive that is distinctive like what we
were talking about before. In fact, let's use
that same thing. So I'm gonna get rid of everything except
for this little, you know, first three
notes of our scale thing. Right. So I'm gonna
treat that as its own little small lego block. And I'm just gonna play with it. Let's stay within
the same key here. Gonna move it around
a little bit. So all I'm doing is that
first little thing. Let's take this one
again. All right. Okay, so I just have this three times or I just have this that I've done
a whole bunch of times, and I've transposed them.
Let's hear what we've got. Right? So even though that's just a little fragment
of the motive, the audience should
recognize that as familiar if you've given
them the motive before. And it'll show you're
playing with it. Now, this gives me an idea. I wasn't really
planning on doing this, but while I was hearing
that, I was like, Oh, I have a good idea. So I'm going to do it.
Okay? So I'm going to apply a whole bunch of stuff to this one melody based on this thing that we
just came up with. In fact, maybe I should go to a new video just so
this isn't confusing. Yeah, let's go to a new video, and then I'm going
to show you how to combine multiple things.
40. Combining Transformational Techniques: Okay, so it is very common to combine multiple techniques. So you might, you know, transpose something and augment the rhythm and
invert it, you know? Just be careful that
you don't get so far away from the original motive
that it's unrecognizable. Now, this gave me a kind of a goofy idea that
I thought I'd try. So I've done fragmentation here. Now I'm going to do
diminution on the rhythm. Oop. So they go fast. I almost want it
to be double that. I'm gonna demute it again. Okay, now I'm gonna duplicate
that, scoot it over. Cool. Now, I'm gonna lay the original
melody on top of it. Let's just do this. Okay? So you see the original melody
is the longer notes. I should. Well, let's just hear it. Okay. So because those are all in the same
octave, it doesn't work great. Let's extend that out
a little bit more. And then let's take this
and move it up octave. Cool. So that was
rather nice, right? Like, I've got all these
fragments popping around, and then I've got the
actual original melody buried in there, right? I thought that was kind
of cool. I don't know what was up with this note
that kept popping out. What's up with that?
What's up this note? Huh, weird. Let's
hear what we're up. So basically, what I did
is used fragmentation to generate an accompaniment
to the melody, which is kind of a
different thing, but also kind of neat. Um, I like it. Okay, enough on this topic.
41. What Comes Next?: Alright, we have come
to the end of P five. So what comes next? There is going to be a Part six. I have it all
written out already. It's going to focus
really on modulation, and that is the idea of
changing keys is part of it. So a lot of people have asked about changing keys
within a song, within a track, and how
to do that smoothly. There are good ways to do
it if you want to do it. But Modulation is actually
even more than that. Modulation is, well, if you
work in a doll regularly, you know what modulation is. Modulation is, you know, moving from one point
to another point. We have you know, we modulate osciators, we modulate filters,
we modulate LFOs. We do all that kind of
stuff. But in harmony, you can modulate also. So we can modulate
dynamics, right? We can go from quiet to loud. We can modulate from keys, like I was just talking about to go from one key to another key. We can modulate tempo. We can modulate a whole any musical element,
we can modulate, there's good ways to do it and
not so good ways to do it. So we're going to focus
on that in P six. So I look forward to seeing you in that class
available soon.
42. Thanks for Watching!: Alright, you've reached
the end of Part five. I hope this was helpful to you. I hope you're going
to be thinking about all of these ideas as you're working
on your own tracks. Hopefully, you've
got some tracks where you're, you know, stuck. You've got some writer's block, and all of the things we
talked about in this class, should be able to help get you out of that and get you
to finish those tracks. Thanks for taking this class. Thanks for being a part
of the student community, and I will see you in
the next one Arios.
43. Bonus Lecture: Hey, everyone. I want to learn
more about what I'm up to. You can sign up for
my email list here. And if you do that,
I'll let you know about when new
courses are released and when I make additions or changes to courses you're
already enrolled in. Also, check out on this site. I post a lot of stuff there, and I check into it every day. So please come hang
out with me in one of those two places or both,
and we'll see you there.