Music Theory for Electronic Musicians: Complete Guide

1. Introduction: have you struggled with getting your musical ideas from your head to your digital audio workstation? They didn't know there are some tricks for total beginners that doesn't know anything about music theory to make your own core progressions, melodies, baselines In less than two hours, if you join my course, I will show you exactly how to go from nothing to knowing a lot. And that is basically everything you need to know. ASA Electronic Dance Music producer Even if you are experience with music theory and have gone through piano lessons, you will be able to gain a lot of quick tips that will help you to create awesome core progressions. I have been producing a lot of different electronic dance music for people all around the world. I have even produced music for one of the top DJs and producers out there with this knowledge that I'm going to show you. We're not going to go over how to play piano, and this is also not a piano course. Everything in this course will be showed in a piano roll. I will show you a method and different tricks that will help you create chords, melodies, baselines, rhythms and other musical elements in just two hours. And the only things you really need is a computer and a digital older workstation like logic, pro able tone or effort studio. So join this course and we will see each other in the next lecture. 2. Piano Roll: hi, guys. And welcome to this course on learning music theory for the electronic dance musician. First of all, I'm going to explain how this course is going to be. I'm going to show everything from the piano roll and not from like, a piano or a synth or media keyboard. And this is just because I've been working a lot with piano role, and I think a lot off the electronic music producers out there has bean working the same way. Of course, it's It can be a lot easier sometimes to get like a rhythm off for melody or corporation of base or something else when you're like pressing to meet a keyboard and get like a feeling of it. But a lot of times, like when you're producing, like making cords or creating some melodies or stuff like that, it's a lot easier to just paying it out in a piano roll. At least in my opinion, of course, can be easier for someone else to just paint out on a meaty keyboard to. But in this course I'm going to show everything in the piano roll, so we're going to make corporations were going to make melodies. We are also going to make base like I'm going to show you how to extract the base from the core progression and not just like copying stuff over from the corporation, but also showing some some tricks how to make the base to stand out a bit more in the corporation. Also, how to make corporations from a plug in when you're not like you don't really have to know anything about corporations or anything about music theory. Overall, you just have to basically put on a plug in and play around with different chords. So you really don't have to have any knowledge off music theory at all. So this course is perfect for a totally new being. Um, and when you don't know anything about what's going on in music theory, So yeah, I'm going to show you everything in this course basically how to how to make corporations out off scales. For instance, I'm going to show also show you how I do my corporations every time. I just basically lay out this text in Ah, um in a project file from logic here. But this course you can basically do everything I say in every digital audio workstation like logic or fruit loops or able tone or or que base or everything else. So, um, you just have to have a piano roll basically, and piano sound. That is everything you need. So I'm going to show you everything in the course on this topic, and I also want you to follow along. So that's here in the next lecture. 3. Requirements: their requirements off. This course is to have a computer with a D A W or digital audio workstation installed that it's a program like Logic pro or Effort studio that has a piano role in it. We're going to make everything in this course in a PR nor role itself. So it doesn't matter which digital audio workstation you have. You don't need any previous musical knowledge at all. But this information can also be useful for a musician that has tons off musical knowledge to. 4. The Things You Need to Know: Okay, So the things you need to know a piano has 12 notes on every octave. So 123456789 10 11 and 12 Each note is called a semi tone. So from this to this, it's a semi tone. And also this to this is called a semi tone. So the step from this to this it's called one semi tone. So every key you have on a piano or in this case in the piano roll is called a semi. When you go over all of the 12 notes and you're on the 13th notes, that is called a doctor. So that is an octo. Let's start from the notes. See, in this example, I will show you what we do when we go from C one. Each note here is, Asai said before a semi tone. Even those that are black case. There's also a note, which is a whole note. So from C to D, it's a whole note, and that is a two semi tones. So, uh huh. From here to there, that is a note. Even though we pass the semi tone that is the black in this instance, so from C one two d one that is a note. If we go from one semi tone from C and out, that would be a C sharp. You can see that with the little square signed there that is called sharp. So from C and one up eyes a c sharp, uh D one up d sharp and so on. There's also one more thing, which is called flat notes, and that is basically the same thing. But when you go down from a note, so let's say C we go down one note that s c flat or also be so That's the same thing. See, Flat and B is the same tone when you go through old off the notes C c sharp, the the sharp e sharp. As you can see, there are no black key here, so there's basically no e sharp from E. The piano goes directly to F, Then we have f sharp. Then we have G g sharp. Ah, then we're going back to a So the keyboard is from A to G A and a sharp be There is no be sharp to So we just have the be here so every note has a sharp note. Besides e and B. When I say there isn't a B sharp or any sharp, technically, there isn't because there is no Blackie between B and C or E and F in this case. But in some music theory books, when you have to describe different scales, different core progressions, they are referring to be sharp, and that is basically a C or any sharp, and that is basically enough. But that is not anything that we will learn here. We'll just go over sharp notes. So C and C Sharp, for instance, we will not cover flatness because that is just a bit confusing. For for like when you're producing electronic music, you just want to have, like a basic, simple method to make your core progressions on. But it is important to know that piano or music theory in this case the piano is built up in this way. In this course, we will be covering something called Scales. A scale is basically a table off different notes that you are allowed to use in a corporation, So let's say that we want to produce in C major. We have to look in the C major scale. So as you can see, I have all of the major and minor scales because there are two different types off scales. There are even more types of scales that are major and different scales, type of scales in the major scale and the same thing in minor. You have natural minor. You have harmonic minor. But in this case, we're just going to use the mostly common used major scale type and minor scale type. So when we, for instance, want to make or produce a track in C major just have to go and look up in the C major row here they would have the keys that are allowed to be used in the C major scale. So we want to make a C majors trek or produce, um, core progression in the sea mind major scale. So we are allowed to use everything that is here, So C D E F g A. B. If we, for instance, are using C and then we have a C sharp in there, that is not going to sound good. So if you love, allow ourselves to make a track and make a core progression that it's going to be like this . That's a C. That's a D. That s a E. That is something we could use in a corporation that didn't sound really good at all, because we have to learn how many steps you can take in this major scale. If you're just making, like, see the E f g A. It was sound too much. The corporation would be too full, and you have to take some different steps to make the harmonic relations between this notes sound good, but we will cover that in the next lectures. The difference. The main difference off the major scale and the minor scale is that a my major scale is the happy one. Like you will get only happy chord progressions or happy sounding chord progressions with the major scale. And the minor scale is is more of the sad toes or sad core provisions and or corporations with a lot of tension in it, or darker core provisions if you if you will call it so. So in dance is dance music. We often use minor scales, but there are some like pop e g m kind off music. Um or pop music in general, there mainly have the major scale, and that is just because they're very catchy to the ear. So it is a good thing to know that most off there child music are made in major scale because it's so catchy. All right, so this is the the only things that you really need to know about piano and the music theory when making music in the in the method that I'm going to show you. So off course, you can read on up to how, like more off the music theory things because this is just a short video explaining the basic stuff that you really need to know. But if you want to make music and make awesome chords, melodies, baselines, you just really have to know all of these things that I explain to you in this video. And after that you're just going to follow a general rule and experiment with that. That is, I know a lot off music producers that use this method. I know it is like a very good thing to have their you don't really need to have any piano or anything with you can just use your laptop and a mouse or even the track pad on the laptop to make awesome courts. So let's see you in the next lecture that I'm going to explain more off this method. 5. Preperations: Okay, so this is just a quick video on the preparation off this method. So I want you to I copied this text that I have here because this is the major minor skates that were going to use in the method and in logic. For instance, you can just import texts into the project file, and I have this saved like a default template for logic. So when I open up logic, every time I want to start a new project, I can just go to the text area and I have this things saved all the time. I don't know how your digital audio workstation handles this kind of tech stuff, but you can just go ahead and and write it down to, ah note pad or even on a piece of paper. So you know how to like when we when you're just going to create some chord progressions eso you can refer to all of these scales. And also, of course, you can just learn them. You can just have them in your head. There are lover of people that just know all of these scales. So that is an option, too, of course. But him I don't know them by, like in my head. All of them, at least. So I just have them like a text here. And I'm going to so to have them in a text file in this course to. So you can just download the text file and have it on a computer. All right, See you in the next picture. 6. Chord Progressions Major: All right, so let's create some major chord progressions in this lecture. First of all, I'm going to open up a piano preset here, and I just use piano in this course because piano sounds is the most you can really hear all of the tones really, really good. And you can also use it for base for you, Quincy's and also, like, really high frequencies to when creating melodies so you can have all of the spectrum from melodies, corporations on baseline in just one instrument and that covers all of the that's in in one instrument. And that is piano. So that is why I just used piano for that. But I'm going to show you in, then some later lectures, how you can export baselines and other stuff from this piano core progression that we're going to do here. Okay, so I'm going to show you how to make a C major core permission. Okay, so C Major has the notes, See the e f g A B. So there are no sharp notes here. We just gonna use the notes that you have here, So I'm going to start with the root notes and the root note is basically the note that you have in the bottom here. I'm going to go down a few octaves so we can hear the core progressions a little bit better like that. Okay, so we want to build up a core progression here on a core progression is based on three notes that are layered like, layered up or stacked up. A corporation can also be more chords, like five layers or even seven, or or even more. But it does music almost every time There's a three note corporation. So the and and the general rule here, that is that we're going to use as you can see, your c They were gonna jump one step in the scale is so e, and then we're gonna jump one more step to G, and that is called one to third. So first notes third and fifth. So and it's just called that because this is the first note 2nd 3rd 4th and fifth. But you don't want to use first and second like C or D. That was sound. That was sound too much. That s C and D Andi, As you can hear. Sure, it sounds okay, but It's a bit too much, at least when they are on the same active. We're going to show you some tricks that when you like, when we're switching up operatives in a corporation to yeah, but let's make a corporation with 1st 3rd and fifth so first to see and we'll already have that. Second or third notes in this scale is an E. Next one is fifth, the fifth notes off in this scale, and that is G uh, Let's hear it. That sounds really good. Let's create our other corporation so you can be a bit creative here. You can just go ahead and take every notes here. Thank okay, and make it a root note. So I'm going to create an E here, and I'm going to take the fifth so still G and a seven. And then it's a B. Let's try it out. And that also sounded really good. Let's create a whole core progression. I'm going to go up again. So we went up from C as a route no to e as the root note to be, and now we're going to go up. Just one note, so two f. So let's make if the root note then we're gonna go to notes from F So a and then two notes from A to C like that. As you can see, As long as we were hitting the right notes here that it belongs to the C scale, everything would sound really good. So we are going to go. We went to F, but I'm gonna go down one my notes here. So I had it e here f Okay, we already had e. So let's make a d then two notes up if to announce up again, that would be a Let's hear Our whole core progression sounds really good without any knowledge or playing on the piano. Any knowledge off the like, real music theory behind this, but just following the scale and just choosing the rights notes off the scale that will make you some really cool cords here. So that is the basic basic method here to making major chords. And from this we will go on and make bass notes and melodies with the same method. But it's quite a difference approach to making, for instance, melodies here There are so some other tricks that makes your corporations to have more tension in it or more feeling to the cord. I'm also going to show that in the next lecture, so let's go to the minor courts. 7. Chord Progressions Minor: All right, so let's try out the minor scale here. So we're going to create Corporation in minor scale. I strongly recommend you to watch the previous video on the major scale because I was really going over more in depth on how to make this kind of chords with just looking at this scales here. I'm just going over and like them, make the minor scales here and I'm going, going toe, choose a bit more difficult scale. I'm going to have f sharp minor. So that's get rid of this my major scale here. And let's create F sharp minor. So let's start out with an F sharp. There's an f sharp and I'm going going to go up two steps again. So to a ah and two steps again to a C sharp, you can see f sharp. I'm jumping over one and going to the third, which is an A jumping over one more, and that is fifth, so C sharp. A. So you can hear that was like that has a lot more attention in it. It was more darker cord. Okay, next one, I'm going to say, and uh, let's see, we are here so be as the root note. And I'm not going up three notes, as I did in the major scale. But I'm going up four notes and this is You can just experiment with this. You can go up four notes again. Go up. One note down to notes. Eso you can even go from f sharp to say d here. Just go downwards. I'm going to go downwards after the scored. So I'm going to show you that. Let's go. To be as I said and jump over one and go to the D next one would be f sharp. All right. And now I'm gonna go down so f sharp and I'm going Teoh hit Hit on e instead. But I'm not going upwards here, Tony to e three. But I'm going to go. I don't And go and make any to instead. So e jump over one have sharpest the same one here. So the next one will be g sharp. And next one after that would be a B and next one. After that, we will do, um g sharp. Yeah, Let's try and g Sharp be and a d All right, So the last score didn't sound really good. G Sharp was there. That isn't be. There's a B. There's a the B c D. Yeah, it should sound good, but it didn't for some reason. So I'm going to to make another corporation. Sometimes it depends on the harmonies between the core provisions. So you just have to try it outs and listen really carefully with your years. So this was the E in the F minor corporation. So we have them there and I'm going to go to an AIDS that so e and A to see my toes up or two notes up. So from a to C sharp from C sharp to E, that sounds a lot better. What is good to know also we corporations is that you really want to end the corporation with something that feels like the core progression doesn't like in this section, you hear that the corporation will like it wants to pro progress. You know, it really wants to get over to this first section again, and not just like ending with a sad kind of tone is ending with something that that it's not the last chord progression you really want to want to have the listener to be like, OK, I really want to hear the corporation again, if you know what I mean. Because if you really listen really carefully, you can hear that this corporation is the begin, like the 1st 1 And this one is the last one. So it it wants to progress to, like, repeat the corporation. And that is basically done just by making the first chord progression in the root note off the cord off the scale. So, as you can see, we were writing an F sharp minor. And this core progression is starting with F sharp minor. And that is why it kind of feels like the corporation is starting here in the beginning because we're using F sharp here. That note alone, that corporation alone feels like it. It wants to continue. I can really hear a feel that this corporation in the beginning is the beginning one. So, okay, As I said before, we're going to get a go over how to export or create melodies from from this corporations and maize baselines too. So let's give it to the next lecture 8. Bass Notes: So it's time for making the bass notes from the corporation. So we have done a core progression here. In the last video, there was F sharp minor, and when you have these kind of three notes layered core provisions, it's very easy to export a baseline. Also, with that, you can just go ahead and experiments to create a bit like different baseline than the core progressions are. I'm going to explain more, but I just want to wanna say also that when we're creating this core progressions, you can go ahead and use the same theory in another like scale. Here is the same thing. If you're using F sharp Minor and go from one to the third and the fifth or even the seventh, and the next one is starting here, for instance, and 123 123 is the same thing. If you're going to create a B minor scale or a major scale or any other scale, here is the same theory. So it's very easy to come up with different chord progressions just by knowing this method here that I showed you before in the previous two videos. So for now, on I'm going to show you how to make the base and base notes is really easy when you have a corporation. As I said before, you can just go ahead and take all the root notes and just make a base out of the route notes. And that is a lot of songs. Has that as, ah, as the base notes in their songs. So you can just go ahead and do that. It's very easy. I'm going to show you. Just copy one octave down. Yeah, and they have your baseline. So if you meet mute piano, you will hear the baseline more. We can get more creative to make a baseline that was stand out from the corporation and make the corporation even more interesting. You can do with this way. You can either take one of the root notes and play around with them and just find a really good good notes. But you really have to. You're just allowed to use these notes when you're going going through and trying them out . I will go ahead and switch positions off this note and this note here. All right, so the first corporation sounded really good. Just by using the same rating route notes as I had here. But the other corporation didn't sound as good as I thought. So I'm gonna go and take f sharp and take maybe in a yeah, And why do I choose a and not like de because he is here and I want to go down with the corporation you don't have to do that is on a rule. But I prefer to go downwards with the baseline and maybe up somewhere. But you really don't want to have the base and go from example be here to, uh, on a here because that is a very large step. You want a baseline to go to be, like, really close to each other. So if you go from B, I will I would go If I want to go down to an A or a G sharp. Let's try and a Yeah, it sounded okay. Um let's maybe try g sharp. That didn't sound good at all. Hey, we have the e. So maybe I would try us. Let's try g sharp here. G Sharp doesn't really want to cooperate with us here today. So that's trout. Maybe. Yeah, go back to next shop things the same note us here and I tend to avoid to have the same bass notes. Ah, you are Yeah, bass Note. In whole core progression like this, I just really want to have them like to have a variation off each section of the corporation. So I'm going to go from ah f sharp to that's se e. And as you can hear in, as you can see, Ah, you just have to really experiment with this one. But it is really fun to experiment with courts when you know what you can use and that you know for sure that it will sound good. It's a lot more difficult to just draw out some different lines here and hope to like having them sound good. So with this method is really easy just to see what you are allowed to use and on. Do you really know that most of the cases it will sound good for some reasons? As you can see, there are some notes that doesn't really go well together. Even if they are in the scale and most off them, they are going to sound really good 9. Melodies: all right. So I'm going to show you how to make melody based on a core progression that you have done before. So we have done the F sharp, minor chord here, and also we have the bass notes, lay it out as I showed you in the previous video. But we really want to have some kind of melody here. I haven't goes through the rhythm section yet. That is going to be the next video after this one. But we're still going to apply some rhythm here to the melody because but without its would just sound like a corporation. That is just more have more notes stacked up on it. So there's going to be some rhythm here, all right, f sharp, minor. That's take one notes and let's try a next one, maybe a D. And from here on, you can almost hear what the next notes should be. And if you don't, you can. Just as I said, just choose one of these and it will sound good. The relations between these notes, maybe like made us not sound as good as they should or as they could sound. But that is up to you to choose what note you want to have to be the next one. I'm going to try out different stuff here. That's a D. I want to go down. So maybe be way you can use the same notes be he's there, Maybe C sharp. - All of these notes are in the f sharp minor scale. So it's really easy to just play around and no, like by by the ear if you want to go down or up. And if you are not sure which notes you should take you just looking at the scale and you will eventually No, what? No to you should use. So ah, and also, when you're going like when you have things kind of melody laid out Now we can just go ahead and use the same kind of thinking for like like he did here. Like maybe this note this one up and then using the same note as you did in the beginning here, and it can use it in this section two and maybe some variation here so you can just go. And I had a copy. Some stuff. The corporation in this section I don't really like it. So I'm going to switch it out. Just you can see I'm using the same route notes here or the bass notes the route knows are actually in a corporation here on this survey business. But I'm just using the B on B here, too. I'm avoiding, too. Like making the same base notes into different places in the whole court progression. But sometimes it sounds good, So I just leave it like that like that. 10. Transposing Trick: all right. So I'm not really happy about this melody or corporation. It sounds OK, but it it really doesn't sound like, really, really good in these cases When I have a corporation, I've been working on a melody and I'll be working a base line. I'm really I really like to experiment of it. So where you can do here is to transpose all of the notes that you have done. So, for instance, you can go from here and just transpose it like three semi toes up the son of a lot better just by going up so you can go up, go down, you can do. You can transpose that exactly how you want so you can transpose it. As I said, two semi domes, three semi terms. You can transpose it as you want, as long as you transpose all of the notes. So you just can't transpose just the melody or just the baseline. You have to transpose all of the stuff that you have done. And of course, if you're changing up like if you transpose all of this stuff three semi tones up or something like that, then you have another scale. So If you want to continue on and making melodies like changing up stuff on different stuff like that, then you are not wanting to follow the f sharp minor. Because if you are transposing all of the notes, you're going up in the minor scale. For instance, if you going three semi toes up and transposing all of the notes, then you are switching up to a D sharp minor. So that is that is basically what you want to be aware off. When you're doing this kind of tricks, you can also go ahead and just transpose your accord. And then there is a method of where you can like, like identify the root notes off the whole corporation, meaning that you will know what scale you are in. So if you're transposing like crazy and just wanting the whole work that you have done to sound good and you like experimenting up and down there, you can try to just hitting one note on the keyboard all the time when the corporation is playing and the melodies and everything, and just hit one note at a time when, when this is playing and you will hear eventually what note was sound good every time you hit it. Like, for instance, in this case way. Okay, so I just figured out C sharp would sound really the best here. So we can just look at the c sharp, minor scale and see if the if all of the notes here are present in the expenses f sharp here. Yes, it iss in the scale The sharp es that is in scale. Be that it's also in the scale and be again. So here, for instance, C sharp. Yes, it is. Ah f sharp. Yeah, a sharp No, there's not in the scale. So let's hear if it sounds good. Yeah, that does sound good, but if we will change it to a doesn't sound good. So that is not the scale. So let's try and identify it again. G sharp to have the b. Yes, The sharp Yes. F sharp. Yes. C sharp. Yeah, a sharp There it is f sharp. Yeah, and c sharp. So I think it's a gym. Sharp. Minor scale. I think I went through and got down to semi tones. I have to check the video What I did with it. But when you see that all of the notes are matching. Then you know that that's the right scale, that you're working it, even if you transpose it and next start to experiment with it. So that was an overlook off, how to create a melodies and also how to experiment, too. Start to if you're getting bored with the sound and just want to transpose it upward down and get a totally different type of sounding court and corporation and melodies and baseline. So let's get over to the next section. 11. Rhythms: Okay, so in this lecture, I'm going to go over some different rhythms. Of course, there are different rhythms. There are a lot of different rhythms, actually, their different approaches to getting to the different type of rhythms. But we're going to make 16th notes rhythms because they are mainly used in electronic dance music. And I have always been producing music and finding the rhythms in different corporations, melodies, base and even beats and drums by just listening to my track and getting a kind of feeling to it. And for that, I do use a meaty keyboard to just playing in some different rhythms because, you know, we have the feeling in you and you just want to play something. It's a lot easier to just yet. Just tap it in. Like, for instance, instead off going to the piano Roland riding in some different different rhythms so you don't have to have a mini controller. Of course, most of the day w support playing around with a keyboard, but But with your own laptop keyboard, you just you don't really need to have a Medicare separate meeting, people. You can just play around on your actual computer keyboard. So So that is what I use for the rhythm. And I also, almost every time I go ahead and import some kind off loop like a beat loop. And logic here has a lot of different apple loops, as they call it, and they are basically just drum loops there that you can import that they're just pre made and they sound really good. So what are you often used is just too important to my project and just play around with the piano bass or whatever I'm doing that I want to have a rhythm on. So let's try a beat here. All right, so there we have the beat and I'm going to create kind of Bain's based sound here. All right, that's choose a yes m Maybe something like that. Just lower it. Okay, so let's listen to the beats and just play around here. So what I really want to explain here is that it is really important to create your own rhythms with like your own like hands and fingers by tapping on the media keyboard off course, you can do some different rhythms within the media keyboard, and I really showed you how I would make a melody just by by drawing out a rhythm in the piano roll, Um, when I did the melodies in the previous video. So the approach is a bit different, because when I'm create some base, I really want that human feeling off off the in the track. So that is where, like tapping in the media keyboard like that, but I can do it with melodies to and off course. I could draw some rhythms in the piano role, but I think for like a beginner, it's a lot easier to just step it out on the meaning keyboard. And then Kwan ties it so it will get like in time. I think every digital audio workstation supports that in one way or another, so we will eventually sound really good. So, as I said, it's a lot easier if you just import one like pre made beat just a loop. Maybe you you don't want to use the loop in the track, but just like a regular loop, just so you can get that feeling in and start tapping on the meeting keyboard and find the right rhythm. So that is my tip on rhythms Andi. Now we will go over some different core progression tricks 12. Chord Progression Tricks 1: It's so a quick tip on corporation trick. Okay, so you can switch out minor chords to major chord or major court to minor court really quickly. Let's say you have ah, minor chord like like here I have a C minor chord. It's very easy to make it major. You just have to take the third off the cord. So ah, C minor is the first. This is 1/3. And by the way, if if you have a a note that it's saying be like a little B, there's a flat note So the e but one semi toned down so an E once in my tone down will be at the sharp. So e flat is the same thing as D Sharp and that is the third here and the fifth in this C minor chord. Iss g. We take the third, and if you want to make it major, you have to drag the third up. One semi tone. This would make the court a major. So, see, Major, if I take the third down, you can hear the difference between the happy kind of sound and the more sad sound with them. Minor chord. So there's a really quick tip on how to convert your minor chord to a major and vice versa . 13. Chord Progression Tricks 2: right. So one more corporation trick here. This time it would take regular corporation. As I said, 1st 1/3 and a faith. And I also gonna show you how you can make it some bit different by taking out the fifth and making 1/7 or taking the third and make it that won 1/7. I'm going to show you Maurin the piano here. So I'm gonna take a C major chord, see? And then we have in. Then we have a G. So the 1st 3rd and fifth, let's take the third. I make it 1/7. So the seventh in the C major chord is 1234567 It's a B. So let's take the third here and make it a BTO. You see how much tension that Corgan gets off course? You can just make the third and layer up like make 1/7. So it's it's gonna be four layers in this cords in this court here, but that could make the chord sound really full and maybe too much full. So you can either do it that way or but the third here and make the 5th 7 on I think you can really hear the, like, dramatic, kind off major court you get here. I know a lot of difference. Like melodic house music producers used this trick. And I I think you almost already here. How much more good it sounds when you're making switching out some of the cords here from like a said third or fifth toe 1/7 and the seventh always makes your cord sounding more like it has a lot of more tension in it. So you can also go like that a second here. It doesn't sound really good because it's a bass note waken do it like this So you take the seventh on the fifth and make it like a bit off a melody here and that was sound really good. So you always have to think when, when making a core progression, you always have to think first, then go up to so two steps in the scale. Take 1/3 to so 5th 7th and then also 1/9. So that would be a d here, so and then you can go on upwards and operas, but ninth is maybe like the maximum you can go up and then we would start to sound the big board, like, too complicated. You can try it out. Of course you can experiment and also you can just go ahead and transpose all off these notes as you want to. Sometimes it sounds a bit better. Of course, you can take the fifth and may be transposed down one octave. So, like that, maybe a 30 year thing is too much as you can hear. And of course, this is not even in the scale. A justic three set semi tones. But you should take three steps in the scale, so it's a bit different. I just did it to show you exactly what I mean and not just go up three steps here in a Panaro, but go up three steps in the scale so he would be an E. So that does sound good, but it's still like to dramatic because we have started to transposing and stuff go up and down on October in the same court progression. And yeah, there's a lot of going going on here right now in the corporation, so that could be too much. But as I said, you have to really check the scale and go up three steps, five steps, seven steps. So go up from 1 to 2. Step may work, but you shouldn't do like that. You should go up two steps all the time when making a corporation. 14. Chord Progression Tricks 3: So one more core progression trickier if you have tried out like different chord progressions and made it through the scales and still aren't like, really satisfied with your work. Or maybe you're just tired off the regular chord progressions that you are allowed to use, even though there are lots there. But sometimes I I feel like I want some results really quickly, and I don't want to like trying out different scales and writing in the piano. But I just want some something to happen, like immediately when I press a key. I want a really good sound in court, you know, and I have a really good to peer. It's a plug in from Expert Records is not a free plug in. It's not really price it too, So I really recommend to purchase it. It's called Chulu. You can use it with every door, every logic, pro able, tell Nuffer studio men in Logic Pro. It's really easy to set up. I just use it as a media affects. I'm not sure how you set up in in the other programs, but in logic it's really easy. You have a lot of difference presets here, so I just gonna use something here just to try it out. And we're just tapping on one note on the keyboard on the bt keyboard and you will get some different, really good sounding courts like this. - Yeah , and I'm doing all these chords with just pressing on one key on my media keyboard. So it's really easy to to find some different cool corporations here. I'm gonna show you how to export these cords from this plug in to so in logic, pro, You do it like this. That's and you will have, as you can see here, this cords here. But it's still just one line things because the plug in is generating the court forest. So in order to get the real cords and the really made it data from this plug in is to use another media fix here. So I use a playing called media fix. Freeze on. It's a free plug in. You can just go and go will be the FX freeze, and you will get the link to that plug in. If you just press record here and just play this media clip from that is generated from cattle. Oh, you will be able to export riel metadata. So let's right like that. As you can see, you have a meaty kind of icon here. We just drag it out from the plug in to the arrangement here and we will not imported Temple. And there this There's our courts that Tulu generated for us by just playing around the one key Amar meeting keyboard. So, like that's and we have to obviously disabled the controller because otherwise that would generate a lot of different were records for us, so like that and we have a cool media cord. 15. Chord Progression Tricks 4: right. So here is one more court progression trick that I want to show you, and it's basically that you have to remember to notes all the time. So let's say that we start on C. Then we're going up. Eso we're going to go up, Let's see on 234 semi tones. So to whole notes desseaux note on this only so e or just third inner c major scale. That is the easiest thing to, um to see that you're doing it it right. So, um, let's use the first and the third in the court, then you just wanna have to, like, remember this so you could just play around like this. - And if you if you have like like I did here just good someone semi tone that could sound a bit like not nice at all, like really bad. And this is because the harmonies off these the relationship between these two corporations are not really good. Ah, semi tone is not a really good step to make when making creating corporations. If we take it one step down, it's not sounding really good either on. Then we have to switch out one of these notes. Uh, I think that's so. The only thing you need to really have, like a mind, is to play around with two different, like the same notes. But it's some cases, as you will see here. It doesn't work, but it's a really good way to start to have, Like some inspiration for creating a corporation, I will show you on the media keyboard how how easy it is to just ah, play along with two little like just remembering to court so or two notes like this. 16. Bass Notes Trick 1: so time for a bass notes trick. Here is a corporation that I have way. So if we just take the route notes here and transposed them one octave down, copy them over and transposed on one act of them. That gives us the same base notes as we had. So that really does sound good as it is, but you can have another trick that makes your corporation sound better. Not always, but it It could work if you're just experimenting with it a bit. And that is to make the bass note to go upwards instead of downwards as it as it is right now. Because, as you can see, the bass notes start pretty high. Go a bit low, lower and lower and lower, so you really want the opposite direction off the bass notes, and you still want the corporation to be the same so the corporation will go down and the basement will go up. So we'll try something like this. And as you concede, it's a C C major chord. So you're allowed to use everything in the C major scale here, so let's try it out. - They can go ahead and double it Yeah, that is in the C major, but it still doesn't some really good. So maybe just try it up a bit and then go down a bit, but not too high. So let's try to de here. Uh, yeah, that was a lot better. So the first corporation that we have that we had with the bass notes going exactly like the root notes off the corporation that sounded OK, but we we took the bass notes and made him made them go the opposite direction. Like this case, we have the corporations root note going down all the time. But in the base notes, we let the basements go in the opposite direction. So it got upwards. That made our corporations sound really like, really, really interesting with the basement, of course. And you can go ahead and make that upward direction kind of bass note to be the third layer off the corporation to and then make the bass notes in the's notes to be the base notes. Instead, one of it is just because it's a too big step from these notes to this, and it will eventually be too much here. Um, yeah. So you can try to do that to to make the second layer off the corporation, to be the base notes in this case in It really didn't work. But, um, to take the root note and make the like, copied and take take the same notes and make them base notes, but making them go to the opposite direction. As I said before, that was really good on and it eventually works almost every time, so it's a really, really nice trick to have, so I recommend that doing that in your next corporation. 17. Remixing Tracks Finding The Right Key: all right, high. I some will come back to the course, so this lecture will be about how to determine a key in vocal when you're doing a remix of a track or a bootleg s. So let's say you have a track or your maybe producing and track, or you want to produce a track or make a remix off some other bigger like song. For instance, in this case, we're gonna use ah, Justin Bieber song. Um, and I already have a kind off idea, often remix. But I still I'm still not sure if I producing in the right key or the right note off Justin Bieber's voice so you can go ahead and, like, try, like experiment with playing the Justin Bieber so more, or the song you want to remix and play along on your keyboard just to determine the key. But it's there is some way, some different methods, So I used the software called Mixing Key. It's mainly built for DJs who wants to mix more harmonically between their mixes. But this this program is very good at recognizing a pitch in a vocal or a song. You literally just like dragging the vocal or or the track that you have and just let the program analyze to fight for you. And then you will get ah, really, really good results. Ah, off the pitch and even tempo and energy and different stuff from the song. So it saves a lot of time and has sold to, like, guess, the tracks notes or BPM or other stuff. So what I would do here is just to drag it in. And by the way, this program is not free. It costs a bit. No, not too much. Um, it's a pretty cheap program, and it's so worth it if you're doing like remixes and bootlegs and stuff like that. So I really recommend you to to buy it. So as you can see, I just dragged it in and it says already 10 a. And what's 10 A. I mean, it doesn't say any like, I assume maybe a like they notes, but the mixed in key program has his own kind of pitching and notes can chart here. But if you press the read tutorial here in the program and go here, you can see 10 a as we have had, Yeah, 10 a is a B minor. So it's very easy to to determine the the key off the track. Um, and we will have that we can go ahead and produce or track in B minor. Or we can transpose this vocal from let's say that we know that that it is in B minor and we're producing in C minor that you can transpose this track. Um, two semi tones. We're actually C minor. To be minor is just once in my toes. So, um, then you can just go ahead and and transposed this vocal down once in my tone and it will work with your track even though it's C minor and Justin Bieber's vocalists and be miners. Okay, so let's show you on example off what I just told you about mixed in key. So I just imported the Justin Bieber. Dispose it. Oh, vocal here. And as we got the result from mixed in key, it was in B minor. Um, and I have been producing a track Ah, that goes in e minor, so it will not sound good as it is right now. And also mixing key did tell us that this track or the Justin Bieber track is in, um, the temple off 90 bpm. And my track is in 1 20 bpm. So you can get a bit tricky to can get the temple right with this track. So I would just show you just just to show you how to make the pitch right. Um and I will not, like, try to get this vocal sounding amazing in this track because it wants this a cappella track that I have here is not really clean. It has a lot of different instrument in it. So just for the purpose off showing you about how to make the vocal in right pitch off your own track so you could make a cool remix. So that is what I going to show you here, So Ah, yeah, this is is in b minor. And if we take up a piano roll here Yeah, and this track is an e minor. And that is only because ah, the route Notice. Starting. Um, any basically. So we haven't here and bees there. So if we take Justin Bieber's track, we have to pitch his vocal down one to 345 six, one more time Okay, so be one to 34 five, six. Yeah, seven. I missed. Ah, a note here. So seven semi tones. We have to go down on the Justin Bieber vocals. So ah, in different digital audio workstations, you can pitch down just the vocal by just Yeah, In some cases, you can just click the audio file and can pitch it down there in logic. There is not such a way to do that. So we have to use a plug in for that. And I always use the wave sound shifter pitch, and it works. Very good. So you basically just take semi tones and right in minus seven here. So now the pitch of Justin Bieber's vocals should be the same ass. My tracks. Um, my tracks note basically notes, basically. So I'm gonna turn off the vocal first, and I'm just gonna show you how my track sounds. Were the idea off this tractor you I've been working on right now? All right, So Justin Bieber's vocal, when it's pitch down minus seven, is going to sound like this. As you can hear, this vocal track is very bad, is very like it has so much instruments in it. And unfortunately, I couldn't find a very good acapella for this track. And I so wanted to remix it. But I just can't with this kind of quality I could pull out. So, um yeah, just to show you that this vocal not is now in the right key in the minor as I produced, I'm just gonna play the bass sound and his Acapella together. - Wait . So just despite the fact that the vocal is not in time and all and very messy but it still sounds in the in right pitch. So the vocal and that my track if this would be a nice clean a cappella that I could because I know that it's in 90 bpm because mixing key told us that too. We could just, um, just change the tempo of this vocal from 90 to 1 20 as my track your project is in right now and make the sound shifter or just pitching down the right amount off semi tones and you will get a vocal sound. That sounds pretty cool. And it will really work with your track. You could be kind of unique that way. So and you can also do the opposite way. So ah, you can determine the, um the pitch off, the off the vocal that you're trying to remix the tractor trying to remix and just pitch your own song to that. So you will get a nice a cappella that is not pitched in an away. Um, so then, you know, also high off course. What, um, what scale you should produce in. So when you know, the track is really easy to just restrict yourself to just being produced in producing in that scale because everything you do in that scale will work with the vocal. Um, if you know the vocals, notes or scale.