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chords help...lost in harmony
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D7uan
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
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159
Posted : Jun 19, 2011 00:10:03
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im reading this book called how music really works and now im all confused with how chords work.....like for example Am chord would be A C E so lets say you start with this chord so does the first bar all have to have the A note in the bass line and then the lead playing C E would this be a chord playing? or does the chord have to actually be playing in a different instrument ACE? What about this for example the first bar is playing bass AAAA right so then the lead or leads would have to play C E for the first A and then what about for the second A you can play C E but then you would just be playing the same thing so then you could play a diminished chord C Eb and then on the third one an augmented C E# and just keep going playing with chord that have A as root or what? and then when you do a progression then your lead notes would also have to progress to an equivalent of that chord or what? im seriously lost and desperate and its not making sense hopefully someone will be able to clear all this up cus its all i can think about... |
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loki
IsraTrance Junior Member
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Posted : Jun 19, 2011 00:42
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what!? i think i get what you're asking, but your coming at it from a totally wierd angle.
first off, if you are playing over the chord Am, anything in the A-natural minor (or A-harmonic-minor, or A-harmonic-minor, etc) scales will sound harmonious. and you don't even always have to sound harmonious - dissonance can create some eerie tension.
don't worry about the notes in the A-minor chord while you're writing your bassline - at least, not too much. you could do a KBBB with A for 3 beats, and then the last beat be E (the 5th) for another beat, before coming down to C on the first beat of the new measure. By playing that bass change right there, you have already implied a tonality of A minor and a chord change from A minor (as A was your bass note) to C minor. The E was a great transition note, as it is contained in both chords.
but your melody could look something like A A C B A A C B (notice the B note, which is just a transition note not falling on the main beat) repeating in a 16th note gated pattern or whatever, some eerie pad plays Eb every few bars (just to give it a totally fucked up, trippy diminished feel).
Or whatever. imo, chord theory is most useful in trance to understand how to construct chord progressions, and how to build/release tension/emotion using the progression itself.
listen to your favourite tunes - esp. guitar-heavy rock n' roll. one of my favourites, for example, is Hendrix's version of All Along the Watchtower. He is playing alternation between the IV, V, and VI chords, and soloing on the minor pentatonic of the VI chord. but he doesn't always follow the chord changes with his solos - just plays expressively and harmoniously over them. your melodies can do the same.
hope any of that helps. relax, though, don't take chords TOO seriously. they are just a guideline for a song's progression and harmony. i swear there are (maybe even decent?) psytrance tunes out there that don't bother with chords and literally are monotinic. Some darkpsy is practially just C on the bass, a C note stuttering out some FM leads, and some eerie C pads up above, with squelchy noises also playing a C note rounding out the effects. err, part of why i generally don't like darkpsy...
 Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room. ~Kurt Vonnegut
www.soundcloud.com/mixyott |
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D7uan
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
43
Posts :
159
Posted : Jun 19, 2011 01:10
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thanx loki i think im kind of getting it. so then the lead notes dont always have to follow the bass notes right? i understand that dissonance and consonance is what make music feel like its moving...ok so then if you have a melody like A A C B A A C B and this is over some A bass notes then you switch to C bass note then your melody can play just like that over the C bass note without having to move the melody to fit the bass note? o yeah im tring to make happy sounding full on morning but all my music just seems to sound like creepy sad or demonic and im thinking maybe i gotto use chords that sound happier or somenthing like that but first i gotta understand what it is that im doing. |
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Monib
Started Topics :
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49
Posted : Jun 19, 2011 02:28
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I have an experiment, that worked pretty well for me.
Take a Key, and Midi in all the chords for 1 bar (so 7 bars with 1 Chord on each bar).
Next use a Midi Keyboard (or some other instrumenet), and play each note in that key for 1 bar, and listen to how it sounds. You'll start getting a feeling about the sound and will help you get to your melodic goals faster.
I think learning to play an instrument really helps here, as Comsosis says, "Music is a listening Art". You need to listen to the interaction of the notes. Not just read about them. I know where you're going, I've been down the same path. I have plenty of books on music theory and such. But they didn't help until I slowed down and started experimenting with the theory.
Hope this helps. |
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Kryten
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
11
Posts :
333
Posted : Jun 19, 2011 17:13
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D7uan
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
43
Posts :
159
Posted : Jun 20, 2011 18:59
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Monib thank you so much man great experiment im barely trying it out with a first chord and its making so much more sense now about how the sounds relate to each other using chords and how they sound like without chords (big diff)now just 6 more to go haha....and Kryten thanks man but i cant download the file if its not too much to ask can i bother you with uploading the file for me so i can download it. it would really help. thanks to everyone for helpin me out its really helping
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Kryten
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
11
Posts :
333
Posted : Jun 20, 2011 20:13
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D7uan
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
43
Posts :
159
Posted : Jun 20, 2011 22:33
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thanks man...i actually use logic but im starting to mix in ableton so no prob imma check it out right now
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loki
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
49
Posts :
429
Posted : Jun 22, 2011 01:13
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Quote:
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On 2011-06-19 01:10, D7uan wrote:
thanx loki i think im kind of getting it. so then the lead notes dont always have to follow the bass notes right? i understand that dissonance and consonance is what make music feel like its moving...ok so then if you have a melody like A A C B A A C B and this is over some A bass notes then you switch to C bass note then your melody can play just like that over the C bass note without having to move the melody to fit the bass note? o yeah im tring to make happy sounding full on morning but all my music just seems to sound like creepy sad or demonic and im thinking maybe i gotto use chords that sound happier or somenthing like that but first i gotta understand what it is that im doing.
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actually yeah, again - listen to tracks you like. it is very common for the melody to stay the same and the bass to change notes, implying chord progression. or vice versa.
as for sounding creepy... if you want uplifting, learn your scales and then bass your track's "tonic" or "root chord" around the first note of a major scale, and build your progressions from that.
tension and evolution in music is largely created by the interplay between major and minor chords. if you only have one or the other, it will usually sound flat or dull.
i like using IV-V-VI a lot, it sounds uplifting but resolves to the natural minor and just sounds so loopable. VI-I-IV-V or just VI-I-V sounds great and loopable too, and it's extremely common in melodic/uplifting fullon (think of those GMS style anthems).
[third edit... lol] also, sometimes i like using a mostly monotonic, one note bass - even for my dubstep - and implying the chord progression by sparse minimal hits... maybe some singing bolws from omnisphere scattered over the high mids. or pads - pads can really define a song's progression.
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room. ~Kurt Vonnegut
www.soundcloud.com/mixyott |
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