One point I'd like to pick up in the first post; it's implies that OP writes a piano part and then accompanies it with bass guitar.
That doesn't make a lot of sense to me, as music written on piano alone usually includes a bassline (even if just the lowest notes of chords used). Bass guitar should generally provide your lowest notes, which means it will either be essentially doubling a piano line (i.e. redundant) or will change the chord inversions used (which is a big deal!) The piano part should be reworked at this stage to leave space for the bass; the free hand can be used to add denser low harmony or increase the complexity of a higher part.
OP was hopefully doing this already but it's a nice example of why one doesn't generally compose by writing one part at a time.
How to compose accompanying instruments?
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 880 posts since 26 Oct, 2011
accidental double post
Last edited by Functional on Thu Sep 27, 2018 9:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 880 posts since 26 Oct, 2011
Okay, after reading up just a tiny bit on four part writing, I think my mind is already blown by this. I think lack of this knowledge has actually been a huge bottleneck for me. I tried setting up perhaps a tad awkward I-iii-V7-vi7 progression (and right after, just the slightest adjustment, and it turns into I-iii-ii6-vi7 . And while it didn't feel quite right if I used closed voicings, I tried arranging the voicing loosely with the quick insights about voice leading and trying to write it as if there's 4 voices (I also do understand that there isn't any particular need to limit oneself to 4 voices, but for sake of simplicity anyway).
So clearly it's not textbook, for example for iii I actually omitted the third instead of fifth. And two seventh extensions probably make things too easy. And the first two chords are in root position too. Not to mention, repeated like that, the bass jumps quite a bit too between vi7 & I (and isn't really super interesting). And probably the cadence isn't glamorous. But whatever, I think it sounds nice, I'm happy with it: https://picosong.com/w23EA/
So this has already helped me quite a bit, because now I have a chord progression with 4 voices that I could paint to my liking. And more importantly, I'm starting now to understand chromatic alterations to chords and how that works. Or that, you can actually omit notes from chords.
I can also DEFINITIVELY see how this is incredibly useful for working with singers. This stuff was what the composer meant when he was talking about vertical harmony; you have a singer just improvising a melody in her head or something and you harmonize it. But I started reading about functional harmony rather than part writing. Which I guess helped me to some extent too. But here, even the mere basics seem to help me a lot. I truly think this is a bottleneck for my writing.
Now, hoping that I'm not too annoying with my trivial questions, here's still one issue or potential fear I have. While I'm sure that one can just use the voicings as such on sustained instruments through each and every chord tone. Hell, maybe you'll have strings with pizzicato articulations working through, say, the root & the third in eights or something. But in pop music, while this is fairly often the case, it's also fairly often not. This is true in particular about melodies that "stand out".
Maybe it's something that eventually just will occur to me (and if such is the case, that's fine). But right now, I can't entirely understand how to relate this into more common melodies. Can we consider that a segment of a melody has a melody note and we consider that "melody note" to be part of it's "main voicing", while the other notes are to be considered either as color notes or slightly doubling notes, depending on the context? This is mostly the way I try to understand it because very often melodies give me this feeling that there's a particular note that they revolve around in any given motif.
And what if the case is such where your melody sort of travels all over the place? Should it perhaps be considered separate from the other voicings and more like an "upfront" element in its own right?
So clearly it's not textbook, for example for iii I actually omitted the third instead of fifth. And two seventh extensions probably make things too easy. And the first two chords are in root position too. Not to mention, repeated like that, the bass jumps quite a bit too between vi7 & I (and isn't really super interesting). And probably the cadence isn't glamorous. But whatever, I think it sounds nice, I'm happy with it: https://picosong.com/w23EA/
So this has already helped me quite a bit, because now I have a chord progression with 4 voices that I could paint to my liking. And more importantly, I'm starting now to understand chromatic alterations to chords and how that works. Or that, you can actually omit notes from chords.
I can also DEFINITIVELY see how this is incredibly useful for working with singers. This stuff was what the composer meant when he was talking about vertical harmony; you have a singer just improvising a melody in her head or something and you harmonize it. But I started reading about functional harmony rather than part writing. Which I guess helped me to some extent too. But here, even the mere basics seem to help me a lot. I truly think this is a bottleneck for my writing.
Now, hoping that I'm not too annoying with my trivial questions, here's still one issue or potential fear I have. While I'm sure that one can just use the voicings as such on sustained instruments through each and every chord tone. Hell, maybe you'll have strings with pizzicato articulations working through, say, the root & the third in eights or something. But in pop music, while this is fairly often the case, it's also fairly often not. This is true in particular about melodies that "stand out".
Maybe it's something that eventually just will occur to me (and if such is the case, that's fine). But right now, I can't entirely understand how to relate this into more common melodies. Can we consider that a segment of a melody has a melody note and we consider that "melody note" to be part of it's "main voicing", while the other notes are to be considered either as color notes or slightly doubling notes, depending on the context? This is mostly the way I try to understand it because very often melodies give me this feeling that there's a particular note that they revolve around in any given motif.
And what if the case is such where your melody sort of travels all over the place? Should it perhaps be considered separate from the other voicings and more like an "upfront" element in its own right?
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 880 posts since 26 Oct, 2011
Yeah, guess what I wasn't doing, just that. So you might understand now why the basics of four part writing seem to clear up so much suddenly. I paid regard to the inversions when I made the chords, yes, but after that the bass? Nope.imrae wrote: OP was hopefully doing this already but it's a nice example of why one doesn't generally compose by writing one part at a time.
Though usually what happened was that I just adjusted the piano bass notes alongside with the bass, but the issue with this is pretty obvious: I wasn't paying attention to what I was doubling and suddenly something that sounded good initially, might have lost that quality. In some cases also, I might have altered chords in a really terrible way and sort of "lived with it" after the fact
Makes me think, by the way, how much of these errors could have been avoided with even half competent teacher. But no need to lecture me about that, I'm stubborn as they come anyway
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 880 posts since 26 Oct, 2011
So some further insight: I was looking for a track to explain what I mean in particular and... I didn't find any. I think I might be overcomplicating things a bit too much. At best there's songs with little movement in the bass, quick chord switches (which give bit more melodic movement) or alternatively just a very small motive going through the chord at the top (all of these include a "real melody" simultaneously played by something else), but it seems it's always a case of just one real, actual melody playing. I mean, insofar as pop music goes. So it looks like voice leading & harmonization are the topics I need to delve into further, which should be of plenty help in themselves.
Thanks for everyone here who helped, appreciate it at a lot (though further insights are always welcome too)
Thanks for everyone here who helped, appreciate it at a lot (though further insights are always welcome too)
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- KVRAF
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
As to 'usually writing at the piano means writing some kind of bass part' vs 'one doesn't write music one part at a time'...
Generally a piano part as apparently conceptualized there is like a whole arrangement, only it isn't distributed to anything else. Yet. Or a solo piano composition is going to have to fill that role (if there is a bass role, that is) in essence, even if not absolutely/concretely, ie., subliminally speaking.
Here we run into convention: I will venture to say that one should be aware of this aspect, this consideration.
Per that clause 'one part at a time'. I think in pop type of songwriting one is writing a bass part with the chords or harmonic climate in mind. But one may think in other ways; the bass line may be like the piano writing at the top of this post and be the basis for everything. In classical music this is known as passacaglia. Or a chaconne (the meanings are subject to debate, another subject); but the bass could contain the chord progression itself without having to detail it or specifically write. One can come to it later (or in a band, allow the keyboard player some room here).
In one of my most consciously 'accessible' tracks, the first section existed as a drum track, period. While I was creating it I imagined a couple of things (I wasn't making a 'drum solo', in fact I believed I was creating a 'drum loop' as though I would enter the market with product) but once I had the notion this would be a 'song', I figured it would be best if I had this track in full first.
I have on more than one occasion, including the current project, began a track as a guitar solo. This time the intent was it could stand alone. I've done that.
I didn't clutter my imagination up at all with anything else. It's not totally wild but I did go for full-on solo melody; and then other parts were implied (drums seemed essential after-the-fact of the 'solo'; I heard e. piano and interjected that first).
This idea is like both previous indications, the bass line first, the drum track first but the independence was more absolute. The melodic creation was primary. I was working with no net. So here the conventions are tossed to the wind.
I realize this stuff exceeds the requirements implied in the OP/thread, but I think it's something people may benefit by an awareness of. I don't think this is particularly radical thought or means that this kind of thinking has necessarily precluded any particular style or genre. I think one may think in terms of independence of parts in conception in and of itself. There seems to be a belief out there that melody is a function of chords and that the consideration of both at the same time is what you always must do.
Generally a piano part as apparently conceptualized there is like a whole arrangement, only it isn't distributed to anything else. Yet. Or a solo piano composition is going to have to fill that role (if there is a bass role, that is) in essence, even if not absolutely/concretely, ie., subliminally speaking.
Here we run into convention: I will venture to say that one should be aware of this aspect, this consideration.
Per that clause 'one part at a time'. I think in pop type of songwriting one is writing a bass part with the chords or harmonic climate in mind. But one may think in other ways; the bass line may be like the piano writing at the top of this post and be the basis for everything. In classical music this is known as passacaglia. Or a chaconne (the meanings are subject to debate, another subject); but the bass could contain the chord progression itself without having to detail it or specifically write. One can come to it later (or in a band, allow the keyboard player some room here).
In one of my most consciously 'accessible' tracks, the first section existed as a drum track, period. While I was creating it I imagined a couple of things (I wasn't making a 'drum solo', in fact I believed I was creating a 'drum loop' as though I would enter the market with product) but once I had the notion this would be a 'song', I figured it would be best if I had this track in full first.
I have on more than one occasion, including the current project, began a track as a guitar solo. This time the intent was it could stand alone. I've done that.
I didn't clutter my imagination up at all with anything else. It's not totally wild but I did go for full-on solo melody; and then other parts were implied (drums seemed essential after-the-fact of the 'solo'; I heard e. piano and interjected that first).
This idea is like both previous indications, the bass line first, the drum track first but the independence was more absolute. The melodic creation was primary. I was working with no net. So here the conventions are tossed to the wind.
I realize this stuff exceeds the requirements implied in the OP/thread, but I think it's something people may benefit by an awareness of. I don't think this is particularly radical thought or means that this kind of thinking has necessarily precluded any particular style or genre. I think one may think in terms of independence of parts in conception in and of itself. There seems to be a belief out there that melody is a function of chords and that the consideration of both at the same time is what you always must do.
Last edited by jancivil on Thu Sep 27, 2018 6:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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- KVRAF
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
That said, back to <4-part writing>. Of course you are working on all parts as a whole.
In the aforementioned consideration of arrangements where a part - horn accents or 'stabs', eg - have their own space, they do but it agrees with the chord chart in essence. It's a balancing act.
In the aforementioned consideration of arrangements where a part - horn accents or 'stabs', eg - have their own space, they do but it agrees with the chord chart in essence. It's a balancing act.
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 880 posts since 26 Oct, 2011
Yeah I think I actually might know a case of where bass implies heavily chords: partial andulasian cadence with i-VII-VI. If you play just the bass of these chords in root position, at least to me, that will imply heavily this progression.
As for melody-first approach, I'd love to do it, but I'm afraid I'm not quite yet up to the task. I've tried couple times fooling around with the idea, but it's clear that I lack the capability of doing that. I've heard lot of really interesting music that, I suspect at least, was made with a relatively simple melody first and then everything else pieced in. In particular among more experimental music (an avenue I'd like to try in future). I'd love to link examples but because apparently there's no way to actually disable video embedding (or one that I could figure out), I'll spare from that mess.
And I think I get what you mean with the "balancing act" part. I read the other thread on four part harmony and your tad more indepth takes there about the topic and the way I understand it; I'm just going to be making pop music. I doubt anyone will sting me if I use parallel fifth motion or opt in for something else than the smoothest possible contrary motion that I could have used (without any real reason too). I mean I do understand why these exercises exist though; my peers who have formally studied this stuff are far better at it (and that will remain most likely forever true) than I am and it's one of these reasons. But I'd go crazy if I had to spend so much time thinking about smoothest possible motion that avoids x, y, z as much as possible and, in respect to inversions, uses the perfect voicing etc etc. If I would write for an orchestra, all this would have to be hardcoded into me far before I even would attempt such things. But I'm not gonna do that.
As for melody-first approach, I'd love to do it, but I'm afraid I'm not quite yet up to the task. I've tried couple times fooling around with the idea, but it's clear that I lack the capability of doing that. I've heard lot of really interesting music that, I suspect at least, was made with a relatively simple melody first and then everything else pieced in. In particular among more experimental music (an avenue I'd like to try in future). I'd love to link examples but because apparently there's no way to actually disable video embedding (or one that I could figure out), I'll spare from that mess.
And I think I get what you mean with the "balancing act" part. I read the other thread on four part harmony and your tad more indepth takes there about the topic and the way I understand it; I'm just going to be making pop music. I doubt anyone will sting me if I use parallel fifth motion or opt in for something else than the smoothest possible contrary motion that I could have used (without any real reason too). I mean I do understand why these exercises exist though; my peers who have formally studied this stuff are far better at it (and that will remain most likely forever true) than I am and it's one of these reasons. But I'd go crazy if I had to spend so much time thinking about smoothest possible motion that avoids x, y, z as much as possible and, in respect to inversions, uses the perfect voicing etc etc. If I would write for an orchestra, all this would have to be hardcoded into me far before I even would attempt such things. But I'm not gonna do that.
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- KVRAF
- 6804 posts since 20 Jan, 2008
Arranging for pop music requires some familiarity with pop music to begin with as well it doesn't hurt to play more than one instrument.
The heart of rock and roll is the beat. Same goes for country, bluegrass, jazz, blues, R&B, Soul, funk and more. Get some beats under your skin not just by listening to them but by playing them. You don't have to be Steve Gadd or Neal Peart but you should be able to hold down some beats. To that end invest in your time to learn how to play basic patterns...With feeling (dynamics)
The next thing is to work out chord progressions. When people tell me that chord progressions are "boring" It's usually a symptom of them not being able to infuse proper rhythmic technique to the progression. Your best bet is to actually learn some songs.... rather than simply trying to go through route progressions.
In pop songs basslines are tied to the progression. They can be walking or not but they should never be complicated. Follow the chord progression and try to stick to the root and fifth. Again your ability to infuse rhythm is tatamount. Don't think you can simply drop in any bassline loop against a drum loop and magic occurs.
Melodies are meant to be sung. This means breath and try to sing/hum/scat your way through them. Do it with emotional commitment. I know there are quite a few who would argue about not using pentatonics. But start with them as they generally are easier to sing. Pop stands for Popular. If you want a song to be popular than it better have a catchy melody that's easy to hum along to... Especially the chorus as people rarely remember the entire song but they love singing the chorus.
As for the rest.....
https://www.amazon.com/Arranging-Techni ... 082561130X
The heart of rock and roll is the beat. Same goes for country, bluegrass, jazz, blues, R&B, Soul, funk and more. Get some beats under your skin not just by listening to them but by playing them. You don't have to be Steve Gadd or Neal Peart but you should be able to hold down some beats. To that end invest in your time to learn how to play basic patterns...With feeling (dynamics)
The next thing is to work out chord progressions. When people tell me that chord progressions are "boring" It's usually a symptom of them not being able to infuse proper rhythmic technique to the progression. Your best bet is to actually learn some songs.... rather than simply trying to go through route progressions.
In pop songs basslines are tied to the progression. They can be walking or not but they should never be complicated. Follow the chord progression and try to stick to the root and fifth. Again your ability to infuse rhythm is tatamount. Don't think you can simply drop in any bassline loop against a drum loop and magic occurs.
Melodies are meant to be sung. This means breath and try to sing/hum/scat your way through them. Do it with emotional commitment. I know there are quite a few who would argue about not using pentatonics. But start with them as they generally are easier to sing. Pop stands for Popular. If you want a song to be popular than it better have a catchy melody that's easy to hum along to... Especially the chorus as people rarely remember the entire song but they love singing the chorus.
As for the rest.....
https://www.amazon.com/Arranging-Techni ... 082561130X
Dell Vostro i9 64GB Ram Windows 11 Pro, Cubase, Bitwig, Mixcraft Guitar Pod Go, Linntrument Nektar P1, Novation Launchpad
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- Boss Lovin' DR
- 12622 posts since 15 Mar, 2002 from the grimness of yorkshire
Exactly, much better put than I did!tapper mike wrote: ↑Sat Sep 29, 2018 4:46 pm Arranging for pop music requires some familiarity with pop music to begin with as well it doesn't hurt to play more than one instrument.
The heart of rock and roll is the beat. Same goes for country, bluegrass, jazz, blues, R&B, Soul, funk and more. Get some beats under your skin not just by listening to them but by playing them. You don't have to be Steve Gadd or Neal Peart but you should be able to hold down some beats. To that end invest in your time to learn how to play basic patterns...With feeling (dynamics)
The next thing is to work out chord progressions. When people tell me that chord progressions are "boring" It's usually a symptom of them not being able to infuse proper rhythmic technique to the progression. Your best bet is to actually learn some songs.... rather than simply trying to go through route progressions.
In pop songs basslines are tied to the progression. They can be walking or not but they should never be complicated. Follow the chord progression and try to stick to the root and fifth. Again your ability to infuse rhythm is tatamount. Don't think you can simply drop in any bassline loop against a drum loop and magic occurs.
Melodies are meant to be sung. This means breath and try to sing/hum/scat your way through them. Do it with emotional commitment. I know there are quite a few who would argue about not using pentatonics. But start with them as they generally are easier to sing. Pop stands for Popular. If you want a song to be popular than it better have a catchy melody that's easy to hum along to... Especially the chorus as people rarely remember the entire song but they love singing the chorus.
As for the rest.....
https://www.amazon.com/Arranging-Techni ... 082561130X
It's about how you do it as much as what do....Think about 'You Really Got Me' by The Kinks. Those two chords sound like nothing special strummed on the guitar or played on the piano. Play it with an aggressive rhythm through a cranked up amp on the other hand...
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- KVRAF
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
I bVII bVI 'andalusian' is guitar-derived basically from barre chords so it's all parallel, dinging someone on that as though a rule is N/A & the perfect illustration of what I was trying to say: that serves specifics to the extent it may not serve other things, here at all.Functional wrote: ↑Thu Sep 27, 2018 7:26 pm Yeah I think I actually might know a case of where bass implies heavily chords: partial andulasian cadence with i-VII-VI. If you play just the bass of these chords in root position, at least to me, that will imply heavily this progression.
I doubt anyone will sting me if I use parallel fifth motion or...
Someone said guitar is not the best for polyphonic thought somewhere here; while I got into classical guitar in order to deal in polyphony and even counterpoint directly (avoiding the piano?) I have to say it's not the worst. But not everything deals in that kind of thinking, rock maybe not at all because guitarists rely on the idiomatic and the layout in a certain way.
SO it's good to know where things come from and know from idiom; in every possible case really.
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 880 posts since 26 Oct, 2011
[quote="tapper mike" post_id=7181052 time=1538239575 user_id=171358]
Arranging for pop music requires some familiarity with pop music to begin with as well it doesn't hurt to play more than one instrument.
The heart of rock and roll is the beat. Same goes for country, bluegrass, jazz, blues, R&B, Soul, funk and more. Get some beats under your skin not just by listening to them but by playing them. You don't have to be Steve Gadd or Neal Peart but you should be able to hold down some beats. To that end invest in your time to learn how to play basic patterns...With feeling (dynamics)
The next thing is to work out chord progressions. When people tell me that chord progressions are "boring" It's usually a symptom of them not being able to infuse proper rhythmic technique to the progression. Your best bet is to actually learn some songs.... rather than simply trying to go through route progressions.
In pop songs basslines are tied to the progression. They can be walking or not but they should never be complicated. Follow the chord progression and try to stick to the root and fifth. Again your ability to infuse rhythm is tatamount. Don't think you can simply drop in any bassline loop against a drum loop and magic occurs.
Melodies are meant to be sung. This means breath and try to sing/hum/scat your way through them. Do it with emotional commitment. I know there are quite a few who would argue about not using pentatonics. But start with them as they generally are easier to sing. Pop stands for Popular. If you want a song to be popular than it better have a catchy melody that's easy to hum along to... Especially the chorus as people rarely remember the entire song but they love singing the chorus.
As for the rest.....
https://www.amazon.com/Arranging-Techni ... 082561130X
[/quote]
As much as I wish to be capable of playing multiple instruments, I sadly can't do it all and got enough struggles to learn piano properly. Planning to get some lessons there actually. Otherwise I just got too much things going at once; I need to produce music, I'm currently trying to get into studio work (live mixing was too hectic for me, two years of that was enough) and also need to learn to play an instrument and improve music theory knowledge & by proxy composing skills.
However, everything you say does make sense and more or less something I acknowledge subconsciously. And when it comes to beats and bass, that's probably least of my struggles; those things these days come pretty much naturally. Though that depends, if it isn't halftime beat, then probably nothing good will come. These days only halftime really speaks to me because of all the room for syncopation and I just wouldn't have it any other way for now. Going four to the floor usually just sounds too boring even though there's a ton of music where people make it work even to my tastes.
One exception though: to me pop music doesn't really mean literally "popular" music but rather just something that isn't classical or folk music. And, at least here, sometimes the nomenclature "light music" is also employed. Nevertheless, I don't care much for actually popular music aside from some exceptions (many of which aren't anything at all what I'd wish to do). Lorn for example is really popular but also quite far from pretty much any other popular artists, since his specialty seems to be sculpting timbre more so than anything else.
But otherwise, I think my biggest issue insofar is that for some years now I was mostly interested in kind of music where lot of these things just don't matter all that much. For example, in future garage it's somewhat rare (in particular the ambient sort that I'm into) that chords have a strong progression. Instead they often seem to do these huge chords (with a _lot_ of voices) that form together with the ambiance the "soundbed", also they're like 2 bars long quite often. The feeling that it gives is more like a drifting or "dreamy" one, rather than "telling a story" kind. And they use a lot of passing sounds (either filtered instruments/synths or heavily pitchshifted vocals) that sort of are buried in the "soundbed" itself through reverb & delay. And i'm guessing lot of these elements sort of try to strengthen the fundamental progression instead, by emphasizing the basic triad chord notes.
Guess what are the more applicable elements from that type of music? The basslines (with filtered reeses) and the drums. Thing is, I've been listening lately to a lot of other kind music. One of my more recent inspirations has been MXMS, because arrangement-wise they're very relatable: reeses, halftime drums, fairly clear (and beautiful) singing with good amount of high-end mixing-wise, piano and the soundscapes. But to nobodys surprise, the pianist is actually a trained pianist with years of experience in at least one other band. Which is why I want those damn piano lessons myself too, cause I can't really evaluate myself as to what I should be practicing more.
[quote=jancivil post_id=7181214 time=1538253321 user_id=163537]
SO it's good to know where things come from and know from idiom; in every possible case really.
[/quote]
Yeah, agreed 100%. I'm just more meddled with more contemporary culture, where lot of relevant things don't necessarily have much relation (other than tangential) to music theory itself. Lot of expression these days comes from factors that are more related to sound design. Lorn is pretty good example form pop culture: as far as I'm concerned, his music would be really boring if it wasn't for his sound design (...and I guess arranging...) capabilities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxg4C365LbQ
Arranging for pop music requires some familiarity with pop music to begin with as well it doesn't hurt to play more than one instrument.
The heart of rock and roll is the beat. Same goes for country, bluegrass, jazz, blues, R&B, Soul, funk and more. Get some beats under your skin not just by listening to them but by playing them. You don't have to be Steve Gadd or Neal Peart but you should be able to hold down some beats. To that end invest in your time to learn how to play basic patterns...With feeling (dynamics)
The next thing is to work out chord progressions. When people tell me that chord progressions are "boring" It's usually a symptom of them not being able to infuse proper rhythmic technique to the progression. Your best bet is to actually learn some songs.... rather than simply trying to go through route progressions.
In pop songs basslines are tied to the progression. They can be walking or not but they should never be complicated. Follow the chord progression and try to stick to the root and fifth. Again your ability to infuse rhythm is tatamount. Don't think you can simply drop in any bassline loop against a drum loop and magic occurs.
Melodies are meant to be sung. This means breath and try to sing/hum/scat your way through them. Do it with emotional commitment. I know there are quite a few who would argue about not using pentatonics. But start with them as they generally are easier to sing. Pop stands for Popular. If you want a song to be popular than it better have a catchy melody that's easy to hum along to... Especially the chorus as people rarely remember the entire song but they love singing the chorus.
As for the rest.....
https://www.amazon.com/Arranging-Techni ... 082561130X
[/quote]
As much as I wish to be capable of playing multiple instruments, I sadly can't do it all and got enough struggles to learn piano properly. Planning to get some lessons there actually. Otherwise I just got too much things going at once; I need to produce music, I'm currently trying to get into studio work (live mixing was too hectic for me, two years of that was enough) and also need to learn to play an instrument and improve music theory knowledge & by proxy composing skills.
However, everything you say does make sense and more or less something I acknowledge subconsciously. And when it comes to beats and bass, that's probably least of my struggles; those things these days come pretty much naturally. Though that depends, if it isn't halftime beat, then probably nothing good will come. These days only halftime really speaks to me because of all the room for syncopation and I just wouldn't have it any other way for now. Going four to the floor usually just sounds too boring even though there's a ton of music where people make it work even to my tastes.
One exception though: to me pop music doesn't really mean literally "popular" music but rather just something that isn't classical or folk music. And, at least here, sometimes the nomenclature "light music" is also employed. Nevertheless, I don't care much for actually popular music aside from some exceptions (many of which aren't anything at all what I'd wish to do). Lorn for example is really popular but also quite far from pretty much any other popular artists, since his specialty seems to be sculpting timbre more so than anything else.
But otherwise, I think my biggest issue insofar is that for some years now I was mostly interested in kind of music where lot of these things just don't matter all that much. For example, in future garage it's somewhat rare (in particular the ambient sort that I'm into) that chords have a strong progression. Instead they often seem to do these huge chords (with a _lot_ of voices) that form together with the ambiance the "soundbed", also they're like 2 bars long quite often. The feeling that it gives is more like a drifting or "dreamy" one, rather than "telling a story" kind. And they use a lot of passing sounds (either filtered instruments/synths or heavily pitchshifted vocals) that sort of are buried in the "soundbed" itself through reverb & delay. And i'm guessing lot of these elements sort of try to strengthen the fundamental progression instead, by emphasizing the basic triad chord notes.
Guess what are the more applicable elements from that type of music? The basslines (with filtered reeses) and the drums. Thing is, I've been listening lately to a lot of other kind music. One of my more recent inspirations has been MXMS, because arrangement-wise they're very relatable: reeses, halftime drums, fairly clear (and beautiful) singing with good amount of high-end mixing-wise, piano and the soundscapes. But to nobodys surprise, the pianist is actually a trained pianist with years of experience in at least one other band. Which is why I want those damn piano lessons myself too, cause I can't really evaluate myself as to what I should be practicing more.
[quote=jancivil post_id=7181214 time=1538253321 user_id=163537]
SO it's good to know where things come from and know from idiom; in every possible case really.
[/quote]
Yeah, agreed 100%. I'm just more meddled with more contemporary culture, where lot of relevant things don't necessarily have much relation (other than tangential) to music theory itself. Lot of expression these days comes from factors that are more related to sound design. Lorn is pretty good example form pop culture: as far as I'm concerned, his music would be really boring if it wasn't for his sound design (...and I guess arranging...) capabilities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxg4C365LbQ
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 880 posts since 26 Oct, 2011
wow really, quotes don't work anymore for me?
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- KVRAF
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
BTW and note well: 'music theory itself' isn't real. Your analysis of what happens is music theory, if it makes sense to you; that's all music theory can be. There will appear to be a lot of consensus to analyses as documented. Yet there may be disagreement on some points. Yes, there seem to be rules but don't believe in it if you don't need it. Again, I think a regular 4-part harmony course is good for a body in a holistic sense. But that isn't a prescription for you or any other person per se.
