____twoism

Hello twoism friends, I have to admit that my traditional music education right now is pretty much nothing. I don't know how to play chords on any instrument, or how keys work (like playing in the key of G), or music theory on notes and flow of a song, basic things like that. I need to educate myself beyond making something that just sounds good to my ears. I want to make proper musical art, not just sound art. The layouts to my songs are way to simple, which has it's place, but I want to expand.

Everything I have made so far has been completely based on what comes into my head as a sound and melody. Finding things to harmonize comes ok as well. But finding transitions, taking the song different places or playing live is a huuuuge struggle right now. I want to improve. I learn very quickly. I learn well by ear and can play instruments as if I've had some training, though I haven't had any besides trumpet in high school (which I very much forget). I don't even know much about how to tune synths to get the sound I'm thinking of. It takes a looooong time for me to achieve the desired synth sound and I want to make that a lot quicker.

I need your help in recommending any sort of tutorial, lesson, or whatever, that will help me improve. I can't afford lessons from a teacher. I need things like online videos, or videos that I can download from the net, or good books that get to the point, or websites with any sort or type of lessons/tutorials.

Your help will be very much appreciated. I've already had a guy here who's been kind enough to help me improve my sound very much with advice on multiple areas in my sound production, all without spending much money at all. Thank you very much. You know who you are.

Cheers,
Anvil Stereo

Instead of writing about your music why not post a track you want to be helped with?

honestly, starting to play the guitar has helped me a lot, because playing chords is so easy, and learning songs is easy since chords are the backbone for most guitar driven songs.
You then learn which chords go together well, and playing already existing songs shows which chord groupings are used often, and which are more difficult to learn.

Then you can branch out, learning the differences between majors and minors, sharps and flats, incorporating 7ths, 9ths, augmented chords, transitional chords.
This is only after learning for about two years. I'm not even good at finger picking or anything, but it's helped a shitload in learning theory.

I've tried to watch theory videos on YouTube, and so much of it is just spurting out terms which refer to writing on staff paper, and not information which I would find practical, often breaking music down into structured processes and rigid phrases.

But learning guitar has given me a hell of a lot of appreciation for actually writing music - it's taught me a frame work with which I can be creative, and it's helped me understand the keyboard more, too, as I look at it and now know what a C chord is, a D sharp minor 7 chord, an E7 chord, etc etc.

That's what helped me learn music theory, but I don't know about you at all. we are all different, of course.

Who needs music theory when you have generative programming ?

not [insert popular music producer]

ooooh take that shot you hack!

got 'im!

listen religiously to the music you love the most. dissect every last tiny bit of minutiae and find out how it works by itself, and then in relation to every other bit. do this repetitively for 10-15 years. write down the cognitions you have when doing this. study them every friday after 5pm. pick up your guitar/plug in your m-audio usb keyboard, turn on your mbox/focusrite scarlet/tascam us-122, open ableton/fruityloops/garageband/protools/reason/MAX. do what you learned.

lol JK get a high-limit credit card and then go to www.studiopros.com and spent $450 a pop on session musicians thats what I did lmao im up to my eyeballs in debt hahaha

What ttk said about the guitar. Pick an instrument, practice some classics/jazz standards, get inside them, master the instrument. If you choose keys, learn maj and min chords up till add11ths and their inversions, find some scales you enjoy besides maj and min and run them in every key every (other?) day untill your hand hurts. Listening carefully is very important.

If you want video-tutorials, this guy does a decent job explaining basics with a piano, but I'm sure you can find a lot of stuff putting "music theory beginner tutorial" or something into whatever search engine, if you beware time-related promisses. "in just X minutes/hours/weeks" is usally a bad sign. I've learned cool tricks from silly sources though. Stuff like how to make a synth sound like inside your mind more quickly...not sure if a video can teach you that. Your mind is unique.

It is important to remember it is not something difficult, abstract, black-magic or someting only very talented or "musical" people are able to understand. even though many like to pretend it is. It is all very logical. Music is math.
Also remember rules are meant to be broken. Just because Pythagoras had some clever ideas about harmony, and some monk developed a complex ladder-system to display notes a certain way doesn't mean that's the one true way of thinking about music. That said, I do believe you have to be aware of rules before you can break them properly.

I can give you some pointers in discord if you want, even though I've only quite recently (+-2 years) been actively studying. It took that long because I was afraid of it and I thought I'd never get it.

All in all sounds like a cool idea! I'm sure you can do it and soon you'll start listening to music very differently (for better or worse).

drillkicker wrote:Who needs music theory when you have generative programming ?

This question is a paradox.

You can do some pretty cool stuff if you incorporate classic music theory in generative algorythms.

Cupz wrote:

drillkicker wrote:Who needs music theory when you have generative programming ?

This question is a paradox.

You can do some pretty cool stuff if you incorporate classic music theory in generative algorythms.

People who realized that fact made some really good shit

I don't know any music theory and am scared of learning it/ it being talked about infront of me.

Your mind makes very pure music and to translate that to an instrument in just the language of inner music and nothing else ensures something nice. Learn what notes on the piano are so maybe you can know what individual notes a chord consists of but, other than that, refuse. A lot of chords I figure out are just
'nicecord6 with the deep middle and existential crises end'

To just have your hands and ears to translate inner music ensures something genuine and pure.
If you haven't learnt music yet. Please, please don't. Just promise you will keep playing and finding your own combinations of notes that sound nice.

I used to think like that, but learning more really doesn't hurt if you have creativity.
learning theory is not limiting your skills to already established ideas, for creative people it's giving them a new set of skills to experiment and play with.

and if it does turn out that theory does limit his creativity, then he was never a good musician in the first place. (which I can assure you is not true, but I'm just sayin')

I wouldn't say the old jazz musicians weren't creative, yet they had that music theory thing in their pocket. It won't limit your musical creativity, it will only expand it.

But I get what you're saying Valotonin, I was in the same place for a long long time. Turned out it was mostly unjustified fear.

I'm in the same boat as OP, and I hope to learn more about music theory, and to learn piano in the future.

Thank you all for your replies so far. TTK and Cupz especially, but all of you, thanks.
There is an old friend in town here that teaches guitar lessons for cheap. I'm gonna give that a go. So I'm with TTK all the way. I feel that would be fitting for my mind. This friend has studied music for decades, too.

I take no ideas any human can come up with as absolute. That includes music theory. The fact remains that music is art and there is no rule that can't be broken and no note that will be incorrect as long as it fits the artistic vision I have for my song.
I don't plan to gain knowledge on music theory to become it's slave. I plan on using it's ideas to contribute to my ideas. I want to learn about more things that will spark my own ideas. Ideas that may not have come up otherwise. We all need to USE knowledge, not be enslaved to it.

I have used chords in my music often. I just have no idea what chords they are. Lol. I'm sure I've used techniques that have names I'm not aware of, too. I want to be able to have something associated with these things to remember them and be able to utilize them when needed in the future.

J8tes: funnily enough, listening to BoC religiously and meditating on their music for the past 12+ years has been what drove my music to where it is now. It hasn't been far off from what you mentioned, lol.

Also, generative programming takes the fun away. It's one of my favourite parts in making music is my expression through melody. MY expression that comes from my own mind and heart. Otherwise, why are you making music?? Generative programming has it's place, but it's not one I'd use much if at all.

Cupz, we gotta chat on discord. Teeeeaach mee!

music theory will hold you back, unless you're already incredibly creative. Music doesn't need a handbook - if it sounds good, use it. I'm a guitarist and write every song I've ever made on an acoustic guitar first and know music theory inside out. For good electronic music you have to forget rules and go with what you feel like going with. I mean I'm not as good as most of the people here at electronica but I can write a decent melody and lyric and had a reasonably successful stint doing indie in the early-mid-90s. The best electronic artists learnt music the hard way by listening and ignoring everyone else. IMO.

There's more people afraid of music theory here then I thought. Think Chas and Sauce don't know exactly what Dbm6add9/Ab means? Its great to follow your feelings when being creative, but knowing what is what and what some very intelligent people discovered about music in the past is not something that will hold you back, only the idea that there's something absolute about them will. It's possible to know a bit of music theory and still write honest music from the heart. Knowing some of it won't turn you into an emotionless songwriting-machine, starting from the same point and following logical steps. If anything the other way around.

I saw this a lot in art-academy too, which is the reason I stopped going. "Just follow your feelings!", "It doesnt matter!", stupid faggot shit that won't improve any of your skills. I know how to follow my feelings, I haven't done anything else ever since I made my first song over 14 years ago. I haven't done anything else ever since my mother squeezed me out of her vagina, now I think of it. I know picasso didn't start out with kubism, and I heard sun-ra wrote down all of his music on sheet. Its crutial to be able to follow your heart, but anyone can buy a synth and make an ambient-noise album, where every recorded sneeze is allright and part of the masterpiece. History shows me that's just not how great work is created. It comes from intense study, enormous devotion and lots of HARD FUCKING WORK, regardless if anyone seems to really care (how I feel).

Just my annoying drunk opinion. PEACE!

No I don't disagree with you. I meant only that if you're already creating some kind of music, learning music theory isn't a necessity to create objectively great music.

Another thought I had;

Theory provides you with avenues to go down.

Without knowledge, you may be "freer" in a sense, but you're also ignorant to what you don't know.
There may be some things you've never tried, simply due to not knowing that you could ever do them.

Sure, you may discover them on your own, but (to paraphrase a known idiom) it's also possible that 1000 monkeys at 1000 type writers will eventually recreate the works of Shakespeare.
How long will it take, how much time would be wasted in trying to reach these techniques and ideas, and will it be too late?

I think if you do learn, do it by yourself. You learn your own method of construction and writing, which enhances the way you use your knowledge rather than always going back and remembering how your tutor did it.
But anyway, after I learned about keys and scales, I realised that I was writing music in only two keys because I didn't know any better.

Now I know more, and I know how to change keys, and I know how to do a whole bunch o' stuff. But I also am able to break these rules because even though I now have a solid grounding in musical theory, what sounds good to me, and what I want to do with my music are first and foremost.

You just gotta know what you want to do with your music and not let what you learn compromise your vision.
It's when you don't know, then you lapse into what you already know and have heard before.
Simple as that.

WORD.