Late night coffee and hash, music theory breakthrough

[Sinergy]

I'll quickly get it out of the way I know very little about music theory. I understand what a scale is, I know what a chord is, and I can usually pick out a note that sounds bad in something I'm writing.

But the whole harmonies/chord progression stuff has been so out of my grasp, especially as the internet is the only one I've been turning to.

I'm writing this tune right now, silly house thing with a pluck on the off beat.

I wanted to write in Em, or Em harmonic since I wanted to use D#. I just googled chord progression for this scale, hoping maybe this time it might make some sense.

I got this:

"Common chord prgressions in this key:

Em->Am->B7

and

F#m7b5->B7-Am"

baffled again, as I'm wondering uneducated shit like "so... these three chord sequences are just repeated over and over again? how can music sound different in this key?"

I decided to write down the notes for each chord for the first progression:

Em->E.G.B
Am->A.C.E
B7->B.D#.F.A

I thought of the same question I'm always asking myself, what about if I'm playing singular notes and not chords in a breakdown???

I took the pluck, and wrote E-E-E-E on a 4 bar loop, running underneath this plug is a rather high sub with a lot of upper harmonics (to stay out of the way of the bassy kick). I thought this sub was the same notes as the pluck as it sounded good and i thought i copied it right over.

Few minutes later I checked the clip, and the notes were actually G-G-G-G on the high sub. But it didn't sound bad, I changed the notes to E-E-E-E, but I didn't like the way it sounded as much (I think).

Then it clicked, the Em chord, first chord in the progression is E-G-B; the pluck was E and the high sub G thus creating a harmony that sounded good. I've just always assumed that the sub is always the same note as a high counterpart (although in most dubstep, it is the same note... does that mean playing the same notes in a layer over each other is fine, but they may sound muffled and more unified (frequences overlapping?) and you won't get the vibez from a chord that would have been created? )

After the 4 bar loop, I do the same thing with the pluck playing C and the high sub playing E, once again I *think* I hear a different vibe than if they were the same note it sounds okay.

Does this mean I could incorporate all elements in the song to play specific pitches in accordance to a main synths notes, thus creating chords? What about the big kick drum always hitting E? is that "okay"?

I'm not trying to put music in a box and I know there are no rules, I'm just trying to wrap my head around this and I feel understanding these "rules" will make it easier and more fun to write, and will allow me to purposely break the rules rather than stumble around them.

Someone should let me know if any of my thoughts are close to the target here...

[mthrfnk]

Slightly confusing post... are you saying "is it okay to have different layered instruments playing different notes, making a 'chord'?"
If so, of course it is, it's one of the best ways to get a track to sound really nice imo - it effectively fills out your frequency spectrum because you're utilising multiple instruments over multiple notes simulataneously rather than everything playing straight notes which gets boring.

Edit: Just as an example in this track I'm working on atm, I have one synth playing the the upper, lowest, and lowest note -1 octave of the chords, two other synths playing the middle, upper and upper +1oct notes and a bass and sub line that is effectively a counter combination of the notes, plus a lead on top that is playing a melody from the same scale... probably explained that badly but you get the idea. This way the synths fill the bulk of the midrange, the basslines I've been able to shift down to the F#/G region making them sound nicer (imo) and the lead fits in the top end.

[Sinergy]

Alright whew, this is starting to make sense. So basically, the 3 chord progression up there, I could potentially use to write a whole song, cycling through it infinitely? Do you ever switch progressions? Or do you pick one for the entire song the same way you pick a key for a song (I now some songs change key, but thats beside the point)

My main concern here is, I know that whatever I've created by having the pitch of the high sub a note in an incomplete chord with the pluck, I like. But then it confuses me because many many bass heavy songs the sub bass is from what I can tell most of the time is the same note as say a midrange counterpart. Is what i'm creating sounding good simply because the sub is a very high one with a lot of harmonics? Will having that high sub a different pitch make the plucks sound disjointed from the sub and therefore not as "heavy"?

[SunkLo]

You don't have to stick to the same chord progressions. Although a lot of songs do and there's ways to outline a harmonic progression in different ways without it seeming like the same thing repeating endlessly.

A chord is just an organized hierarchy of notes. Assuming you're not making modal jazz, all of those notes will belong to whatever key you're playing in. The harmony at any given point will consist of intervals stacked on top of a root note. In pretty much all cases the interval is a third. So you have whatever instruments outlining this hierarchy, playing notes that are thirds away from each other, all pointing back to the root note. If you keep stacking thirds you come full circle and end up playing every note from the scale as upper extensions. You could call that a 7 add 9,11,13 chord or something. It would sound exceedingly shit in most scenarios due to it being too cluttered.

Remember I said chords are a hierarchy. Basically the lower notes are more stable and the upper notes are heard more as passing tones or extra color added on to the harmony. When I say lower notes I mean structurally, not necessarily their location on the keyboard, although the two are usually related. You could take the third of a chord and put it an octave lower than the root. This is called a chord inversion. The root is still the foundation of the chord even though it's not necessarily the lowest note.

To understand where this hierarchy comes from, check out the overtone series. In short, most periodic waveforms you hear in the world have harmonics at multiples of the fundamental frequency and those harmonics form musical intervals above that fundamental. This could be what you're hearing, some interaction between the bass harmonics and upper chord notes. If you look at the overtone series, you'll see the first interval to emerge after the octave is the fifth. A fifth is very powerful and lends stability to a chord. Playing the fifth of a chord inverted below the root (like in a sub bassline) can sound beefy. This is where power chords come from. Next interval after that is a third which gives the major/minor quality to the chord. So the third is responsible for setting the chord's harmonic context. 6 out of 7 diatonic chords have a perfect fifth. Whereas 3 of them have a major third and the other 4 have a minor third. So by including the third in a chord, you're distinguishing the harmony as major or minor. Adding a seventh helps classify it further. Without a third or seventh, a chord doesn't have a major or minor tonality, so they're important degrees for establishing harmony. You can then add another third and get a ninth, then an eleventh and finally a thirteenth, which are just aliases for the second, fourth, and sixth degrees when they're making up the upper extensions of a chord.

As you get farther from the root and fifth in a chord, you're trading off stability for harmonic color. So keep that in mind when you're building harmony parts. The upper extensions can't hold up a chord since they're too weak. The lower degrees serve as the foundation, the octave and fifth, followed by the third and seventh. The upper extensions are used more for a bit of exotic color or as passing notes. For instance the ninth degree of a major chord can be the same note as the fifth degree of the next chord, so by playing it you can help transition between the two. Which leads into the next point...

Most of the time you'll have different instruments holding down different notes in the harmony. This keeps things from getting too crowded, especially if the instruments are in the same frequency range. An important concept for writing harmony parts is voice leading, which ties into chord inversions like I mentioned before. Basic voice leading involves looking from the perspective of one instrument, say the bass. You want it to move smoothly from the note it's currently playing to a note in the next chord. Depending on what that chord is, the nearest note might not be the same degree as the one currently being played. For instance if you're playing the root of a C chord (C,E,G) and the next chord is a G chord (G,B,D) instead of making a big jump up to G, you can slide that bass note down one to B, or up one to D, which would be the third or fifth of the G chord. If you take the same approach with the other instruments then you'll have really smooth chord changes instead of sounding like you glued your hand in the same position and banged it up and down the keyboard.

Once you learn that approach, you don't necessarily have to pick the nearest note, just the one that creates the most interesting contour. Think of it like creating individual melody parts for each voice which just so happen to land on the notes from the chord you want to play. This is treading into the waters of counterpoint, which is the idea of seemingly independent melodies that happen to work together harmonically. You can trace the structure of a chord progression in many different ways, using different melodies and different chord voicings. This is what enables you to play over the same repeating harmonic structure without it being super boring to listen to.



Bonus round! That interval hierarchy I was talking about also applies to chord progression. The most common movement between chords is a downward fifth (like moving from a G chord to a C chord) It's not just the intervals between chords; where the chords sit in the scale plays a big part as well. For instance moving from the fifth degree of a scale to the tonic is much more common than moving from the sixth degree to the second degree. Even though they're both moving an interval of a fifth, where they are relative to the parent scale/key is important. Moving down an interval of a fifth from a chord built on the fifth degree to the tonic chord is the most fundamental harmonic progression you can make in a key, which is why it shows up everywhere from classical to jazz.

So when writing chord progressions, keep in mind the intervals between the chords, and what degree of the key/scale those chords represent. Some chords are more stable than others depending on those factors. A half diminished chord built on the seventh degree wants to resolve to the tonic much in the same way that the dominant fifth chord from above does. (Compare B,D,F -> C,E,G and G,B,D -> C,E,G) They both share a lot of notes, and the root of the seventh chord is only a half step from the root of the tonic chord, which causes it to want to resolve upward, much like the third degree of the dominant fifth chord. (B making the half-step up to C in both these examples) This is known as chromaticism which is a powerful tool in transitions that creates a lot of movement.

Anyway, there are tons more relationships within music for you to explore. Hopefully I've enlightened/confused you enough for today.

Got no hash but I think it's time for some coffee.

[mthrfnk]

You don't have to stick to the same chord progressions. Although a lot of songs do and there's ways to outline a harmonic progression in different ways without it seeming like the same thing repeating endlessly.

A chord is just an organized hierarchy of notes. Assuming you're not making modal jazz, all of those notes will belong to whatever key you're playing in. The harmony at any given point will consist of intervals stacked on top of a root note. In pretty much all cases the interval is a third. So you have whatever instruments outlining this hierarchy, playing notes that are thirds away from each other, all pointing back to the root note. If you keep stacking thirds you come full circle and end up playing every note from the scale as upper extensions. You could call that a 7 add 9,11,13 chord or something. It would sound exceedingly shit in most scenarios due to it being too cluttered.

Remember I said chords are a hierarchy. Basically the lower notes are more stable and the upper notes are heard more as passing tones or extra color added on to the harmony. When I say lower notes I mean structurally, not necessarily their location on the keyboard, although the two are usually related. You could take the third of a chord and put it an octave lower than the root. This is called a chord inversion. The root is still the foundation of the chord even though it's not necessarily the lowest note.

To understand where this hierarchy comes from, check out the overtone series. In short, most periodic waveforms you hear in the world have harmonics at multiples of the fundamental frequency and those harmonics form musical intervals above that fundamental. This could be what you're hearing, some interaction between the bass harmonics and upper chord notes. If you look at the overtone series, you'll see the first interval to emerge after the octave is the fifth. A fifth is very powerful and lends stability to a chord. Playing the fifth of a chord inverted below the root (like in a sub bassline) can sound beefy. This is where power chords come from. Next interval after that is a third which gives the major/minor quality to the chord. So the third is responsible for setting the chord's harmonic context. 6 out of 7 diatonic chords have a perfect fifth. Whereas 3 of them have a major third and the other 4 have a minor third. So by including the third in a chord, you're distinguishing the harmony as major or minor. Adding a seventh helps classify it further. Without a third or seventh, a chord doesn't have a major or minor tonality, so they're important degrees for establishing harmony. You can then add another third and get a ninth, then an eleventh and finally a thirteenth, which are just aliases for the second, fourth, and sixth degrees when they're making up the upper extensions of a chord.

As you get farther from the root and fifth in a chord, you're trading off stability for harmonic color. So keep that in mind when you're building harmony parts. The upper extensions can't hold up a chord since they're too weak. The lower degrees serve as the foundation, the octave and fifth, followed by the third and seventh. The upper extensions are used more for a bit of exotic color or as passing notes. For instance the ninth degree of a major chord can be the same note as the fifth degree of the next chord, so by playing it you can help transition between the two. Which leads into the next point...

Most of the time you'll have different instruments holding down different notes in the harmony. This keeps things from getting too crowded, especially if the instruments are in the same frequency range. An important concept for writing harmony parts is voice leading, which ties into chord inversions like I mentioned before. Basic voice leading involves looking from the perspective of one instrument, say the bass. You want it to move smoothly from the note it's currently playing to a note in the next chord. Depending on what that chord is, the nearest note might not be the same degree as the one currently being played. For instance if you're playing the root of a C chord (C,E,G) and the next chord is a G chord (G,B,D) instead of making a big jump up to G, you can slide that bass note down one to B, or up one to D, which would be the third or fifth of the G chord. If you take the same approach with the other instruments then you'll have really smooth chord changes instead of sounding like you glued your hand in the same position and banged it up and down the keyboard.

Once you learn that approach, you don't necessarily have to pick the nearest note, just the one that creates the most interesting contour. Think of it like creating individual melody parts for each voice which just so happen to land on the notes from the chord you want to play. This is treading into the waters of counterpoint, which is the idea of seemingly independent melodies that happen to work together harmonically. You can trace the structure of a chord progression in many different ways, using different melodies and different chord voicings. This is what enables you to play over the same repeating harmonic structure without it being super boring to listen to.



Bonus round! That interval hierarchy I was talking about also applies to chord progression. The most common movement between chords is a downward fifth (like moving from a G chord to a C chord) It's not just the intervals between chords; where the chords sit in the scale plays a big part as well. For instance moving from the fifth degree of a scale to the tonic is much more common than moving from the sixth degree to the second degree. Even though they're both moving an interval of a fifth, where they are relative to the parent scale/key is important. Moving down an interval of a fifth from a chord built on the fifth degree to the tonic chord is the most fundamental harmonic progression you can make in a key, which is why it shows up everywhere from classical to jazz.

So when writing chord progressions, keep in mind the intervals between the chords, and what degree of the key/scale those chords represent. Some chords are more stable than others depending on those factors. A half diminished chord built on the seventh degree wants to resolve to the tonic much in the same way that the dominant fifth chord from above does. (Compare B,D,F -> C,E,G and G,B,D -> C,E,G) They both share a lot of notes, and the root of the seventh chord is only a half step from the root of the tonic chord, which causes it to want to resolve upward, much like the third degree of the dominant fifth chord. (B making the half-step up to C in both these examples) This is known as chromaticism which is a powerful tool in transitions that creates a lot of movement.

Anyway, there are tons more relationships within music for you to explore. Hopefully I've enlightened/confused you enough for today.

Got no hash but I think it's time for some coffee.

Excellent post, thanks!

[SunkLo]

I should compile all my theory posts and turn them into a book. I'm sure there's enough of them that I could just copy and paste without having to actually write anything else hahah

[Crimsonghost]

Very nice SunkLo.

Also, check out how orchestral pieces are put together. A very basic example would be;

Double bass- root
Cello - octave above root
Viola - fifth above cello
Violin- 3rd in octave higher than cello.
Violin 2 - 7th in same octave as other violin.

So you see, you're using different voicing with different instruments to form chords.

[R3b_Official]

My mind is blown..... I know very little of music theory but that sunklo just opened my mind to different possibilities when composing a song. I used to think songs as individual instruments playing but now its more of each one is based on another one. I wish i had the chance to be a band geek in middle school or even take a music theory class this year.

[titchbit]

my piano teacher has been teaching me those exact same concepts the past few weeks sunklo. did you learn that from a teacher or did you read it?

[mks]

I have some posts from years ago talking about the circle of fifths and about how to use them going to left, resolving from the dominant to the tonic.

At the very minimum, you can outline a chord with just a third and a seventh if you need to, particularly the the bass in playing the root. The third will tell you if it's major or minor and the 7th will tell you if it's major or dominant.

In fact if you move to the left in the circle of fifths, in the direction of diatonic cadences, 3rds become 7ths and vice versa for every chord resolving from the dominant to the tonic.

For this reason you can use these thirds and sevenths as your leading to going into the next chord if you wish.

[SunkLo]

Mostly self-taught.

I was kind of hinting at the third and seventh thing but never explained it further. As mks says, you can voice lead smoothly down a progression of fifths playing only the third and seventh. They take turns descending down a degree and swap roles each chord change. So in a ii-V-I progression, the third of the ii chord becomes the seventh of the V chord and the seventh of the ii chord descends a half step to become the third of the V chord. Then that third of the V chord becomes the seventh of the I chord, while the seventh descends half a step to become the third of the I chord.

[titchbit]

^what books or websites do you recommend?

[SunkLo]

There's not actually many people teaching a holistic view of theory unfortunately. You have to feel limited and confused by harmony until you get to the jazz level and see how everything connects. A drummer friend of mine just started playing bass a while ago and I told him to practice modes and their respective arpeggios right after learning intervals and how the major scale is constructed from two tetrachords.

Mark Levine's books are good, assuming you have a beginner understanding of harmony. If you read about harmony from a couple different perspectives you'll get it eventually.

[wolf89]

Then eventually you do this. huheuheue


Sorry bit drunk

[test_recordings]

Yeah to be honest I just throw stuff around, I really need to listen to more jazz to get the hang of it.

Having a keyboard for real time practice helps a lot though, you can bash stuff out on the fly so you don't have to guess l@on the sequencer

[mmjdw]

Essentially your question here is "is it alright if different instruments play different notes"