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In progressive rock, certain types of electronica and free jazz there isn't much repetition - you can hear the song go through distinct passages which helps to build interest and keep the listener engaged and even at times disoriented, in a good way. It's not as simple as varying the beat several times or filtering a sample either - sometimes, the song will change completely, chord-wise, BPM wise or whatever. I'm sure you guys have all heard em.

But despite that, the change doesn't sound abrupt - it sounds natural, like it's the inevitable flow of the track. Even when it feels like it should just be another song lazily tacked on, it feels cohesive and musical.

I'm looking for tips on how to create progressive changes in my arrangement. I'm certain there is some music theory behind it to keep the musical relationships, for instance.

Again, this isn't just a question on how to keep interest in my track - it's about how to create completely different passages, all while keeping it musically related and natural.

Interestingly enough, I've been realizing lately that the melodic "simplicity" (aka repetitiveness, aka lack of differentiated structure) in much EDM was born out of the technical limitations of the playback systems they were intended for; as such, wild key changes over the span of more than an octave are very, very difficult to pull off without sounding wonky in a bad way.

That being said...

Jazz-based forms often deliberately buck music theory conventions; as in, once you know enough of the rules you can consciously break them. The only thing you need to be a jazz musician is a very, very thorough knowledge of your instrument and what it can do.

You might want to check out some of Funckarma's stuff. They're one of the few acts I can think of off the top of my head that successfully merge jazz abstraction into electronic beats/bass.

alphacat wrote:Interestingly enough, I've been realizing lately that the melodic "simplicity" (aka repetitiveness, aka lack of differentiated structure) in much EDM was born out of the technical limitations of the playback systems they were intended for; as such, wild key changes over the span of more than an octave are very, very difficult to pull off without sounding wonky in a bad way.

That being said...

Jazz-based forms often deliberately buck music theory conventions; as in, once you know enough of the rules you can consciously break them. The only thing you need to be a jazz musician is a very, very thorough knowledge of your instrument and what it can do.

You might want to check out some of Funckarma's stuff. They're one of the few acts I can think of off the top of my head that successfully merge jazz abstraction into electronic beats/bass.

That's quite interesting because my friend, who did a classical performance degree and I had a discussion about jazz recently, and he said he was floored at how knowledgeable you had to be of music theory in order to be an improvisational jazz musician.

He also mentioned that there was an argument that "jazz was the natural progression of classical", which I also found intriguing.

And thanks for the recommendation, I'll hit them up. Jazz was the first thing that came to mind when it came to changes, but there are also a few acts that do sudden and abrupt changes well even without free form jazz - for instance, bands in prog rock, and I find their changes to be different to jazz improv in terms of structure.

Either way, I'm interested in many ways of achieving interesting and sudden progressions/changes regardless of genre. I suppose it would be fairly tricky pulling it off in the Ableton realm but I'm keen to give it a go

zeta wrote:That's quite interesting because my friend, who did a classical performance degree and I had a discussion about jazz recently, and he said he was floored at how knowledgeable you had to be of music theory in order to be an improvisational jazz musician.

He also mentioned that there was an argument that "jazz was the natural progression of classical", which I also found intriguing.

Yep.

People view jazz as a shedding of rules, whereas I just see jazz as a music form with more plastic rules. The grid's still there, you can just warp and twist it.

I do this sort of progressive arrangement a lot. Honestly most of the time is just comes from creating a new empty loop and working on it with the same instruments in isolation. Then trying to make a bridge from the previous part to the current one. You kind of need to be able to interpolate between what you're doing, rhythmically, harmonically, and in terms of local structure and arrangement.

So rhythmically, if the second section accents different parts of the beat, you need to be able to transition into that, or at least transition the parts that you want to be smooth. It may actually be more effective to put accents where there were previously rests. It depends on context what needs to be smoothed over and what should have contrast.

Harmonically, understanding chord functions is pretty helpful. You kind of need an intuitive understanding of tonal gravity and how to reharmonize if need be. Again, you might not want the transition to be smooth if contrast is important. This is where jazz harmony is invaluable.

Then when I say local structure and arrangement, I mean phrasing of different instruments. In other words, what the cadence of each instrument is. (Not referring to specifically harmonic cadences, although that can be considered as well) So for example if your bass line is pretty busy and your drums are laid back with some keys tucked in to provide some extra harmonic reinforcement, and then you switch to a part with a more barebones bass with the keys taking on more of a melodic role, there's a difference in phrasing here. You're dealing with energy or tension and release between different parts. This is also something you can interpolate with during transitions between sections. You're also gonna be taking into account the macro arrangement of the song though. So for instance, if you're entering the break section, it makes sense to have a contrast between it and the previous part. You'll probably have a noticeable drop in energy, produced, in some part, by the phrasing and arrangement of that particular section.

Arranging is a fractal quality, ranging from the span of a beat or less, up to the arrangement of the full song. The push/pull, tension/release principles apply here and are the tools you use to create fluidity or contrast from the micro scale up to the macro scale.