This week we’re taking our Beginner’s Guide To Music Theory up a level so, in under 35 mins, you can learn and take your understanding of music theory with this deep but concise look at writing better chords and progressions, time-signatures, different phrasings, polymeters and syncopation.
As with our previous Music Theory course, this is a constant learning curve, but vital in getting your tracks to stand out, be more varied and grab the listener’s attention.
Although aimed at beginners, this course is definitely one for all abilities to dive into and guaranteed to help inspire and create more interesting tunes.
This must be the best tutorial I have ever watched regarding music theory, for beginners, in the context of using a DAW. Even though there were many concepts I knew about, everything is a lot more clearer now (e.g. melody notes and spacing in octaves). If we could get more parts to this series, that would be amazing. Things like: where does the melody sit in relation to the chords, what to look for in the timings/lengths of bass/chords/melodies (how to make them work together), and how to make EQ decisions based on these elements and the drums, introduction of new elements (some examples were given in the first two parts) and/or taking some out. I believe the thing that made this straightforward and easy was the focus on just a couple of concepts in one part short video with great examples.
how to space bass/chords/melodies within octaves, and how to make those decisions based on the length of the notes you use; how to EQ them separately/context and if EQ can help the decision to space them out; how to EQ all these elements in context of each other and what regions on the spectrum should you look at for muddiness/frequency masking based on the notes playing (because that’s what the main issue is for new/unexperienced producers; all tutorials address “eq this; eq that”, but there is no music theory behind it; “if it sounds good, it is good” is not knowledge, only trial and error, in my opinion); essentially, how to declutter your mix through song writing
this is one I wrote briefly on a different thread; how to EQ note changes and considerations in context of the above bass/chords/melody; even how to make the decision of whether using the bass as the root note or not (sometimes that is not the best option)
how to make decisions of when to borrow chords, what considerations you need to look at; then how to write your drums around the melody/chords (for groove), and vice versa, to make them complement each other; maybe look at breaks/pauses between notes played and how to build suspense based on song writing; techniques to write chords/melodies (when to go up/down/stay on same note based on the note lengths) and build those song journeys.
I really hope to see some videos addressing some of these topics. I, personally, believe, with the introduction of DAWs music theory just became much easier to learn and you don’t need to be particularly “talented” at singing/playing to make a good producer/dj.
But, I will be honest, the forums seem a bit dead, so I don’t know how many people do use the website and how feasible it is, from a financial aspect, to pour this kind of knowledge and charge only $10-15/month.
Great tutorial but I’m finding glitches in some graphics - for example the black keys on the piano roll of Disclosure/Holding On seem to be wrong for the named notes.
My example is Tutorial 02 - Seventh Chords - at around 2mins 24 secs. I can see at the extreme left that the black keys are in line with the annotated notes but, frustratingly, it looks like the grey rows that the annotated notes sit on are not properly lined up to the black notes on the left of the screen.
Hope this makes sense. It’s not a glitch on every example so not sure what’s happened with this one.
