i think maybe a 'fundamentals of chipmusic' manual something might be what you need.  if anyone knows a good place for this.  it would address the issues of chords and such.  a lot of applying musical knowledge to this stuff means learning about the limitations of the hardware and either working around them (arps for example), or embracing them for what they are.  there are a lot of compositional methods, you'll always be met with the same hardware limits though.

i could maybe make something like this to supplement my lsdj zine.

SUPERNERD wants to fight! wrote:

Uhh...theory is theory man. It's not like lsdj has it's own special notes. I recommend getting a guitar or piano and learning a bit on that.

Great idea. Learning music on a gameboy or a computer or something like that is far from the best way how to learn. I recommend a piano highly.

Is actually not far from the best way. Learning music and it's theoretics in a tracker is a really good way to understand for example the construction of a chord. Instead of having three fingers on some snares which makes it sound like a G you can actually see the notes on your screen forming a G.

I do agree that learning music on an instrument is a good basic but learning it on a computer is really not that bad.

if you asked a more specific question, you'd get more helpful replies!

Garbage in, garbage out.

more than just major and minor scales. i know hoping into music is intimidating for few, just trying to help a lad out

Not arguing with you there

but in the end it won't really help you to write good music

But as for applying music theory to LSDJ, I'd say the best thing to do is to experiment. Just watch some tutorials to get used to the interface and everything, but once you've got a handle on the interface and most of the functions just play around with it and see what happens. Try all the commands, test out as many things as you can find and see what they do. It takes time, but once you get it it becomes really easy.

(btw chords or should I say arpeggios are made either with tables or the C command, it makes the channel flip through different notes really quickly so it sounds like they're playing together when it's really only one note at a time)

LSDJ was always easier for me.

You're on your own, I use nanoloop haha

Nanoloop is easier
and before anyone tells me that is just an opinion, which it is; ask yourself if you can honestly say that it isnt

for me, it is easier to transfer ideas from guitar and piano to NL, making it easier to apply theory... if that is still relevant in this thread