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ChipMusic.org / Forums / Posts by n00bstar
What's all this music theory crap? Ya just gotta write what FEELS good. That's how it's done, yo.
Fortunately nobody ever said "What's all this gravity crap? Stuff falls DOWN. That's how it's done, yo." or this species would be as retarded as you are.
It's not because something was written by ear and feels good that it can't be analyzed to understand more about what makes it tick.
Do not go to those technology/production scams. You'll learn nothing of value. Read more, watch tutorials, and most importantly... do it. Trial an error is where you'll get your chops. You won't become and sound engineer/producer/blabla in school.
n00bstar wrote:Ah yeah. This synth almost makes me want to buy an analog again. It's got some sweet growl to it, and a fairly unique setup too. How much are they going for these days?
almost?
you only "almost" want an analog again?
the cs01 and mopho are two of the only untouchable parts of my setup....
i question your gearlust...
Hehe. I've owned a lot of the classics at one point or another in the 90s during the first wave of analog revivalism (and back when the prices were still reasonable heh). Then years later I worked in a music store so I could just borrow whatever they had when I wanted. Gearlust left me years ago 
And today's synths leave me fairly unimpressed anyways. The only two analogs I had a soft spot for in the last decade or so were the Little Phatty and MiniBrute. In both cases it's because they have a very distinct character and a few weird routing possibilities that are both unique and limiting. Too many synths today do "everything". My friend has a Mopho and I borrowed it for a while to check it out a bit, like all the other dave smith hybrids, it didn't to anything for me. Too clean.. too plastic, no distinct personality to it.
While there is a definite charm to hardware synths, I find that today's syntheads mostly don't know how to use analogs properly. Most of these synths today end up being sampled with entry level soundcards and then processed digitally, which for me entirely defeats the entire purpose of using analogs in the first place. Maybe I'm just a tired old fart, but if I'm not going to end up hooking the synths to a noisy analog board and end up dumping it all to tape before it gets sampled and burned to CD, then I'd rather just use VSTs.
Ah yeah. This synth almost makes me want to buy an analog again. It's got some sweet growl to it, and a fairly unique setup too. How much are they going for these days?
One more tutorial has been posted!
Haha. It's my gaming ID. Been using that for years online and it kinda grew on me I used to go under the name Random a long time ago, but seeing as there is another Random making chip music now... I might as well leave it to him. But yeah.. I'm 35, been making music since I was 10, and playing guitar since I was 15 (yknow.. around the time you realize a guitar can get you laid, exactly five years before you realize it never does).
This inspired me to write another klystrack tutorial (although most of the info is good for any software) about arpeggios
I often like to imply the dom7th rather than play it out from a single chordable instrument. Like leave the underlying chord major but use things like the lead/solo, hell even the bass sometimes, to finish on the appropriate note to form a dom7th. Or if I'm to include it in the chord itself, I like to bring it into the chord at the last possible moment and go from the major to the 7th like so many old rock n rollers did.
Or yknow.. just go all out and use it on every damn chord 1-4-5 progressions all in 7ths? Fuck yeah! On the guitar I like to leave out the fifth (because of the dead-easy three strings movable shape) and just play root, third and seventh. The third still gives it that distinctive major sound, and the fifth can be given to another instrument entirely or just used for fills here and there.
We need a music section on this forum.
The phrases create a harmonic structure as they are brought in and out...
Ah! You mean how two single-note lines come together to imply the chords? I'm a big fan of that. In my opinion that's a big part of what separates a song from a doodle: if you can reduce the essence of it to be played on a single acoustic guitar then you probably have something.
I was a fan of Daft Punk since before the release of Homework, my cousin had the vinyl for Rock n Roll / Rollin n Scratchin. If I'm not mistaken, one of them was classically trained on the piano, and the other still uses his guitar to compose the tracks. A bit like the semi-copycat Justice that compose most of their song on piano and bass before switching every notes for samples.
If I could go back in time though, I'd travel to these guys and tell them "oi.. guys, ease up on the sidechaining, cause in five years every god damn dance act is gonna hop on that particular bandwagon and ruin dynamics forever"
Some of my favorites that I owned were the Moog MG1, Juno 106, Audity 2000, DrumStation (well.. half of it is a drum synth), TB303, Yamaha AN1X.
At the peak of my synth years, I had well over 20 full size keyboards in my bedroom. Didn't even need to turn on the heating in the winter hah. I eventually got tired and sold all of them and I have no regrets, except perhaps for the MG1 which was my first synth ever so it's a sentimental thing really. Years later I got into old electric pianos and acquired a few Rhodes and Wurlys. They were great fun for recording but shit to store and maintain.
Right now my only keyboard is the trusty Nord Stage 88. It really does 90% of what I need to have, and for those few moments where I need more in-depth synthesis, I turn to VSTs like Massive, Predator and FM7.
It's playing notes? Heh. Can't beat you to something I don't understand. What are you trying to analyze on it?
15 years of video game development.... which leads me to make shit money and get fired every two years or so when the studio I'm working for close down.
KIDS: DO NOT WORK IN VIDEO GAMES UNLESS ITS YOUR OWN BUSINESS.
But in response to the original post. I found out, just like chunter, that music got a whole lot more fun and my skills got a damn lot better when I threw out my dreams of rockstardom and just started enjoying it for myself. I've earned a "living" with music before, composing for games, tv, ads and stuff like that. It's shit work and its not constant. Like so many other things, you'll see people with half a quarter of a third of your talent and passion get all the contracts and half ass them. Being a working musician outside of being in a super successful band mostly means know how to sell yourself more than know how to make music. That didn't suit me at all since I couldn't sell myself out of a soggy paper bag. I opted for the 9-to-5. I needed stability. That stability got me a much nicer studio setup than the music contracts that were barely putting any butter on the proverbial bread.
Aye, don't worry I know my stuff and I trust my ears too. 20 years of blues guitar playing here In fact I trust my ears a whole lot more than I trust theory. That's probably why I end up borrowing chords elsewhere instead of keeping key hehe. The intention was just to mentally masturbate this with other people who have some theory in their baggage.
I know what you mean by any note is fair game in blues, but non scale notes are mostly passing chromatisms and pretty much only used in melodies, very rarely in the composition of the chords themselves that tend to revolve around simple major/minor/dom7th. And to make things even more convoluted, the blues scale tends to fit pretty much perfectly over both minor and major progressions.
I guess when I play my guitar I don't even ask these questions since it's all second nature to me by now. But this particular song I was composing on the piano where I am much more theoritical since it's not my main instrument and I tend to fall out of my usual 'patterns' of playing.
It's fun to have these conversations though.. it's sorely lacking on this forum.. yknow, music stuff, not just backlights and carts 
My best understanding is that this is an example of referencing parallel key signatures. The G major and C major chords imply G major, but the flattened 3rd (the Bb major chord) is borrowed from the natural/melodic minor key of G. I've seen this progression with D major tagged on the end too; the dominant chord from the G major scale. So.. yeah, G major with a borrowed chord from that parallel minor seems to be an answer.
Yeah that's also what I've come up with. It's mostly G Major but I borrow a chord elsewhere.
G BLUES ROCK SCALE
Since the blues scales is just a minor pentatonic with an added note, there's technically no B in it for the G major chord. And if I use a major pentatonic, there's no A#. That was the original questions basically
If G is home (tonic), you're going G (I), to what is actually Bb (bIII), and C (IV). This doesn't fall into a specific key other than to say it's G Major but with a flat major 3.
Yeah that's what I thought it was.. I just wasn't sure if there actually was something better that could actually include all those those notes neatly.
To bring it back to G, use a D7 chord.
I'm a huge fan of the dominant 7th too, but in this particular song it doesn't fit at all. I mean sure it'll create the tension for a resolve on G but the flavour of the 7th itself is too dense for the simplicity of the rest.
In any case, there's no need to overthink it.
The whole point was to overthink it I'm not having difficulties writing the song or anything, I was just curious if people could perhaps fit it all into one nifty scale.
Also.... and this is where I started to mentally masturbate too much with this... I was assuming I was in G Major with a borrowed chord. So for my middle eight I went to the relative minor, Em, and now I can't make it resolve back to a G, it wants to resolve on the Em every damn time no matter what twisted fucked up path I take through the chords.
ARGH.
A# major would make my G chord a minor one, and I'm using a major there.
And if I'm in G major, then A# isn't possible.
If I'm in G minor, I have the A# available but both my G and C would need to be minor.
It's really starting to rustle my jimmies because this progression has been used ad nauseum in rock history so yknow.. we know its VALID somehow. But the more I look at it, the more I'm starting to think its simply a G Major with a borrowed chord from another key. I don't think it fits any scale because you have both a B note and a A#/Bb note in the progression.
Hell I've even looked at all the modes, and nothing seems to fit.
Riddle me this?
In what key/scale/mode am I if my progression is G major, A# major, C major ?
It's a super easy, very well known sequence of chords, but I'm trying to intellectualize it needlessly right now. I know a fair bit of theory but I find myself at a loss with this one. My G is clearly where I resolve this progression, but not scale that I know of have these three chords in.
Am I just breaking key here? Or am I missing something super obvious?
ChipMusic.org / Forums / Posts by n00bstar