Commonly Used Modal Scales and Chords in Electronic Music

[MfLI]

I thought my blog post regarding commonly used modal scales and chords might be of interest to you. Included are: Aeolian (most common), Phrygian (adds latin/asian flavor), Dorian (consider for uplifting, funky) and Lydian (interesting for deep, dark).

More info and downloads

You will find midi-files that include most chords and a separate one based on Apple Garageband SMART chords. The midi-files are mainly meant as a refernece. Hopefully more useful are midiChords VST presets that can be used for one key chord triggering.

A work in progress with midi-files and midiChords VST chord presets going to be added in (hopefully near) future

[jancivil]

Yeah, clicked on the Aeolian chords midi file. Absolutely useless for Aeolian, exactly the problem one would avoid. Mindlessly stepping through seventh chords (and later some things, who knows what they are? Why would you have a midi and no text to even say what the chords are?) produce the hazards of making it sound like major, all the tensions that make it pull to major are present. When you get away from this obvious major thing the impression is more of randomness.* Some of it's a real mess, too.
Any idiot can have stepped through things and slapped chords on it. Anyway, you don't know what you're doing.

Slow down and learn the thing first. Slapping chords on a mode isn't it anyway. The Bø7 we tend to want to avoid, the G7 we tend to want to avoid, particularly as given here where no mode is established. The first sounds we get are so totally C major.
Seeing 'electronic music' (you mean EDM I think, there is a whole world of electronic music that does other things) and 'modal chords', I knew this would be exactly what it is.

The thing that makes a mode is the relationship first of all to the central note; white keys, aeolian, that's the A. These chords never quite put us there. I sang an A through it, and never felt it as home. That is essential for that term 'Aeolian' to be true of these notes.

Some others will swing by to reinforce what I'm saying in a minute.

[MfLI]

jancivil: Thank's for your response. Fair enough and sorry to hear you didn't quite find what looking for.

The midi-file reps chords used starting with triads and then moving on to more rare ones: 7th, various 9th etc. I intended the midi-files as a reference only. If you really want to use those chords I would go for the VST presets for midiChords VST (I personally find it a very handy chorder ). Further, the SMART chords VST presets (Based on Apple Garageband) might serve you even better as a smaller set of chords fitting nicely together.

[jancivil]

I'm not looking for anything. What a way to distort the situation. Does it look like I'm asking? I'm telling you. I know what I'm doing. You do not. You are at a point in your development you need to learn, not act like you're teaching. I do not want to use these chords. A lot of them are completely incompetent and sound it. You actually rely on software to indicate to you the chords! Do you not realize that a person that knows this would NEVER need that? Anyone with a little bit of googling can know what to do to compile the list of seven triads. When you exceed that, your results are often bizarre, the second group is a lot of garbage for instance.

Clearly you didn't even read my post. I know from modes. There is no Aeolian mode to be found there, this is no way to proceed. The first group absolutely sounds identical with C Major. Here is a really fundamental problem, which if you knew from 'Aeolian mode', eg., you will not have. Modes do not go with arbitrarily slapping chords on all seven notes as out of tonal procedure. A couple of the chords through themselves contain tensions which pull to what is C major here. This is true of all modes you are relating to major. I'm totally sure that if you proceed like this for the rest of them, they will no more feature the identity of that mode than this one does. They will all be equally pointless exercises, you mindlessly constructing chords by this or that device for all seven tones. For this to be that mode with these seven notes, <A> MUST BE the center, the 'tonic' as it were; ONE. As I said, sing that A through these chords. At no point does it feel like home. Beyond the first group, so obviously major key, the effect is rootless pandiatonicism. The modes each have their own feeling, their own identity and the first thing we need is their relationship to ONE. If one is to put chords to it, they should enhance that feel. These destroy - no, actually they preclude it, with that first group there is no chance of the mode to assert itself - right away. But that B-F in a chord is a problem, probably should be avoided but certainly this should be known, and care taken.

Slow down and quit pretending you have it.

You had all of ten posts before coming in here with this. You don't have any need to get a lay of the land, you somehow assumed this top-down attitude out of obviously not more than a little sketchy bit of information gathering off of the internet. You should scan the music theory board and find some of the discussion of modes, particularly vis a vis chords.
You stand to learn something and I mean something really basic. How on earth do you feature you have this in order to teach it? That's amazing. Fucken EDM people, man.

[jancivil]

If you really want to use those chords I would go for the VST presets for midiChords VST (I personally find it a very handy chorder ). Further, the SMART chords VST presets (Based on Apple Garageband) might serve you even better as a smaller set of chords fitting nicely together.

No, I as a musician that knows what I'm doing have never needed that kind of crutch. It only serves as a crutch for the cripple.

[MfLI]

I guess this pretty much wraps the substance of your post: "Fucken EDM people, man." Talkin' 'bout constructive criticism - nice attitude, man...

FYI: I'm not here to teach you or anyone else anything. If the stuff ain't u'r piece of cake, simply forget about it. It is really just that simple.

[jancivil]

No, you're avoiding the actual substance I gave you by that gesture. It *constructs* some of the basics for you, actually.
You've shown the shitty attitude by posting that shite in the first place. It's just not competent. Then your 1st reply to me indicates you want to frame what went on to suit your bullshit. "sorry to hear you didn't quite find what looking for." - as if you weren't trying to assert that dynamic. Don't insult my intelligence, goddamn.

Now this. You lie to yourself by it. You can't 'wrap' the substance by this one statement. You very much typify my experience here of a particular quality, of being superficial and sketchy yet you think you know something, which typifies 'EDM'-oriented posts here for years. If you were a more honest actor you would be trying to learn rather than presenting a blog to the whole group. You would be listening before talking. You lack the basics. You can tell yourself whatever story you like about it, it doesn't change the fact that you don't know what you're doing. Your ass is showing, don't blame me for that because I pointed it out.

You need to get a lay of the land before doing this, anyway. I expressed some frustration accruing for years behind this very thing. You post for the 11th time and it's this, as if a vacuum preceded you.

You can learn from my posts but you have this top-down assessment of yourself that will in all likelihood stunt your growth.

[MfLI]

U know... From my perspective your "U better learn from me u faggen EDM artists, because I know" -style of commenting couldn't be much more a turnoff to continue this discussion any more.

If there are clear errors in the chords you as well as anyone are naturally welcome to to point them out and I'll gladly correct them.

[jancivil]

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evo ... ger-effect

The Dunning-Kruger effect describes a cognitive bias in which people perform poorly on a task, but lack the meta-cognitive capacity to properly evaluate their performance. As a result, such people remain unaware of their incompetence and accordingly fail to take any self-improvement measures that might rid them of their incompetence.
______________
Self-View Not IQ

To be clear, the main reason for the Dunning Kruger effect should not be viewed as lying in a person's general IQ. Much rather the Dunning Kruger effect seems to arise from the general top-down approach in which people estimate their own performances: In evaluating ourselves, we tend to start with preconceived notions about our general skill and then we integrate these notions into how well we think we are doing on a task.

[jancivil]

U know... From my perspective your "U better learn from me u faggen EDM artists, because I kow" -style of commenting couldn't be much more a turnoff to continue this discussion any more.

If there are clear errors in the chords you as well as anyone are naturally welcome to to point them out and I'll gladly correct them.

That was a tag-on to posts that tell you some things you need to heed. Finally your arrogant "I'm sorry you didn't find what you were looking for..." was too much, I reacted. There is only so much crap I can swallow, I expressed myself.
As I said, once I saw the thread title I totally knew what this would be, 'EDM modal chords', from years of exactly this crap. So as it happens your outrage won't be of any moment to me really. Your perspective isn't my problem. I have taken some time conveying my thoughts to you, yet I owe you nothing in this world.

I have given you indications of what to look for. There isn't anything in it for me to correct your work. Yes there is surely a better way to teach someone than being this blunt, but frankly your approach indicates to me an assessment of yourself that wouldn't be so conducive for the lesson, at this stage.
There would be no real gain from correcting it by specifics, your fundamental premise is wrong, as I already indicated to you. You have taken this thing 'modes' and decided you are clever enough to do this with it, lacking any investigation into it.

If you were thoughtful enough and respected the forum like at all, you will have browsed about looking to find your spot here, and found NUMEROUS people have undertaken this ill-advised approach and discussion ensued. You can't be real interested in modes or you would have done a little more looking around the world to see what people have done first! Your ass is showing, one of the things I felt was embarrassment for you.

Sorry, that stings, but you're either going to get a life lesson from straight talk or people will namby-pamby and coddle you as if you are a child and you'll come away having gotten away with it. And I have to be frank, I think you lack that metacognition element too much to NOT do this, it's a terrible sign. It tends to be a vicious cycle, yet it can be broken. You need to be able to look at yourself here, think about your own impulse, be a little paranoid about what the next person will think if you have a hard time basically being more self-critical. Did you not imagine there were people in the world that would bust your chops? If you can't bust your own, do imagine that many people will look at this and come away with exactly my attitude to it.
I can't enable what you did.

[MfLI]

So instead of promptly pointing out the erroneus chords you prefer to go into a pseudo psychological, completely off topic, mumbojumbo analysis about how full of s*it I am Gee, man... I simply don't get u. Honestly I don't.

Thank's for the amusement factor tho

[JumpingJackFlash]

I assume this thread will likely be locked soon, but before that happens I just want to say a couple of things just so you know that jancivil is not just one angry individual with an axe to grind...

In this case, jancivil is quite correct.
The last thing we need is someone trying to "teach" something that they barely understand themselves. The Internet is full of that kind of thing, and the result is that people come away with all sorts of misconceptions. Learning things badly is actually worse than not learning them at all. Instead of "helping" people, the exact opposite is achieved, and the cycle of ignorance continues.

For some reason, people nowadays seem to be under the impression that music is easy, that all you need to do is read a few Wikipedia articles, watch a few YouTube videos and perhaps have a handful of guitar lessons as a kid or experiment with manipulating loops in Reason (or whatever). No. If music is just a hobby, then by all means approach it however you like, but don't kid yourself that it qualifies you as any kind of authority on the subject. It does not.

In the real world, people spend decades learning and practising music and still don't come close to acquiring "expert" knowledge.

Does a one-day First Aid course qualify you to conduct open heart surgery on someone? Of course not. So it is with music.

If everyone left teaching to the teachers, we wouldn't get the misconceptions that we see here every day; students would learn things correctly, the right way in the right order, and without getting confused.

Ignorance is perfectly acceptable. But when it is mixed with arrogance, the results are invariably disastrous for all concerned.

So instead of promptly pointing out the erroneus chords...

No offence, but it's not that simple. It's not a matter of changing one or two chords; your entire approach is wrong, your entire premise is faulty.

You've got two separate things here; Tonality and Modality. You're mixing them up, trying to apply the principles of one to the other, and it doesn't work like that. There are ways of doing this kind of thing, but you need to (really) know what you're talking about, and it's much more complicated than what you've got here.

[D.Josef]

So instead of promptly pointing out the erroneus chords you prefer to go into a pseudo psychological, completely off topic, mumbojumbo analysis about how full of s*it I am Gee, man... I simply don't get u. Honestly I don't.

Thank's for the amusement factor tho

"Friend", you are completely off track. I also love EDM, so don't take this as chauvinistic or a slur or anything, but lay off the ecstasy before coming online, man.

For one, you were acting like a complete fool. When probably the most competent musician / theorist to grace this forum called you out on your nonsense, you went into a high horse teaching mode, even going to the length of suggesting software to find chords (lol).

I'd be glad to have a single percent of the proficiency Jancivil has, and I haven't needed software to pick out my chords for me for years. What you did was like... if this were a cycling forum, you said something idiotic, and a veteran road racer told you so, to which you've replied by suggesting your favorite brand of training wheels. I honestly, really wondered if you were on drugs when writing that.

Before going all "help I'm being oppressed", please try to use more humility and respect for elders, and try to learn what you can (you can learn a LOT from Jancivil, I found reading her posts here to be better than some music textbooks).

If there are clear errors in the chords you as well as anyone are naturally welcome to to point them out and I'll gladly correct them.

You're missing the point. Your entire stance is incorrect. It's not that there's something wrong with your chords, there's something wrong with the very idea they were based on. You're not only running the wrong direction, also it turns out you're on a horse race track to boot.

Modes just don't work like that.

[MfLI]

Just one more question to you guys: From which sentence in my text did you get the impression that I'm here to teach you (or anybody for that matter) something?

[JumpingJackFlash]

Just one more question to you guys: From which sentence in my text did you get the impression that I'm here to teach you (or anybody for that matter) something?

What was the point then?