Ultra basic intro to music theory using Ableton Live. Also, could do with some expert assistance.

[tapper mike]

With guitar it's not as key centric as it is chord centric based on the open notes of a standard tuning guitar. EADGBE

Guitarists rarely work out Emajor as a first scale. Usually it's G or C. The "Royal Key" of guitar is A. Usually when study lessons are presented regarding Scalar patterns, melody, melodic phrases, riffs They are offered up in the key of A.

Guitarists gravitate to the familiar if they stick to standard tuning the most common keys are....EADGCF If the spend anytime in Jazz they add Bb and Eb. You remember what you perform in more-so then what you study for. I practice scales in all keys and most common modes. It's a lot of practice to stay sharp. Most would only need to practice in keys relevant to their material. I've never played a song in C# and I've played thousands upon thousands of songs thru the years. I've only played 2 ever in B.

[JumpingJackFlash]

Out of interest, G and F are only a sharp and flat away from C - what makes it easier to learn clarinet in those keys? I'm assuming it's a thumb fingering if other woodwinds are anything to go by?

I meant that, on the clarinet, the first scale you are likely to play is F major. - That is F major on the (Bb) clarinet, which would sound like concert Eb major.

It would be a long story to explain it properly, but it's a question of technique in relation to the physical nature of the instrument (so, what is easier on the fingers and so on).

[kennyda]

Absolutely untrue. You can't pigeonhole genre by preference of major or minor keys or modes in general. Carlos Santana (a rock guy) has a preference towards the dorian mode. While several of his more popular songs work from the dorian mode He does write in aolean, ionian, phrygian and mixolydian not to mention borrowing from the pentatonic major and pentatonic minor.

What separates styles the most is

have a look, survey of 1500 dance tracks
http://www.lostinmusik.net/is-there-a-c ... er-is-yes/

[JumpingJackFlash]

have a look, survey of 1500 dance tracks

I find it interesting that the graph is entitled "occurrence of key signatures" which, as we all know, does not necessarily indicate the prevailing key.

It could be that a lot of dance music is just written with accidentals, either because the author is ignorant of correct key signatures, or the piece just doesn't work according to traditional tonal methods.

[robogone]

Every single one of those 1500 tracks is in a minor key?

Somehow I don't believe that...

[ghettosynth]

Absolutely untrue. You can't pigeonhole genre by preference of major or minor keys or modes in general.

I totally agree. That's not what anyone here is saying though. You can pigeonhole certain dance styles, notably trance, progressive house, and, to some extent, deep house. Minor keys are used far more often.

And, just because they stick to the white notes doesn't necessarily mean they are writing in either of these keys. If a song sticks rigidly to the notes of the A natural minor scale for example, they would probably be more correctly described as being in the "Aeolian mode" rather than the "minor key". But modality is clearly beyond the scope of the OP, so let's try not to confuse things!

Whoa! Where did that come from? Writing is kind of a heavy word here. I don't disagree with the rest, but, perhaps we envision different use cases.

From what I read at the beginning of this thread, the OP is targeting bedroom producers who know absolutely nothing but want to target a specific style. They've seen some other videos on production technique and understand some of the key sounds, rhythms, and arrangements that dominate their style of interest. When they try to create a track, however, they find that their choice of notes clicked in the grid isn't sounding like they want and they go looking for something to help them.

They first encounter phrases like "they would probably be more correctly described as being in the Aeolian mode" rather than the minor key. But modality is clearly beyond the scope of the OP" and get confused as hell.

They just want to know the basics right now and they will find the shortest path to get from where they are to where they want to be. We can debate until the cows come home about whether that's right and moral but it isn't going to change the nature of the beast.

It is no different than the impatient kid with a new guitar wanting to play songs that he knows. Teach him A,D,E and that will fuel the average curiosity quite some time. Show him how to bend strings and the first position "pentatonic box" and tell him to make stuff up but stick to those notes and he'll realize that a few restrictions to narrow the search space really help in understanding how to get a particular sound. Then teach him that moving it down three frets and make up different stuff to get a country sound and you've given him a simple framework for exploration that will allow him to explore by ear. Many people will want to eventually understand these simple rules of thumb. But, until they do, those rules of thumb convey a lot of unstated information that will limit mistakes more than they will limit creativity.

Similarly, you want to reduce the search space for the budding dance music producer. In the first page give him the key that sounds most like trance and is the easiest to play. Teach him the natural minor and sweep the details under the rug. If he goes off and just creates basslines by clicking randomly on the grid with respect to this new information, and chords by simply constructing triads on those same notes, then he is going to create something that sounds more like a trance record than by clicking without that information.

He will most likely view this movement towards his sound of choice as progress.

You have now associated learning something about theory, albeit, not all that much and something he probably doesn't find that interesting, with success in creating dance music, something that he does find interesting.

In short, I think tutorials that aim to get people going broadly in a genre should aim to first convey the simple rules of thumb that embody enough information to reduce the most serious "mistakes." Which, simply, amounts to reducing the search space of which notes to play when in order to achieve a particular sound.

Remember, the target audience must already have production software, but must not know anything about music. That immediately implies that they are targeting "production" as opposed to "writing."

[JumpingJackFlash]

Where did that come from?

I realise that was too complicated for a beginner, that's why I added the bit about "trying not to confuse things". It was not intended for the novice. I also agree with much of your post about the need to start simply and gradually build from there.

I would not expect the OP to include that paragraph in his tutorial, but the OP himself should aim to be at least one step ahead of his intended tutees.

[ghettosynth]

Where did that come from?

I realise that was too complicated for a beginner, that's why I added the bit about "trying not to confuse things". It was not intended for the novice. I also agree with much of your post about the need to start simply and gradually build from there.

No man, I get that. I was using it, perhaps inappropriately, as an example of the language that will turn beginners off. I recognize that you get that.

I would not expect the OP to include that paragraph in his tutorial, but the OP himself should aim to be at least one step ahead of his intended tutees.

No disagreement there, 60 pages ahead of the student is the running joke. That said, the most important point is doing it.

I think that the best beginner tutorials are much more genre focused and are written by people with expertise in the genre first, and more general music and production knowledge second.

[JumpingJackFlash]

I think that the best beginner tutorials are much more genre focused and are written by people with expertise in the genre first, and more general music and production knowledge second.

I guess that depends on what you're trying to teach people. What you call "general music" and "production knowledge" are all highly useful (and often necessary) things to know in and of themselves.

Even genre-specific tutorials need to contain some "general music" references, as the OP demonstrates. Mess those up and you could seriously confuse and disadvantage the student for later life. More "general music" theory can work for a variety of different genres.

[ghettosynth]

I think that the best beginner tutorials are much more genre focused and are written by people with expertise in the genre first, and more general music and production knowledge second.

I guess that depends on what you're trying to teach people.

Of course, but I think that the use case here helps to define that. I should have qualified my statement more explicitly, the language makes it seem that I'm claiming it to be true for all beginners, that's not at all what I mean.

I meant that the best beginner tutorials targeting beginners who want to get up to speed in a particular genre, are more genre focused and are...

What you call "general music" and "production knowledge" are all highly useful (and often necessary) things to know in and of themselves.

Necessary for what? I don't think that it's necessarily true that all general music and production knowledge is universally "highly useful." For example, placing mics is, in general, of little interest to trance producers. So, a trance producer who is good at trance, but not so good as a producer in general will probably produce a better tutorial for neophyte trance artists than will say Roger Nichols.

Of course, there is an implicit constraint here. Roger Nichols isn't going to produce a tutorial for future trance artists and neither is anyone else with that level of skill. So one has to assume that the tutorial producer's skill is less than some optimum.

There will always be a trade-off of skills in anyone so it comes down to a matter of what's the best way to go about it for a particular goal.

So fundamentally, I disagree that anything is necessary, and many general skills are of marginal use to those interested in genre focused music production.

Even genre-specific tutorials need to contain some "general music" references, as the OP demonstrates. Mess those up and you could seriously confuse and disadvantage the student for later life.[/g] More "general music" theory can work for a variety of different genres.

I don't agree that it's as dramatic as all that. Perfection is the enemy of the good. If you learn something incorrect you can always correct your understanding as you move on.

Further, my statement was not a binary proposition, great trance producers probably have enough experience with music to know what's important, and what's not, within their style. I think that not understanding the genre is far more detrimental to the quality of such a tutorial than having a similar limitation in music/production skills.

Of course, the OPs tutorial is not that focused. Consequently, I'm not sure that it's as useful to beginners as more genre focused tutorials.

[ghettosynth]

Every single one of those 1500 tracks is in a minor key?

Somehow I don't believe that...

They are not. If you had read the article you would have seen that the focus of the article is about mixing from a DJ's perspective. The image is misleading.

I've included the relative major keys in with each minor because dance music is mostly minor. I tested this with random subsets and the broad results are consistent: Amin is the most popular key. And do you know what the relative major is? Cmaj. The one with no black notes. This is my conclusion for why Amin is at the top of the popularity list - because it doesnt involve the black notes. Now there's nothing racist about this (!), it is just that Cmaj is the first scale learned and one that most people are comfortable with. When people start playing around on the keyboard most will naturally gravitate to these keys.

So this is just a simple distribution for mixing ease. It doesn't actually say that all of the tracks are in a minor key. What it DOES say, however, is that the most popular keys are Am or C.

He also asserts, based simply on his experience, that most dance music is in a minor key. This is more true for some genres than others, as I've stated, but it's still largely true.

Trying to argue that it isn't because it suits a perspective on the OPs tutorial is really a bit of a distraction. By dance music, I largely mean underground dance music, I really don't have any sense of the pop-dance music key distribution.

[kennyda]

I find it interesting that the graph is entitled "occurrence of key signatures" which, as we all know, does not necessarily indicate the prevailing key.

It could be that a lot of dance music is just written with accidentals, either because the author is ignorant of correct key signatures, or the piece just doesn't work according to traditional tonal methods.

maybe he just means key, people don't use score for dance music much as far as I know.

Every single one of those 1500 tracks is in a minor key?

Somehow I don't believe that...

he includes the relative majors with the minors because dance music is mainly minor

From what I read at the beginning of this thread, the OP is targeting bedroom producers who know absolutely nothing but want to target a specific style. They've seen some other videos on production technique and understand some of the key sounds, rhythms, and arrangements that dominate their style of interest. When they try to create a track, however, they find that their choice of notes clicked in the grid isn't sounding like they want and they go looking for something to help them.

They first encounter phrases like "they would probably be more correctly described as being in the Aeolian mode" rather than the minor key. But modality is clearly beyond the scope of the OP" and get confused as hell.

They just want to know the basics right now and they will find the shortest path to get from where they are to where they want to be. We can debate until the cows come home about whether that's right and moral but it isn't going to change the nature of the beast.

It is no different than the impatient kid with a new guitar wanting to play songs that he knows. Teach him A,D,E and that will fuel the average curiosity quite some time. Show him how to bend strings and the first position "pentatonic box" and tell him to make stuff up but stick to those notes and he'll realize that a few restrictions to narrow the search space really help in understanding how to get a particular sound. Then teach him that moving it down three frets and make up different stuff to get a country sound and you've given him a simple framework for exploration that will allow him to explore by ear. Many people will want to eventually understand these simple rules of thumb. But, until they do, those rules of thumb convey a lot of unstated information that will limit mistakes more than they will limit creativity.

Similarly, you want to reduce the search space for the budding dance music producer. In the first page give him the key that sounds most like trance and is the easiest to play. Teach him the natural minor and sweep the details under the rug. If he goes off and just creates basslines by clicking randomly on the grid with respect to this new information, and chords by simply constructing triads on those same notes, then he is going to create something that sounds more like a trance record than by clicking without that information.

He will most likely view this movement towards his sound of choice as progress.

You have now associated learning something about theory, albeit, not all that much and something he probably doesn't find that interesting, with success in creating dance music, something that he does find interesting.

In short, I think tutorials that aim to get people going broadly in a genre should aim to first convey the simple rules of thumb that embody enough information to reduce the most serious "mistakes." Which, simply, amounts to reducing the search space of which notes to play when in order to achieve a particular sound.

Remember, the target audience must already have production software, but must not know anything about music. That immediately implies that they are targeting "production" as opposed to "writing."

quality post! You know me better than I know myself.

I would not expect the OP to include that paragraph in his tutorial, but the OP himself should aim to be at least one step ahead of his intended tutees.

yeah, I need to get some stuff out of the way and get stuck into finishing off those tutorials. And as you say, trying to learn more than what I'm passing on.

I'm gonna cover modes in Tutorial 4

Perfection is the enemy of the good.

very true

Of course, the OPs tutorial is not that focused. Consequently, I'm not sure that it's as useful to beginners as more genre focused tutorials.

well, I suppose I'm trying to bridge the gap, in Live, between basic 'how to make a tech house bass line' type stuff, and general beginners music theory stuff, which I always found to be boring, hard to understand, and seeming to always require prior knowledge, or teaching the score/notation and twinkle twinkle little star etc.

[JumpingJackFlash]

If you learn something incorrect you can always correct your understanding as you move on.

No, this is a very sloppy mentality. If you learn something that's wrong, it's much harder to "un-learn" it later on than it is to learn it correctly in the first place.

Start with the basics by all means, but never teach something that's actually wrong. You're doing far more harm than good.

[robogone]

He also asserts, based simply on his experience, that most dance music is in a minor key.

That's not actually what he says - he says that most dance music is in a minor key, but he bases it on his own music only:

So what is the most popular key you ask? Well, I used Mixed In Key to look at the key of my 1500+ dance tracks from the past five years

It may or may not be true that most dance music is in minor keys, it's going to be guesswork really and I'm not going to comment either way as I don't know, but there's something decidedly non-scientific about using your own creations to extrapolate that everyone else does something the same way.

[robogone]

If you learn something that's wrong, it's much harder to "un-learn" it later on than it is to learn it correctly in the first place.

Very true. Particularly where physical technique is concerned. Muscle memory is very hard to unlearn.