So I usually just make drums, bass sounds & jam them out using any old random notes and 'voila I have a tune'….

I'm going to attempt to write musical arrangements - and have some questions:

If I was to pick a scale for Dance music - say B Minor = B, C♯, D, E, F♯, G


Can I sequence these notes in any order for melody, bassline, top line, arpeggio and it will work every time because they all are in the same scale + will just work?

When it come's to chords - is it ok to use Major and Minor chords adding 3rds, 5th's, 7th's etc to the notes listed above?… even though some of these notes will then fall out of the scale notes listed above?

Well, yeah. Scales aren't meant to tell you what you can or can't use. Remaining strictly diatonic is pretty boring.

Check this out, it's pretty awesome:

http://audio.tutsplus.com/tutorials/music-theory/guitar-chor ds-piano-1/

Spend some time just playing around with chord progressions. Listen to where the tones want to move. The more you do this, the less you rely on constructs like scales.

The simplest thing to say is; if it sounds good, it is good.
Feel free to stop there and not read any more



Not necessarily. Just because the notes belong to the same scale (diatonic) doesn't mean that they will always sound good together (consonant). For example, if you have a C# and a D sounding at the same time, the result is going to be a clash (dissonant), even though both notes belong to B minor.



Well, you can, but then you're leaving B minor (chromatic). This is not necessarily a bad thing. However, to stick in B minor and give the work more coherence, use only (or at least mostly) triads that are found within B minor (diatonic).

So, this leaves you with the following possible chords, all of which belong to B minor:

B minor (B-D-F#)
C# diminished (C#-E-G)
C# minor (C#-E-G#)
D major (D-F#-A)
E minor (E-G-B)
E major (E-G#-B)
F# major (F#-A#-C#)
F# minor (F#-A-C#)
G major (G-B-D)
A# diminished (A#-C#-E)
A major (A-C#-E)

Note that these take into account the variable nature of the 6th and 7th degrees of minor keys. Some of these triads will work easier than others (there are voice-leading concerns and so on).

For more information, check out my Introduction to Music Theory.

there are no quick fixes or perfect formulae really. if you're at all serious, you need to disabuse yourself of this kind of idea.
it's done all the time. adhering to scale tones might be safer but you might run into a problem of bland sameness. it depends. at this point you want to start picking up what you like by ear and analyzing it and see what your model has done.

sorry for the offtopic, but how did the OP write these sharp signs?

I do it the other way around! So write a melody or chord sequence or whatever and then figure out what key it is in and what other sorts of tonalities you can use. It would be pretty dull if you just picked a scale randomly and decided to only use notes from that.

Maybe read this:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Using-speci al-characters-Character-Map-frequently-asked-questions

Most of the time, yes.



Most of the time, no.
Last edited by Vospi on Wed Feb 27, 2013 1:08 am; edited 1 time in total

alt key codes, hold down alt and use the numbers in the table

http://researchmaniacs.com/Symbols/AltKeyCodes.html