Few questions about song writing!

[Functional]

So, I've a few questions about writing a song. Well, more over, melodies and harmony. I'm afraid that the title may be misleading, but can't come up with a better one.

Anyway, before I proceed to the questions themselves, a small background notification here.

It was about 3 months ago when I got the idea "I want to make music!". Didn't know what was an C Major or oscillator, and I thought that awesome music always was made with FM Synths like DX7.

Obviously, I know now what C Major is, or for that matter, any Major and Minor including harmonic and melodic minors as well. I've got some sense about chord progressions in terms of 1-IV-1-V ways.

This all basic, but considering how short while ago I started and with very limited time to have any practice due to nature of my life that revolves around work and sleep most of the time.


However, now...

Now seems to be the time that my musical knowledge comes finally to a finale, either I understand, or I don't.



First question I have - can I move from one scale to another in a progression, and if I can, where should I be prowling at to give it a try and start to slowly understand that way?

AS I understand, chord progressions in our scales mostly revolve around the feeling of returning back to the key note. Changing from one scale to another so far has not been succesful to me.

Good example would be the I-IV-I-V progression in C Major. Last notes hit also on G Major Tonic chord. Despite the fact that you can change from tonic chord to any, you can't change to any G Major chord after having C Major progression.

Is it even favorable to do so at all?




Next question, is a bit trickier.

For now, I understand the idea behind perfect fifths, sixths and thirds. Actually, most of others as well.

However, I find that using perfect fifths, sixths and thirds is pretty great for progression, because you can change it much easier to something else. Even as simply as changing one note of the next sequence.


But I can't understand the reason for that. I also can't get the same result from chords. I can't just simply change one note in a chord and make all the boredom in it go away. Is it just me, or can you create actually wilder things with perfect sixths and fifths as well as thirds?

In that case, it would be sad, because chords are simply more deeper to me.


Also, I believe that modulation is sort of an answer to this. But unfortunately, I can't quite understand what modulation means exactly in context of musical theory. Wikipedia article felt like a bit of ramble that I can't understand.




Thanks in advance for answers and sorry for long post as well as terrible articulation! :3

[tapper mike]

Can you change keys in a song?
Can you change scales in a song?

Yes, and Yes. It's music theory not music fact. A theory means things that have been tried and seem to work well together. Your upbringing will have a greater degree of of making a determination does it sound good then your knowledge. Same goes for everyone else in the world.

Modulation means to change keys in a song. In pop when a key change occurs it usually only changes once then changes back. Doesn't have to happen, and doesn't have to change back. It also doen't mean you have to or shouldn't try experimenting. Direct modulation means change key now. It doesn't mean work your way thru chord changes to get to a new key. So you have direct modulation and you have indirect modulation. Your choice of how you should get there.

You don't need to modulate keys to make things sound different in a song. Such as going from a verse to a chorus. You can change the order of the chord progression and the rhythmic structure to envoke "this part is different then the other part"

Theory is not carved in stone. Exceptions abound everywhere. And if you look deep enough you'll find a therum that supports the exception. At this point you should be developing your own sensibilites. The way to do that is learn covers of songs you like. It will strenghen your technique and sharpen your mind. You'll see, and hear things that don't fit into the nutshell defines key tones yet work.

The biggest thing you need to do is develop rhythm. It's a physical thing. It's not something you can do programming beats or using arpeggiators. Which also gets back to learning covers. The stronger your sense of timing, metre, rhythm the more confident you will be in your abilities and the more competent you'll show yourself as being. A simple song played well is better then a conplex song stumbled over with no life.

[elnn]

First of all, in I-IV-I-V progression in C major, the V chord is not a G major tonic chord, it's G major chord or G major triad. The tonic is the first degree of a scale, or in this case, C is the tonic (G is the dominant and F, the fourth degree, is the subdominant). It also may mean the first degree of a chord, but when dealing with progressions, it's relative to the key you're in. Therefore, even though a G7 chord is made of chordal degrees 1-3-5-b7, relatively to C major scale it's actually made of V-VII-II-IV - no tonics here.

Also, no thing as a perfect sixth. there are basically four perfect chords - perfect unison, perfect fourth, perfect fifth, and perfect octave, because of their 'neutrality' and stability. All other chords are either major or minor, e.g. a minor second, a major third, a minor sixth, a major seventh, etc. These are all distinguished by their intervallic range, the number of semitones separating them. A minor third, for example, is 3 semitones apart from the first tone (C-Eb), while a major third is 4 semitones (C-E).

You should first grasp the theory behind intervals, before delving into chordal theory, because there are several prominent gaps in your knowledge which WILL (and probably already does) hinder your chordal knowledge. Learn all the intervals, how they're made, their alterations (if that's how they're called, you know, augmented, double augmented, diminished, etc.). Then go on with chord structure (and not only triads, but also the basic seventh chords and their variations and all the triads, including suspended, augmented and all that stuff).
Only then should you begin with chord progressions - it'll actually be a lot easier to both learn about them and experiment with them

[Nystul]

Honestly this sounds like another case of needing more practical experience, playing real music of other people and trying to recognize the abstract concepts you have learned in real music and noting the effect they have. Progression based around chords I, IV, V are basically going to reinforce that major scale. But that is a good starting point. But ideally, you would work through some examples where you have a melody based on a major scale and try to fill out harmonies based on I, IV, and V7. Or you find some hit song using just those chords and study the melody. You can look at a simple song now and it won't just be gibberish. You should be able to recognize the key of the piece and some of the chords and whether the melody notes are coming from that scale or not. 3 months ago that wouldn't be the case. But if you go too deep into the theory when you haven't worked with a lot of music, it just makes your eyes gloss over like when you read that wiki on modulation.

[jancivil]

yeah, this is a result that's all too common, guesses made from reading about things you didn't do yet.

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[jancivil]

So,
It was about 3 months ago when I got the idea "I want to make music!".

Now seems to be the time that my musical knowledge comes finally to a finale, either I understand, or I don't.

after 3 whole months?

Information is not knowledge. You'll know from experience. Three months is not enough time to know very much. Cut yourself some slack.

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[Functional]

Thanks for all the replies. I'll try to be brief here;

First of all. Three months, it's pretty much next to nothing to me. I never thought that I'd even know this much as I do currently about music theory after just three months. It may not be much, but after all, I knew nothing about music, other than what I have heard, but I couldn't recognize before now at least some of the structures behind music, let it be the melody, harmony or the synths themselves.

Second of all - I have gained results, positive ones, out of changing just one key from a perfect fifth for example to the sixths (which I assume is not perfect, I just can't remmeber everything straight yet). I admit that my theory knowledge is still far from even decent.

The point here was, I wanted to know what exactly is the reason that changing one key can yield positive results.


And about the timing in the progression - I agree completely, it's very important aspect and I do make considerations based on lenght of silence and notes as well as ephasize them based on chord progression. That was something I learned quickly - they make all the difference.


However, good value of information here and thank you guys for that. I'll be doing more practical work then. Though, I know, that theory is just something known to work, not the four cornered wall in songwriting.

But it's always interesting to achieve something. If I understand something on music theory, suddenly start to use it succesfully, I like the feeling it gives to me. I'm not trying to force myself to learn the theory, I'm rather enjoying it.

[jancivil]

I wanted to know what exactly is the reason that changing one key can yield positive results

there just isn't going to be a very meaningful answer to that.

a chord change is not going to be good or bad per se.

First of all, people don't go around humming chord progressions. IME it should not be looked at as such a primary consideration. the melody might be best clothed by certain things in the realm of harmony. This might be typical, even cliche, or it might go against the grain somehow. Which kind of move to choose and why is a matter of craft.

I did a thing a little bit ago that if I saw it in a chord chart I would very likely say to myself, 'that is probably gonna suck'.

A pretty hoary IV-iv-I. Making matters worse, that minor iv goes to a I^7, ie., with a major seventh. It works despite this as I did not make the chord progression first, it happened to follow the melodic action, which was very strong. This can happen because I have been involved on the melody end of things for years and my improvisation skills are strong. In further part-writing, harmonies were found that I would not have thought to do, in this case one move I would have thought was not to my taste.

Looking for formulae for music is a kind of fool's errand. It doesn't happen.

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[Functional]

To some degree, I agree, even with the little knowledge I have.

Whenever I try to do things the way that theory tells me (Yes, it's a wrong way to view it, but often I just do it that way), I usually tend to get something that works but something that already does not only exist but is rather boring.


And whenever the only theory I'll be using would be just to create a starting point like creating a perfect fifth and then a bass note two octaves lower from the upper note, I usually get interesting things done.

But even then, I spend most of my time considering the rhythm itself, as it defines everything from what I can hear.


This thread was just sort of a "Why does it sound good if I do X" and hoping that I'd get some answers, but I guess, it doesn't matter. If it sounds good, does it even matter?

I'm just still a little fixated on music theory. I know one person who doesn't know what a C Major is, but he can write perfectly well songs according to his hearing. However, he's going to a school soon to study music theory. Will be interesting, whenever he gets better or his years of practical work already exceeds music theory.

[elnn]

To some degree, I agree, even with the little knowledge I have.

Whenever I try to do things the way that theory tells me (Yes, it's a wrong way to view it, but often I just do it that way), I usually tend to get something that works but something that already does not only exist but is rather boring.


And whenever the only theory I'll be using would be just to create a starting point like creating a perfect fifth and then a bass note two octaves lower from the upper note, I usually get interesting things done.

But even then, I spend most of my time considering the rhythm itself, as it defines everything from what I can hear.


This thread was just sort of a "Why does it sound good if I do X" and hoping that I'd get some answers, but I guess, it doesn't matter. If it sounds good, does it even matter?

I'm just still a little fixated on music theory. I know one person who doesn't know what a C Major is, but he can write perfectly well songs according to his hearing. However, he's going to a school soon to study music theory. Will be interesting, whenever he gets better or his years of practical work already exceeds music theory.

Music theory is one of those things that once grasped, it has to be forgotten to make something really interesting. It's the very basic knowledge of music, which also enables us to understand what other is trying to say. I myself didn't understand half of the things about intervals you said (no offense, you'll learn, hopefully ). Are you talking about harmonic or melodic intervals? or are you trying to say something about chords? It's much easier to communicate with other musicians once you know at least the basics of music theory

[jancivil]

Looking for formulae for music is a kind of fool's errand. It doesn't happen.

or at best a musical formula will only apply to a limited set of music(s)

even so, it doesn't tell you why a move up by this or the other interval works makes an impression here but there it's clunky. That's a matter of craft, and depends on other factors and the context a move exists in.

[jancivil]

an exemplar of someone I think wrote great songs but didn't bother with theory is Paul McCartney. But he grew up in a household that did music all the time, with a father that did music hall and that, so he got a sense of melody perhaps in the genes and reinforced constantly. The pertinent thing is that he had melody on his side, the harmony in the context of melody, from everyday experience with tunes that preceded him.

You're not going to obviate this experience by any reading, by digesting information out of its context.

Music theory is an after the fact description of why something worked. It isn't a recipe book. There are great composers and completely forgettable composers that understood from the same theory book. The difference wouldn't be easy to write about.