Whats the process of the way I create music called?

[Aubrey Lamont]

There's some great info in here. Thanks!

[Aroused by JarJar]

By the way your first song "Vague Miscommunication" is good, in my opinion It has some naive motion that holds it back from being really good.

Heh, the internet sucks, unless you're trained in the lingo it's 1,000x easier to sing and play what you mean about music... this would take about three minutes in real life.

Give it a try anyway, can you be more specific. I'm curious how you think that the OP might change the track.

Too much parallel motion between the voices- basically everything moves up and down together. It's like the thing that happens when you play the same barre chord up and down the neck of a guitar.

It's a really nice tune and production, though. That's just my opinion on something that would make it less static and more rewarding for multiple listens.

Ok, so that I get. I thought that you were getting at something more detailed.

Well, yes, but that's a start. Otherwise we'd have to go into the specific notes. But it's the shapes, the movements, that come first.

[ghettosynth]

By the way your first song "Vague Miscommunication" is good, in my opinion It has some naive motion that holds it back from being really good.

Heh, the internet sucks, unless you're trained in the lingo it's 1,000x easier to sing and play what you mean about music... this would take about three minutes in real life.

Give it a try anyway, can you be more specific. I'm curious how you think that the OP might change the track.

Too much parallel motion between the voices- basically everything moves up and down together. It's like the thing that happens when you play the same barre chord up and down the neck of a guitar.

It's a really nice tune and production, though. That's just my opinion on something that would make it less static and more rewarding for multiple listens.

Ok, so that I get. I thought that you were getting at something more detailed.

Well, yes, but that's a start. Otherwise we'd have to go into the specific notes. But it's the shapes, the movements, that come first.

Ok, so without getting into specific notes, which parts do you think will give the biggest yield by a change in motion? It seems that the heavy synth that comes in at 0:25 needs the lighter parallel sound that comes in at about 0:50. It seems to me that the obvious parallel motion throughout the piece is part of what makes it good but I'm not sure that I'd make that string accent follow the other lines in direction. It seems that you walk that down or even hold it fixed in reference to the background.

[jancivil]

For the Peanut Gallery.
Re melodies derived from singing. No not really. You can write a melody and understand it's function better by playing it out. You'll know the literal values of the notes better when you aren't as focused on singing and see as well as hear how they work against various structures.

Your telling a story about people that don't agree with everything you say won't affect what I say, which I feel I should say because of this 'you'll' here.

(You're broadcasting your own tendencies as if everyone is like you. You found chords first; you've shown over time that this is your forte and your focus. You have in fact indicated you think coming up with melodies without chords to 'guide' you is really hard. It's really hard [for a person] to do. For you, you mean.)

Who will know better by playing? What will they know better by playing instead of singing? What function of the melody is better understood through 'an instrument' simply through it being an instrument. What is this 'focused on singing', vs 'focused on guitar'? I don't get the necessity of your dichotomy. Are you featuring <melodies derived from singing> vs <melodies derived from analysis ('seeing it')>? I think music is a 'hearing' art.

You've actually said it doesn't really help [a person] write. But that 'you'll' is just you. It works for me and I'm focused on melody. It has nothing to do with me being any singer, I have no range and I make bad notes all the time. But, I'm hearing it IN MY HEAD and I can tell you, requiring no instrument before me, what notes. This is a good thing! This is to be encouraged. This is a useful skill. I'm not dependent on [this middle man of] analysis to come up with melody in this manner you seem to argue for. I could be blind.

When a conservatory or a guru sets out to train a musician, the bases such as to test intervals, to train the ear, all of it, the student is made to vocalize. This is normative and it is universal.

I really believe that the voice, as an internal insrument, is the human's primary interaction with melody. Melody must have been sung before there were instruments, instruments doing melody is a substitute for singing.

For instance, guitar players too often make lines based on finger patterns. This is a kind of deficiency that the singing of lines as a modus operandi, as a discipline should remedy. It's hard to feature someone becoming great at melody that didn't train their ear through some discipline involving singing. Singing the melody as 'writing' the melody produces 'song-like' melody; when there is no fingerboard or keyboard as a middleman, imposing tendencies and arbitrary conventions.

[Zombie Queen]

For instance, guitar players too often make lines based on finger patterns.

I observed this in my own experience, guitar imposes specific patterns, as well as piano imposes its own patterns. But don't you think singing imposes its own patterns too? There are lines that are naturally easy to sing and lines that are hard to execute.

I found it a funny exercise, to compose vocal lines on piano, or bass lines with voice... It usually turns out to require more gymnastics when playing/singing them, but also helps to break patterns and come up with some fresh ideas. Of course, I'm pretty bad singer and pretty bad player, so maybe I'm not too good example.

[jancivil]

Do I think singing through itself imposes patterns? not so much. the ideas one might accumulate in one's singing, such as scales or something... but through itself what patterns crop up, what in the voice is equivalent with the fretboard or the placement of black/white keys?

<lines that are hard to execute> exist on instruments but that problem isn't this problem. people extend themselves with voice as with an instrument. That I don't really hit the notes outside of my range is not because I can't reach them in my head, it does not vacate my ear training out of sight-singing. I'm singing lines in my head in a way that is connected with actual singing and tends to be more musically objective than noodling on a guitar. With a guitar in my hands I am conscious of the extent my hands are a determinant. If I 'write' in my head or at the keyboard (which I really don't 'play') the lines are not enslaved to idiom. My sax parts should not be detectable as a guitar player's thought. Idiomatic guitar has its occasional place in my music but I prefer the tune to be a real tune this way. My most catchy tunes were written on a napkin in a cafe by indicating a syllable for the note, like solfege, saregama, singing the notes.

We're talking about horizontal lines and tappermike wants the vertical consideration as necessary. That is its own topic but I think in terms of the OP and getting off of chords that strong an emphasis is a bit misplaced.

[ghettosynth]

For instance, guitar players too often make lines based on finger patterns.

I observed this in my own experience, guitar imposes specific patterns, as well as piano imposes its own patterns.

So have I, it's one of the reasons that I like tools like Ableton Push which not only allows me to use learned patterns in different ways, but also allows me to explore new patterns and relate them easily to music.

But don't you think singing imposes its own patterns too? There are lines that are naturally easy to sing and lines that are hard to execute.

I imagine that the throat itself imposes limitations and defines certain patterns, especially in the untrained singer. Moreover, for the untrained singer, the difficulty of controlling pitch might make singing less useful as a tool in the same way that a violin or a theremin, while expressive, give no concrete connection to a particular note, whether absolute or relative. Even if my guitar is out of tune absolutely, it is easy enough to relate physical patterns and the sound of intervals. Even if one has not broken out of the "language of fret numbers" it still facilitates communication of a motif.

Are pentatonic scales easier to sing because of some physical properties of the throat? Or is it simply that many nursery rhymes depend on them so it's the "voice training" that everyone receives.

I found it a funny exercise, to compose vocal lines on piano, or bass lines with voice... It usually turns out to require more gymnastics when playing/singing them, but also helps to break patterns and come up with some fresh ideas. Of course, I'm pretty bad singer and pretty bad player, so maybe I'm not too good example.

I don't use the word "compose" for anything that I do, but I agree that it can help to break patterns. That said, so does using push and, for me, it does it in a more pedagogically useful manner. If I just allow my fingers to flow to whether their learned patterns take them, then after the fact, it's trivial to translate that motion into intervals without having to identify each interval by ear. I did find, however, that when working with a singer that going back and forth, e.g., I came up with something to go against what he sang, then he sang those lines, and then I took that result and further modified what I was doing, was a very useful process. I think that it was more useful, however, because he was a good singer.

That said, finger patterns are muscle memory and I doubt that vocal muscle memory functions much differently. I've noticed this when I sing without consciously trying to write something, I quickly fall into patterns. It's insufficient, IMO, to argue that the instrument doesn't intrinsically enforce patterns. In essence, there are two different constraints here. First, the physicality of the instrument, e.g. 6 strings across 20+ frets, or 88 keys organized as two rows of different height keys, then the constraint of the learned muscle memory. For me, the latter is much more limiting than the former. It isn't the patterns enforced by the physicality that I need to break out of as much as the patterns enforced by learned behavior.

YMMV.

[spacecult]

But isn't the point that in this type of music the song is almost always derived from the riffs and not so much from a chord progression at all? Riffs that were usually written without much regard for theory or harmony but by rhythmic feel and 'sound' (riff notes are chosen more for their timbrel qualities or moody effects and maybe later analyzed for scale/mode and harmonic relationships).

These are exactly the types of things that come out of noodling on an instrument or hearing them in your head, and not so often being the product of a chord progression and some harmony and composition rules.

[Zombie Queen]

Are pentatonic scales easier to sing because of some physical properties of the throat? Or is it simply that many nursery rhymes depend on them so it's the "voice training" that everyone receives.

This is interesting question, which scales to, "what shapes us, tools or culture?", which, I think, is a variation of "which came first, the chicken or the egg?".

As we're on KVR, I'd bet on tools.

[ghettosynth]

But isn't the point that in this type of music the song is almost always derived from the riffs and not so much from a chord progression at all? Riffs that were usually written without much regard for theory or harmony but by rhythmic feel and 'sound' (riff notes are chosen more for their timbrel qualities or moody effects and maybe later analyzed for scale/mode and harmonic relationships).

For me, yes. But I think that it depends a lot on whether you're working alone, or with others. With others, it seems to me that it's easier to develop multiple parts that naturally have the kinds of motion that build interest. Each member of the group will have his own set of "personal patterns" that drive his improvisation. The bass player might naturally build a line with interesting motion against a guitar player's riff, whereas, if the guitar player picks up the bass, he's more likely to apply similar patterns to what he produced on the guitar. At the very least, each musician is not starting with the recently learned pattern(s) of the others.

These are exactly the types of things that come out of noodling on an instrument or hearing them in your head, and not so often being the product of a chord progression and some harmony and composition rules.

Right, but, then, working alone, it's often more difficult to break out of your own patterns and so one might tend to intellectualize the second and subsequent parts. I'm not sure though, I don't have the experience with the type of music the OP is talking about. In groups, we often started with the singer's melodic lines and found chords to fit. Building on that the singer could then work over parts built from the existing progression. I dunno, it worked ok in context. When I write EDM stuff it's less often driven by chords (or chord), but very much by noodling, at least in an abstract sense. That is, noodling with technology leads to a set of machines playing a "riff" that I like and can sample.

[jancivil]

Are pentatonic scales easier to sing because of some physical properties of the throat? Or is it simply that many nursery rhymes depend on them so it's the "voice training" that everyone receives.

This is interesting question, which scales to, "what shapes us, tools or culture?", which, I think, is a variation of "which came first, the chicken or the egg?".

As we're on KVR, I'd bet on tools.

I didn't know they were easier to sing. I did not have an easy time singing to begin with, I really don't know what's easier or why. I tend to approach these assertions as a doubter. I bet if the first song you were taught in the first grade was 'Doe, a deer, a female deer, Ray, a drop of golden sun...' that the major scale gets to be the easy thing, you know. I would bet on more nurture than nature here.

The voice is not fixed like a fretboard, you physically {endeavor to} match a tone you hear with a vibration in your person. I would have thought it obvious that here is a difference. The 'muscle memory' of a person with a fretboard or a map is the same as a person vocalizing? So does this follow 'does the throat's construction determine ease or difficulty'? How is the throat constructed then? This seems empty to me, I think it follows from nothing.

The first eureka moment I had training my own ear was Proud Mary by Creedence Clearwater. That bridge lick, I liked that and I liked the turnaround back to the verse. Before I tried to find it on guitar - I wasn't really playing any guitar yet - I wanted to solve my problem with it, I was baffled by the sort of different key-ness of it. The lick centers on 'V' and turns around to 'I'. I didn't know anything. b7 // 5, b7 // 5, b7 // 5, 4, b3, b3 / 1 b3, 1.
I was around 12, 13 and no ear at all. But I did this thing and I had my legs underneath me. So that's my experience. I feel I got that lick sussed from singing in a way that a guitar or piano would not have quite given up. I had to feel that change from the temporary tonic to the real tonic with my actual body, and now I had it in my head solidly.
Then I moved on to harder things, and more involved with the guitar after I got something I could bend strings on. So before I could play that little lick I knew what it was in a kind of pure way. I bet it made me pick up the harder things better, it wasn't long before I was trying to find the solo on Foxy Lady.

I think generally I was gravitating to minor pentatonic but I think I just liked that rather than scales.

When I had ear training imposed on me, it was do re mi, solmization and in context of diatonic harmony. By that time I had transcribed a lot of things, sometimes I could get a book with the chord changes, sometimes this wasn't useful at all, sometimes there was nothing.

[jancivil]

anyway, it's often said that the goal is to hear the thing in your head. requiring an instrument in order to know where the thing is seems like needing a walker to get around.

it was my instinct at the beginning to find it by voice even though I had no voice. my mother really loved me, she bought me 'Great Songs of the Sixties' and soon I was caterwauling Bob Dylan songs with a harmonica and the whole bit. By the time I was 30 I could sang country in key of D tol'able on a good day.

[tapper mike]

Wow this is really developing into quite the thread. Love a lot of the stuff and wish I could respond to many of the posts. But I feel if I do it too much I'll get too distracted and not be able to get back to subjects I've yet to cover.

If you have a good ear and sense of harmony it's fairly easy to build a chord progression based in single note lines. Find common tones and or use harmonic justification to make the parts fit. I too would work as "arranger" when a singer or a bassist would come to me with an idea. Usually with bass he's already got enough backbone of the chord or riff (as bass riffs often come from the chord) to fill I the blanks.


Just a slight recap
The concept of counterpoint is that you have a main melody and then a second supporting melody. When we work from contrapual motion ideas the premise is that these two separate melodies need to be in lockstep with one another. They don't have to be. A nice study of this is Bach's Jesus Joy of Man's Desiring"
Its a popular classical song for guitar or keyboard that's been covered by just about everyone.

The Premise
Most commonly in pop/rock. If you have a melody and want to harmonize it you take the note that is your melody and use that as the upper most voice in your harmony. If it's a C then you know C, Am, F chords will work well with it and you build the chords downward from the melody tone. This is "Voice leading" and lends itself to "smart voicing" such as using common chord inversions. You can also use "extended" and "altered" chords when looking for an appropriate chord to support your melody line. Which goes back to my explanation of harmonic justification a number of posts back. So taking that C to its other possible voices. Bb9, Gsus4, Eb6, D7, B7b9, A7#9 etc...

Now here are a few things you can do to mix this stuff up.
First...simply because your original chord voicings kept your melody on top. You don't have to stick to that voice leading after you have the chord down. You can play the chord with any note on top as the chord or chord progression is now your second melody. So if smart voicings is your rough draft to get you to the chord you'll be playing against the melody it doesn't have to be your final draft. Think about different inversions/positions of playing the same chord and you can move away from parallel motion. You also don't have to include the 3rd on every chord. or any chord. Your verse shouldn't sound like your chorus. If you are playing open or open moveable type guitar chords for the verse (like say...Steely Dan's reeling in the years) opt for open chords or caged chords or bar chords for the chorus.

You don't have to include the extension in the chord. A lot of sappy love songs with a sense of longing often have the singer singing a 2 or 9 note against a chord that doesn't expressly have a second or 9th note written out or performed. It's often at the end of the progression and implies a sense of longing. It's an in between your eyes type sound because it sits between the root and third (major or minor) You can also have a slight dissonance to conosance (concord, peacefulness) type resolution in a very short amount of time. If say. The first note of your melody is the sus4 note of the chord and it moves to a chord tone thereafter.

You also don't have to go the path of least resistance when choosing which chords to use against a harmony. When I was a kid...Rock detractors would always say. "Rock and roll is just I-IV-V. It's easy to write rock use those chords and your done." So after getting this beaten into my head for awhile I'd try to figure out songs using I-IV-V. Because, I'd read it in a book and educators said it was true and I like an idiot believed it. Then I started reading sheet music and figuring out rock songs on the radio. Another farce passed on to me was that a melody always starts on the root and ends on the root. That one I didn't believe for quite as long as the I-IV-V thing. I'd get frustrated as hell trying to write songs using these principles and even more frustrated trying to figure out songs based on this incorrect data. So a little bit of my heart goes out to a Johnny come lately who read something in a Lets Get Stupid, Music for Morons book which contains just enough information to be dangerous. So....

The first chord you play doesn't have to be the I chord. A lot of major rock is based on not the Ionian (major) scale but the Mixolydian scale. A lot of minor rock is build on the dorian. And there are a few Lydian based songs as well. Playing a melody alone may give you a key but not always a mode. The first note of your melody doesn't constitute the tonic either as some "Stupid music concepts for stupid people" literature not only implies it states as the defacto standard. Another concept to consider... The first note of your melody doesn't have to exist on the first beat (THE ONE) of your first measure. This really annoys me about looped music. Everything comes in on THE ONE. Metronomes also emphasis THE ONE. If you're James Brown you might love coming in hard on T THE ONE. He doesn't harmonize based on the first note of his phrase, he harmonized based on the last note of his phrase. The last note of his phrase lands on THE ONE. As in "I feel ONE,two,three,four, Just like I knew that I ONE...etc. It's kind of a pain to think like this when using sequencing or a looper but it's also a benefit if you can push your melody even partially behind or after THE ONE. While many songs start with a lead in to the first full measure there are others where the melody starts a little after the first measure. Particularly in "Smooth Jazz" Where chords can begin in the middle of one measure and end on the one or after the one of the next measure. Matt Otten who is a wonderful "Smooth Jazz" guitarist songwriter, improviser and teacher. Stated that a corner stone of "Smooth Jazz" is never start your melody on the one. Because it sounds boring. This can be true whether you work from a chord progression to write the melody, a vamp, counterpoint or harmonization.

So here's that summary:
The first note of the melody doesn't have to be the tonic. Nor does the last.

When trying to write chords from a melody. put the melody on top (highest note) of your chord and use it to determine what your chord will be from that. Use "Smart Voicing".

You can harmonize outside of the diatonic scale when looking for chords to match your melody.

The first chord doesn't have to be the I nor does the last chord. It also doesn't have to end in a plagal cadence (V chord)

The first note of the melody doesn't have to be harmonized. Nor do all the notes. You can choose a select few notes to make your decision on which notes to harmonize to form a chord.

The melody doesn't have to start on THE ONE which is the first beat of the first measure. You can shift the melody behind to create a "lead in" to the measure or shift the melody forward to start later in the measure.

Your first draft isn't your end product. Don't be afraid to make revisions to your chord progressions or melody.

Once you have the basic chord sequence down you can re voice your chords using different positions and inversions. You can also "De voice" earlier harmonies.

Connosance, Concord. Means the note is found in the chord or the note is used to create the chord.
Dissonance, Discord. Means the note is not in the chord. You can create a mini resolution by going from a discord to a concord. or create a slight sense of tension by moving from a concord to a discord.

[Zombie Queen]

The voice is not fixed like a fretboard

I think, these are not frets that form the patterns, what about fretless guitars? It's more about easy paths to get from one note to the other, same with voice. E.g. try playing lowest note followed by highest note, repetitively and very quickly - piece of cake on a piano, but nearly impossible to sing.

anyway, it's often said that the goal is to hear the thing in your head. requiring an instrument in order to know where the thing is seems like needing a walker to get around.

I like that idea, but... It's the question of how much thinking depends on language. I like to see myself as a free-thinker, but I feel I'm more dependent on the language than I would want to. In music, instruments are the language. In my head I can hear some wonderful things, but imagination is blurry, as dreams, things sound differently when you actually spill them out or write them down. Maybe it's just me, but my head is bumping hard onto reality check.

Sorry, if I'm de-railing the thread too much.

[jancivil]

this is a thing for me, I want the middleman of language - of naming - out of my way as much as possible.

'easiest path for the voice' isn't anything for me, that confuses what I'm saying about singing as the Modus Operandi, it isn't about manifesting the note properly. it is a way to get outside what the hand wants to do, for one thing. it is a way to get abstract, a way to the ear that isn't bound to fretboard shapes or keymapping, to the intervals straight up.

try playing lowest note followed by highest note, repetitively and very quickly - piece of cake on a piano, but nearly impossible to sing.

Not at all relevant. It's about hearing an interval, having learned intervals in such a way that is INTERNAL, the voice, and the mind/ear is working with intervals themselves rather than placement on this middleman of instrument. One could be blind and this is not through itself an obstacle to music. Think about this, don't react to it.