Atypical music, melodic progressions, chords and modulations

[yul]

Hello! I Trying to move beyond common scales and basic song buidling schemes recently in my electronic ambient style.

There is a lot of atonal and microtonal stuff out there but it's not always "musical".

Synthesizers are a great way to mix and match odd oscillator combinations/intervals which can lead to different paths IMO although it's easy to get lost.

I have been inspired by some uncommon chord progressions of pop artists Tony Banks recently and David Frank. Banks uses a lot of scale modulation although says he stays in diatonic always.

Here I have been using synth patches with detuned oscs at intervals of 5 semis as well as using chords with 2nds, 3rds and 4ths to obtain a different avenue for developing melody which can be heard on occasion without being too dissonant.

Hope this makes sense and that the result is pleasing from your perspective!





Cheers!

[jancivil]

Well, this is a forum for discussion. Why not show your thinking behind getting more ideas for a line by tuning oscillators to the various intervals?

[yul]

Yes absolutely. What I think is that by having certain interval tunings on a synth patch and by experimenting with chords, there are some interesting combinations that can come out.

On occasion it can lead to slight dissonance where a typical standard chords will start to clash with the second set of oscs. It's easy to get complex and to have a bad sound too.

I started noticing this using a 2 osc monosynth tuned in intervals and by playing a line it would sound quite good in itself but posed a challenge for when layering a melody.

The Wavestation/Prophet VS is also a very good place to experiment with stuff like that as you I also mix in between chords of different scales.

Also experimented with Minimoog style 3 oscs with large intervals, it is sometimes a musical challenge to play anything on top of that!

I also like to layer a sometimes dissonant melody on top of a chord (dissonant too sometimes) and also do key changes. This is standard musical theory I would think (I am not an academic).

[jancivil]

There was an Oberheim synth which came out circa 1980 with more than three oscillators. Must have been six? I remember well going into Reliable Music (big like Guitar Center before I ever heard of that) and tuning it to a quartal stack, maybe with a major third on top and noodling about with synthetic scales. Let's say it was four: C F# B D#...

More basically, you could simply tune 2 oscs to a minor seventh apart and C D Eb F G A Bb is Bb C Db Eb F G Ab in addition, so now you have 9 notes to worry about. But it could spur ideas in lines which are novel as you imply.

[shonky]

I remember when I started with electronic music that I was only using a sampler and sometimes I would mess around with the samples in sound forge and mix pitched variations with the original sample so that I would end up with a chordal pad and then use this to play melodies. Certainly some melodies sounded very "wrong" depending on what the other notes in the sample were but it could lead to some interesting harmonic ideas that could inspire dissonant melodies.

I suppose much of what I considered "right" though were based on various musicians from house, techno, hardcore, jungle and drum and bass doing similar things, what with their technique of sampling chords and then using these to play melodies themselves, and so it didn't seem that extraordinary at the time.

[sjm]

+1 to the house chords thing. Another example of this kind of idea is the end of "I am the Walrus", which is just a series of descending major chords using the notes of C major. I think it starts on A, but not 100% sure off hand, but anyway, it's just A G F E D C B ad infinitum.

Obviously there are fewer notes at play in each chord here (though you could extend them I guess).

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the lack of inversions and lack of variation this kind of static setup brings, although it has its place. The principle is of course no different from using barre chords on a guitar and sliding up/down the fret. But on the guitar, there will be natural variation in the timing and intensity, as well as which strings are sounded, with each chord.

It's not as comfortable to pull of on a piano because of how the keys' layout changes your finger positions. On a guitar, it's the same fingering all the time, and by extension, the same relative intervals, so very easy to do. In that context, you might want to take a look at some of Sonic Youth's stuff. They tend to tune the guitar differently for each song, and a lot of the playing is really just 1 finger barre and sliding around the neck board. The different intervals between the strings mean that the same playing technique results in quite different harmonies depending on how the guitar is tuned.