Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 4
Lesson 38 from: Music Theory for Electronic ProducersTomas George
Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 4
Lesson 38 from: Music Theory for Electronic ProducersTomas George
Lesson Info
38. Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 4
Lessons
Introduction
00:58 2Basic Music Theory Terms
08:07 3Keyboard Layout and Octaves
06:19 4Working out Major Scales
08:58 5Perfect 5ths
06:42 63rds - Part 1
08:05 73rds - Part 2
07:39 8Perfect 4ths
04:36Chords and Inversions - Part 1
10:05 10Chords and Inversions - Part 2
09:13 11Chord Progressions - Part 1
10:22 12Chord Progressions - Part 2
08:26 13Inversions
08:53 147th Chords
09:48 15Chord Extensions
08:09 16Suspended Chords
02:40 17The Circle of 5ths
04:30 18Minor Scales
08:09 19Chords in the Natural Minor scale
09:56 20Harmonic and Melodic Minor
09:30 21Write the Chords, then the Melody
09:03 22Write the Melody, then the Chords
18:01 23Arpeggios
08:00 24Writing Bass Parts
11:35 25Writing Bass Riffs and Adapting Melodies
14:10 26Song Analysis - Chords, Part 1
10:17 27Song Analysis - Chords, Part 2
05:58 28Song Analysis - Melody
08:55 29Song Analysis - Arrangement
07:30 30Song 2 Analysis - Arrangement
05:04 31Song 2 Analysis - Chords
08:55 32Song 2 Analysis - Melodies
06:34 33Song 3 Analysis - Chords
11:41 34Song 3 Analysis - Melodies and Arrangement
06:55 35Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 1
10:22 36Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 2
18:47 37Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 3
18:49 38Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 4
08:21 39Create a Song from a Chord Progression - Part 1
08:16 40Create a Song from a Chord Progression - Part 2
08:07 41Create a Song from a Melody - Part 1
07:27 42Create a Song from a Melody - Part 2
09:05 43Modes Intro
04:10 44Ionian
00:43 45Dorian
04:31 46Phrygian
02:09 47Lydian
01:35 48Mixolydian
02:13 49Aeolian
00:39 50Locrian
01:50 51Dorian Mode Example
09:12 52Pentatonic Scales
12:27Lesson Info
Create a Song from a Drum Beat - Part 4
OK. And then just go through arrange, arrange, arrange, arrange, arrange al also save your track. So drum example, save this onto your hard drive. I think it's better to have a hard drive for your music rather than saving it onto your disk drive. Personally, we've got something called Splice, which is automatically saves your music. And also it's quite useful. If you do use serum, you can set up a payment plan. So you pay $10 a month rather than buying it straight away. So Splice has a few different options which can be quite useful for music producers. But let's hear this. Like I said, this is more about music theory, but these are also important tips like where to get your plugins from, how to mix your music. It all kind of links in with music theory and writing music. So here there's no base if you listen and we're bringing the basin. Now, there we go. Ref's all chopped up and chop up the eo as well. So this kind of thing, this is basically how I write a song based around a drum bea...
t. This is the most common way I actually do this. So let's have a listen again. Listen for the space you can hear all the instruments quite easily, space for everything to be heard. Of course, I was just making this on the fly. I didn't plan this cos I thought it'd be better if I just go through it and write. So it's more realistic of what will actually happen, made a few mistakes now and again. But that is as expected, it's not gonna be perfect when you write music, especially if you're brand new and especially if you're not very good at music theory. So learning a music theory is really important because I know which chords fit where and also writing melodies can be useful and you know which notes just fit together. A lot of it's to do with training your ears to know what notes fit together and also knowing in theory which notes fit together. So it's a combination of the two really. Of course, you can always go through copy this over. I'd like to color them differently if I had a different part. Now, I'm gonna take out the kick drum and the snare. OK? And I'm gonna add the kick drum and the snare and after there's some interesting tricks, it's all about arranging and not just doing the same thing over and over again. And then I've actually chopped up this riff you can see here and add in this chopped up riff towards the end. So let's hear what I've got. This is just a track I've just thrown together for this tutorial for this lecture. So I think it's really useful to know how you can start making music just from a blank slate. Then you can go through and add stuff like automation. If you are interested in that, I recommend checking out my complete Ableton Live Nine course, which I'll go through automation how to use Ableton Live in details, but this isn't really an Ableton Live course. Now I'm gonna actually change the kick drums at the end and make them straight so you can go through and change the kick. See if you notice. So straight ma basically just means on every beat and there's four beats in a bar. OK? So this one's different also. So this one is one beat every bar, add a different kind of flavor and feel. We're gonna actually double up the base as well. So the basses are gonna be playing twice as often here. Credit Subtle adds more movement. So you can just build and build and build and build and build. There you go. There's a one minute 40 song that I've made just off the cuff write music based around this drum beat. So it starts off, it's kind of shuffle beat. Then we slowly adding more elements, but it was all built from this drum beat. Let's hear this once more and try and pick out the different elements of the drums, the bass, the keyboard parts, they are pated riff and then also the keyboard part that so there the regular r and then the har, the harmonized ref which is the octave lowest. There's quite a few things going on. It's all based around two chords. A minor and c really, really simple, I think works. No kick from bringing the kick in force the floor every beat ready. Just building up building their song up, move stuff around as well. So just put this on the second time round, swapping the, I don't think that works but worth a try. OK. So that's how I created the song built around a drumbeat. It's pretty simple. This was all completely improvised. I had no plan when I did it. So I know for a lot of people just looking at that blank screen of your digital audio workstation can be really intimidating. Hopefully, I've just given you an insight of how I can build music. A lot of this is a combination of learning music theory and training your ear, but you won't be able to train your ear as efficiently if you don't learn music theory. Cos when you learn music theory, you learn the building blocks of what chords and what notes go together and then your ears will kind of recognize the patterns, recognize what's going on. And then when you build and you write music, eventually you won't have to think about what chords you're playing what melodies like a lot of this is subconscious to me now because I've internalized the cause I've internalized the harmony. I've internalized the theory. So that's what you need to do. But the best way to do it. So of course, go through these lessons, learn what the chords, the scales, the melodies, how to write them. And then you need to just go in experiment, experiment, experiment and write and write and write and write because a lot of the time it's not gonna be perfect. You're gonna make a lot of mistakes. As you saw during, during this, I made quite a few mistakes really. But sometimes these mistakes worked in my favor. Sometimes it created something a bit, a little bit more colorful that I wouldn't necessarily think of. So you don't always have to stick to the exact rules of a my and I must use the, the A, the C and the E, the root F and the fifth. You can try different ideas, try different melodies, rhythms and just train your ear. But at the end of the day, write music that you like. So thank you for watching this lecture. I hope you found it useful and I'll see you in the next one.
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