J. Anthony Allen - Music Theory for Electronic Music Producers

Music Theory for Electronic Music Producers

The Producer's Guide to Harmony,
Chord Progressions, and Song
Structure in the MIDI Grid

Published By

Slam Academy

1121 NE Jackson St.

Suite 142

Minneapolis, MN. 55413

www.slamacademy.com

Copyright 2018 by J. Anthony Allen

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Slam Academy at the address above.

First Slam Academy paperback edition April 2018

For information about classes at Slam Academy, including the online class "Music Theory for Electronic Music Producers," please see slamacademy.com/online, or inquire at info@slamacademy.com

Interior design by Ivan Kamaldinov

Cover design by Ryan Johnson

Allen, J. Anthony, 1978

Music Theory for Electronic Music Producers: The Producer's Guide to Harmony, Chord Progressions, and Song Structure in the MIDI Grid / by J. Anthony Allen, PhD

ISBN-13: 978-0692093290 (Slam Academy)

ISBN-10: 069209329X

To my Slam family (Slam Academy) and to my real family (Erin and Scully).

Music Theory is the green vegetable of electronic music. You know that it's good for you, you know that it will make you a better producer. But why spend time learning it when you could launch your software and rock out some chocolate-sauce covered beats? In the long run, we all know it will be good for us to learn, but it's tedious, complicated, and boring. With this book, I can't turn broccoli into ice cream, but what I can do is help you through the process of learning music theory in a simple way, specific to electronic music, that cuts down on the technical jargon and makes the whole thing go down smoother.

Simply put: Music theory is knowing what notes are going to sound good together in context. Let's pick that sentence apart a bit:

Music Theory is knowing...

What we want to be able to use music theory for is predicting, while we are in the moment of producing, what our options are. You should be able to run through a few concepts and say to yourself, "Ok, we are on this type of chord, so I have a few common options". But you will know quickly what your options are for chords and notes that will sound good.

Music Theory is knowing what notes are going to sound good...

Good, in this context, doesn't mean happy, or harmonious, or anything like that. It means they are going to fit in with the notes around them. They might be dissonant, abrasive notes, but if that is what our track is all about, then that is what we want. It is important to remember - and I'll remind you of this constantly throughout this book - that if we always put the notes that sound happy or harmonious we are going to end up with an entirely predicable and boring track. Sometimes you have to break the rules, and in this book that is encouraged.

Music Theory is knowing what notes are going to sound good together in context.

Let's say you are writing music for a video game. In one scene, the character is in the wild west. In the next, he gets into a time machine and is now a knight in a medieval era. Oh, and you have two hours to write all the music for both scenes. Music Theory to the rescue. We know what chords and scales are common in both eras. In the first scene, we would think about what scales and chords sound appropriate to that context. We would then produce as much music as we could using those elements, before we switch context to the the medieval era. We then would grab a new set of scales and chords that sound good in that context. You still have a lot of creative work to do, but you've skipped ahead on all the exploring of sounds that you would have done if you didn't know that both of those eras have a set of chords and scales you can use to quickly make the listener feel like the music is in context.

I approach music theory from the perspective of a composer and producer. Not as an academic music theoretician. The rules that we will cover in this book have been around for centuries, and they tend to work well for making "good" sounding music. But music is a constant evolution of experimentation and rule-breaking. As a producer, when I talk about music theory I have one rule on this that I insist you keep in mind while using music theory:

Rule No. 1: Don't let music theory be a bully. Your ear always wins.

I often have students come to me with a partially completed track and tell me that they came up with a chord progression they liked, but it didn't make sense, so they changed it. This makes me cry a little bit. It didn't "make sense"? If it sounded good to you, then it made sense. You are letting music theory tell you how you should write your track, and that is not the role of music theory. Your ear always wins: If it sounds good to you, then go with it. Break the rules. Make your own theory. It is, after all, just a theory.

Music Theory gives us clues and guidance while we are writing, and helps us to know what will sound good. But it should never be in the drivers seat when you are in your creative mode. Let it be the navigator, but don't be afraid to make your own roads. Innovative music always comes with the risk of driving off a cliff. Embrace it.

Traditionally, when you study music theory in a college class, you actually take three classes at once: Music Theory, Sight Singing (sometimes called Aural Skills), and Piano Skills. The idea is that you study the concepts of music theory, and at the same time you reinforce it by learning to sing (by just looking at sheet music) some of the concepts, and then you nail it home by learning to play it on the piano. This method has been around a very long time, and has it's advantages. I'm not going to tell you that it is a bad method for teaching music theory. But this book isn't for people in a college music theory class.

This book is for people who are producing music in software (or hardware) and realizing that they need better control over picking what notes to use for their melodies, harmonies, and even percussion. Learning to sing and play the piano are not bad skills to have at all, but in this book I've found another way to teach music theory. Instead of learning to play the piano, we are going to be using the Piano Roll Editor - available in any software that you choose to use. We will be skipping over some of the music theory lingo in favor of focusing on how something sounds, and how you can use it in your tracks.

I'll be using Ableton Live for all the screenshots in this book, but because we are only using the Piano Roll Editor, you can use any software you like. As long as it has a Piano Roll Editor, you will be fine using any other program.

Another thing we will be doing throughout this book is dissecting some popular tracks that you have probably heard before. We will look at the chords they used and figure out how and why it works the way it does. In each of these analysis sections, you can input the notes into your software and follow along. All the examples I'll be giving you work best when you hear them. Seeing them is nice, but it is no comparison to hearing them. After that, you can experiment with the track and see if you can find some new and interesting chords using the analysis as a starting point.