timaeus222

No dude, I said your solo was atonal with respect to its key, i.e. within the confines of its section/timestamp, in isolation. I didn't say your remix was atonal as a whole. Also, even though you didn't actually say that, I got that implication from other things you said. Again, not something I would really need to go into in omgsupersrs detail. It's not the most important thing in the world that I know how to identify atonal music, only that some music sounds tonally conventional, some not so conventional.

Basically you just said that music is more often rationally written in a tonally unconventional way than in an atonal way. Yeah, that's fine, but I don't often talk about that kind of detail-oriented debateworthy content. I think of atonality in the confines (i.e. timestamps) of a section of a song I'm examining. Yeah, you can't say a whole song is atonal from one section being as such, but atonal sections are entirely logical to identify even when the song is mostly tonal.

To clarify, I meant that accidentals are atonal with respect to the actual key, so in the confines of the ground they cover, they are out of the key that acts as their original context.

My point was that it kind of derailed into whether or not I know definitions of musical terms. I'm not the focus, music theory is. Also, like I said (twice), I've heard plenty of atonal music, namely Webern and Schoenberg, amongst others. Wouldn't you consider this atonal at times (besides the apparent Middle-Eastern influence, which of course is not atonal)? Especially at 1:06 - 1:19.

lol The ample/plentiful ear training sounds like it makes it difficult. Anyways... getting rather tangential here.

yeah dude no need to keep posting definitions. It's just less clear what key you're actually in if you have to listen for the tonal center to realize it's still a particular key. So yes, I do know what atonal music is. Schoenberg and Webern and such wrote it. I learned that last semester. And no, it doesn't imply I'm calling much of classical music atonal, just tonally unconventional.

uh https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=atonal unless Google is wrong

Yeah, it means not in an explicitly definable key or mode. Someone like Schoenberg writes/wrote that stuff. You basically said it yourself that you think it's smart when people write music that has notes outside of the key, which under that definition is temporarily atonal during that outside-the-key excursion (besides, in that remix, you had a piano solo that went out of the main key).

Sure you have. In other words, you wrote that remix while recognizing the music theory concepts you had learned about [in your musical studies] that happened to be applicable in this context, and so you see that you wrote something atonal [within that remix] that was technically correct, i.e. valid under the concepts of music theory.

Just like you don't need to know that the normal force of the ground pushes back at the force your feet apply at an angle to the ground, allowing you to move forward when you walk! #nerdcore

Yeah, it's weird to think of it as if intuition about theory can work just as satisfactorily as reason about theory can work, eh? If I get stuck, however, I don't go look up the theory on how I can write this in a technically correct way; I hum the bass line that works with the melodic contour I'm writing at the time (usually in one or two tries) and from there I just hear the chords in my head that work, and I write it out. Yeah, it takes a bit more time, but in my case I don't feel hindered. Freaky!

Okay. All I'm saying is that going out and outright learning music theory and taking it ermahgerdsupersrs could work, but if it seems like a bit much to take in at the time, it could be better to just either wait on it, or try learning the ideas more by intuition than by straight reading and applying and just "do" music theory. I don't find it a bad thing that I'm trying to be humble, but thanks.

dat oscilloscope I've totally used that exact model before omg

You said "How can you possibly bring out the best of something if you don't understand what makes it tick?" Well, it's true, I can't explain what I did there, but I did it anyway. That's my point. I get that it works and I know how to tweak it so that it works, but I can't write out in words why. All I can say is that it sounds good, and if it sounds good, that's what matters for me. Maybe I ought to be back at ya.

Yeah, it seems counterintuitive to say that you can do something that brings out the best of what you can do, even if you don't know music theory to the extent that you would need it if you were to use it while composing something, but the fact is, I wrote this without extensive theory knowledge on complex chords and effective chord progressions. That's just how it went. Maybe it's an exception, but that's what happened. It has plenty of chords above the complexity of basic triads, all of which are sensible. You don't have to write notes outside the key in a theoretically interesting way to have a good song. It can sound cool, but few people without the theory to understand it won't get why it works, and truly why you love it. So no, theory is not necessarily important for arranging. It's helpful, if you put in the effort and understand it and can apply it, but it's not absolutely crucial to realizing the best of what you can do. I know I'm not a conventional person when I say I don't rely on theory to compose harmonically complex music, but oh well. That's who I am.

My biggest concern would be the muddiness between the piano notes and the bass from 0:28 onward. Something's clashing there harmonically and cluttering the low end.

Seems to be a style of these four to start off a little conservative and personalize it later on with rad solos. I checked out their old music, and they kicked up their game since a year ago, and it was already good back then. Totally groove to me. The solos demonstrated plenty of skill, music theory prowess (or just really good ears), and some excellent arrangement flow.

It's been a while, but I think I can come tonight!

15 yeeeeaaaaaaaars!

Interesting juxtaposition between the major-key and minor-key portions; the Lavender town theme seems to lend itself well to both moods. The dubstep was also really well done. Could tick some people off, but I personally think it's on the borderline of like-dislike (I like it, anyway). Keep up the good work! Hope to see more of ya.

Theory may not work for everyone. I personally know the bare minimum about theory (scales, chord names, etc.) and I don't feel like I really need more than that; it's weird, but I've made music with harmonies I can't explain, which I honestly am okay with as long as I like it. I would read a manual on your synth, try to figure out what the knobs do, and recreate some sounds to refine your sound design imagination. Maybe try to transcribe simple songs by ear and write your own harmonies to them, see what works, and see why it works (note relationships, like basic intervals, even). Maybe imagine chords in your head, write them out, and see if it matches what you thought. Listen for other peoples' chords and try sequencing out what you hear.

It just sounds so transparent. This is exceptional.

Yeah, I agree, the structure of a subtractive synth is fairly straightforward to understand, if you take the time to read up on it (I didn't when I first started ). Basically, you usually start with an oscillator (might be called VCO for voltage-controlled oscillator), which is a module that gives you a starting waveform, such as saw, square, triangle, sine, or maybe noise; send the output through a filter (might be called VCF for voltage-controlled filter) that attenuates/cuts out some frequencies or changes the width of the frequency band (small width = resonance, high gain = brings the pain; no gain, no pain! ); and optionally modulate/modify with things like a low-frequency oscillator (LFO; inaudible) or an envelope (ADSR; attack, decay, sustain, release). I think if you get used to imagining what happens through that process, even just how the input sounded and how the output could sound, you can think up sounds and decide "okay, to make this sound, I should probably do this, then this, then this." or "I have this sound somewhere... it's on the tip of my tongue... now where was it?" FM is a little funky (also an inside joke, 'cause you can make e. pianos with it!), and the theory on that was pretty hard when I tried to read up on it (I ultimately just figured it out by experimentation). It's essentially when a waveform gets stretched and compressed according to the slope of another waveform over time (stretching = positive slope, compressing = negative slope). What you get is a sound that becomes buzzier as the frequency increases; some might call it "gritty" in some cases, or "glassy" in other cases. It gets even more interesting when you change the pitch of either the incoming oscillator or the FM oscillator, since that changes how the wavelengths of the waveform line up a bit, creating less "standard" modulations. Wavetable is more or less just a way to draw your own waveforms, or use predrawn waveforms. It's not much more than having more interesting "basic" waveforms to begin with in a synth.

Oh yeah, that's another good point. Sometimes there's a particular type of instrument that you know you want to use, but maybe you have multiple samples or VSTs that can give you the tone character you want. For example, if you realize a piano would really make the song, you have choices between a hard-toned piano, a multi-velocity-layer ultra-realistic piano with a range between soft and hard tones, or maybe one from a specific set that's just really unique (like Roland SC-88, or FluidR3, or somethin'). Also, you could even go more specific into the sound's playing capabilities. Do you want it to sound legato? Retrigger? For example, I would generally use legato for synth leads, or retrigger for a pitch-envelope bass or a cinematic "pulse" bass (not a pulse wave, but in the sense of straight quarter notes in a horror genre, perhaps), or something like that. (If you're using a real instrument, that can be read up on, since flutes can't only be played staccato, cellos can't only be played legato, etc. but that's obvious)

I pick my instruments based on the mood I want to evoke and the frequencies that are empty at the time. It really depends. I think it'll help quite a bit if you synthesize your own sounds so you can ingrain how it is a sound is made, and that way you can try synthesizing them in your head as you imagine them, and look for what you're imagining. In time, it can become straightforward to think about how you want realistic instruments to sound before you pick them out and process them (because real instruments are usually less complicated than synthesized sounds, if you already have a base sample ).