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I will start of by saying yes its true a lot of EDM songs use the same chord progressions and if your happy with using chords that have been used before then thats completely fine and acceptable no need to carry on reading, however if you would like to try and make original chord progressions I have tried to explain all that i know as best as i can
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with music theory you either know it all or know nothing what i mean by this is if you've been learning music theory for a few months you may know a scale and the major and minor chords of that scales but theres so much more than that such as 7th', 9th's borrowed chords etc.. But because you've only learnt that small bit you stick with that and don't experiment further which brings me onto my next point
3.Experiment - there are no solid rules in music theory and you should always have a beginners mind, nothing is set in stone.
4.Voicing- voicing doesn't just mean stacking the same chord 3 octaves, the notes you don't play are also very important. What i mean by this is if you have an A minor chord instead of stacking A,C,E 3 times up take aways some of those notes to get a different tonality to the chord and play with velocity instead of just having one huge chord hit with no variation. Also know that adding harsh notes hear and there in you progression can sound nice when its fully resolved and you can use up to 6 notes in a chord progression and it will still sound fine if voiced correctly try this by playing A C E G B D
5.When its ok to steal- now this is completely opinion based because they're is no legal repercussions for using someone else's chord progressions and if your making deep house for example with a 3 or 4 note bass line its basically impossible not to steal (although you can add some little notes in between the main progression to spice things up a bit) but in this instance i believe its totally fine as long as there is some difference in instrumentation and sound design however if its a long/different chord progression such as Deadmau5-"some chords" thats when its sort of scummy thing to do IMO
- Chords/bass - you can use just two chords and still make your music original by having a groovy evolving bass line with lots of changes underneath it and vice versa you could have a generic 4 notes bass line but have an original lead on top and thats also cool
7 . How to learn - the best way to learn is by playing an instrument, recreating loads of music , scouring the web and download midis, learning a scale its major and minor counterpart I suggest using A minor/ C major because they're all white notes and A major because its the relative key to A minor but its up to you.
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listen to classical music/ jazz - this is a must if you want to improve your music from a compositional standpoint. Try to replicate what you hear.
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Theory is not a must - look at deadmau5 he doesn't know music theory but he is considered one of the best at making progressions in EDM he goes by instinct and experimenting and using notes that are unexpected also if you haven't already heard of him already check out https://soundcloud.com/paradigmrecords/sets/the-nth-degree he knows no theory but his composition is in my opinion some of the best
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change the way you make music if you always start with bass line try start with melody now and make the bass fit to that another thing i like to do is making my progressions around a vocal it can give you a really nice starting point
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Variation - variation is key in making good original chord progressions for example if you have a basic bass line / chord progression but then at the end of every 8 or 16 bars you change up the notes as a sort of fill example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWzMNkT_nJw, another idea is a progression change from either the intro to break or break to drop (key changes / switching major/minor also can work) even though the progressions being used are very basic i feel this is a good example for how changing chords between each section can work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZa5YnH46nU
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don't listen to anyone people who don't know what they are talking about (including me if you feel that way ;) but there are some really terrible posts on here and from certain EDM youtubers (cough.. zen world.. cough) who have no idea what they're talking about and try to say things like "chords don't matter, always go up in twos , Future bounce, bass house melodies tutorial !! " and this is completely false chords can go in any order with any amount of space you want and there should be no rules set for specific genres having a specific set of melodies its just ridiculous
anyway below are some examples of EDM artists/albums i feel are really creative musically, feel free to post some of your favourites i love discovering new musical electronic artists
trap: https://soundcloud.com/wizetheproducer/sets/goodies-ep-out-now-via,
house: overwerk (linked above),
Deadmau5 - everybody already knows hopefully ?, https://soundcloud.com/karmafields/sets/new-age-dark-age-deluxe
dnb: https://soundcloud.com/willkeeno/sets/futurist, https://soundcloud.com/bensley/sets/next-generation https://soundcloud.com/shogunaudio/sets/technimatic-desire-paths https://soundcloud.com/willkeeno/sets/remixes https://soundcloud.com/camokrooked/sets/zeitgeist-17
i've linked a lot of dnb artists because i feel this is the genre thats really killing it musically (trance also has some great music from a theory standpoint but i dont really listen to it enough to give any artists)
TLDR: there are no rules in theory, its not essential, do things differently and unexpected. edit: sorry the numbers have messed up in this post for some reason
Submitted September 29, 2017 at 03:00PM by muscialtheory https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/739jx9/chord_progressions_music_theory_in_edm/?utm_source=ifttt
Javier Rodriguez
Friday, September 29, 2017