Music Theory and EDM Production (practical usage)

[bastos]

How much music theory is really needed for solid EDM production?

Reading and writing notes, scales and intervals variations, chords etc…
It’s so borring and I just can’t grasp it’s practical usage… Especially for reading and writing notes.

I’ve started to study theory from the scrach, reading some basics, but I’m a little concerned because, obviously, I don’t want to waste my time and nerve cells on something that I acctualy don’t need…

Are there any essentials, that I should know, and, maybe more importantly, are there any not as essential themes that I could just pass?

Any thought on this matter, anyone willing for some experience sharing?

I could really use some guidance on this…

[Mattias]

I'd say you can get by checking some smooth / straight to the point / pedagogical videos on Youtube for this.
Just the basics, then get right into producing and learning by doing for a while, after that you most likely will develop more interest to go deeper.

[willemb]

Here is a similar thread, the first reply to which was to do a search for another thread about the same subject, haha:

http://subsekt.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4669

[innovine]

You probably don't need much for techno. Maybe some chord progression stuff is useful for detroit techno but mostly it's all very monotonic. Pick a key, like F# or G. Pick if it should be major or minor, probably minore. Know what chords are in that key, there is a lot of th ory explaining why, but you can just look it up. You'll probably play the first chord hsame name as your key) a lot, with the fourth or fifth maybe for a variation, but any chord in the key will do. Your bassline will take its notes from the notes in that key, and favour the notes which make up the chord currently playing. Also, you can look up inversions. If you want some kinds of changes in your chords/pads but don't want it sounding too poppy you can use inversions of your chord instead of changing chord. Theory isn't ever going to hurt your understanding of music, but for techno you can probably get by with a bare minimum. You'd probably get more out of rhythmic studies, polyrhythms, odd time signatures, triplets, analysing fills and breaks, and so on.

[Mattias]

Yeah Innovine got some solid points.
You yourself set the aim and goal, remember you can always raise it when you reach a comfortable level!

[bastos]

You'd probably get more out of rhythmic studies, polyrhythms, odd time signatures, triplets, analysing fills and breaks, and so on.

This is what I need. More sir, please.

[GLinet]

Whatever I'm doing, when I start focusing a lot on theory and technique, my creativity wanes. At the same time, I can't exploit my creativity without going through those "how to" periods.

Knowledge subordinate to intuition can have powerful results. Obsession with knowledge for its own sake is a dead end. You end up with cliched, "paint by numbers" shit.

I'm reminded of writers who are always going to workshops and talking about literary theory... but never actually write anything of merit themselves. Studying the thing isn't doing it.

IMO, good art should make you a little uncomfortable. It should straddle the border between what you expect and what you don't. Knowledge can help with meeting expectations - intuition is there to tell you when to ignore them.

[msl]

Why the fuck are you calling it EDM anyway? EDM is Guetta round these parts.

Anyway the answer is 10,000 hours. Just experiment, thats what techno is about.


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[innovine]

You'd probably get more out of rhythmic studies, polyrhythms, odd time signatures, triplets, analysing fills and breaks, and so on.

This is what I need. More sir, please.

I'm not sure what else can be said, really. Either way too much, or not a lot....

What do you understand about rhythm anyway? Do you know what all the above means, and do you know it when you hear it? Rhythm is a language, and there are grammar rules and ways to think about patterns and grooves that can be very useful. Sure, you can go pretty far just dicking around and hoping you hit on something interesting, or you can study what works and what doesn't and learn from those who have created before you.

I like a lot of drum and bass, and triphop, and several years ago I decided to learn how to play drums, to learn more about rhythm and beats. I can't recommend this enough. Techno is all about the rhythms, and even if they are relatively simple, it's well worth learning something about drumming, to improve as a musician. It doesn't really matter if you play on a drumkit, a bongo or djembe, or bash away with your fingers on some pads, it all works. You might want to check out Benny Grebs 'The language of drumming', he presents fundamental patterns in an interesting way. I also learned a lot of stuff from 'The breakbeat guide' by Ydna Murd (he also has brilliant youtube vids, search for his username jungleritter, this is a must).

Really fundamental to drumming is the paradiddle. This is a way of hitting with your right and left hands, in the following pattern: RLRR LRLL
There are plenty of variations: RRLR LLRL, and so on. Smoothly switching between these gives great beats, especially if you play each hand on a different instrument (play all the right hand strokes as accented hits on the hihat edge, with the left hand as soft hits on the hihat bow, for example). Swapping different paradiddle and sticking patterns gives radically different grooves, and provides a very convenient way to memorize and handle them. Watch jungleritter playing some paradiddle videos for ideas.

I strongly recommend you play these with your hands/fingers for hours and hours and hours and hours, so you can smoothly transition between patterns and combinations. George Stones 'Stick Control' book contains long lists of all possible combinations which is very useful to drill through. After a while the sound of them sits in your brain, and you end up being able to think about patterns in a higher level than just individual hits. Hard to explain this aspect, because it is a way to feel/hear/internalize/play that isn't word-based. I enjoy drum practice as a mental discipline and as a challenge to master the physical movements, just as much as music. YMMV. In addition, it improves your ears, and you can listen to tiny timing variations and flams in great detail (much like a skilled dj can 'zoom in' on out of sync beats and hear it long before the punters can). You only really get this level of detail in your hearing by repeated practice.

Finally, you need to study the genre you are working in. This means recreating stuff you hear that you like. There are plenty of people on forums who'll tell you not to copy and to be original, but honestly, there is no better way to learn. You'll never listen to something to the same degree as you will when you try to imitate it perfectly. The more you try this, the better your production ears will be. You won't even understand what this means until you try it. So try it. Take an interesting bar or few bars of a tune and try to recreate it exactly. Do LOTS of a/b comparison. You'll hear you are wrong, but it takes a lot of focus and practice to understand why, and the problem is NOT in your production skills, it's in your ability to hear, and to hear what the difference in two sounds are. Practice this like nothing else and you'll do great. This works for every aspect of production. When it comes to fills, breaks, drops and other variations, you should attempt to recreate these from your favorites. It's one thing to listen and to say "oh here comes the snare roll and now its faster and then theres a big cymbal smash" and another thing to say that "the snare roll begins with two quarter notes and a rest then switches to 8ths on the 'and of 3' and continues through to the next bar where it goes from 8ths to 16ths at the '3' and then 16th note triplets for the last beat with an accent on every 'and' in the last bar and the final few hits, with a cymbal crash on the final 1. Nothing stops you writing that stuff by yourself, but honing your skills to be able to hear it and transcribe it from a couple of listens is very useful. Especially if it's something with a lot of rests in it, then it gets pretty tricky. Another favorite fill of mine is a snare roll, two beats of 16th notes, followed by a beat of triplets, then 2 8th notes. This sounds like it's slowing down to a stop, without changing tempo. It's not something i'd likely play if i was just messing around, but now that I know it I throw it in now and then. This came directly from studying different drum fills. Triplets in general are awesome to throw into 4/4 now and then, cos the average listener doesn't know what just happened. They can hear something different occured, but it's gone by before they can analyize what the hell it was. Makes for spicy, interesting music.

You might also want to take a look into other styles, to improve your musicianship. It's nice to be able to know what gives jazz it's jazzy feel, should you want to have a bit of a jazzy break in a track. If you want a bit of a latin vibe, knowing some samba patterns is going to help more than finding that 'latin drums' preset on your sampler. There are plenty of complex drumrolls and fills in rock and metal which can be adapted and played with electronic percussion. All the genres have useful stuff to give, and you can pick and choose which bits to add to your own palette.


Bit of a rambling post, sorry, but it's an area I am passionate about!

[Lost to the Void]

Anyway the answer is 10,000 hours. Just experiment, thats what techno is about.


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This, basically.
If you are going to focus on anything theoretical, then drum, percussion, rhythm.
Techno is drum music.

[Hades]

Anyway the answer is 10,000 hours. Just experiment, thats what techno is about.


.

This, basically.
If you are going to focus on anything theoretical, then drum, percussion, rhythm.
Techno is drum music.

drum music and sound design !!

but never forget those 10.000 hours !

there are no real shortcuts.
And yes, you will waste time on things you will look at afterwards and think "damn, I didn't need that, not really",
but even that differs from person to person.

[Hades]

How much music theory is really needed for solid EDM production?

Reading and writing notes, scales and intervals variations, chords etc…
It’s so borring and I just can’t grasp it’s practical usage… Especially for reading and writing notes.

I’ve started to study theory from the scrach, reading some basics, but I’m a little concerned because, obviously, I don’t want to waste my time and nerve cells on something that I acctualy don’t need…

Are there any essentials, that I should know, and, maybe more importantly, are there any not as essential themes that I could just pass?

Any thought on this matter, anyone willing for some experience sharing?

I could really use some guidance on this…

I come from a classical background, so long ago I had the whole theoretical training when I played piano for years (still do nowadays, the piano playing, not the training).
There is absolutely NO POINT WHATSOEVER that you learn to read or write notes.
Why would you do that for techno ?
Do you know any techno tracks that have sheetmusic ?
I'd love to see them, must look very interesting.

Seriously, you can skip that part.
I'm very happy I can read (and write, not that I ever need this) notes, and I buy sheetmusic a lot, but it's never for electronical music,
and I've never had any use for that skill when making electronical music.
except of course it's great that I can really play my keys, but you can learn that without learning how to read an write notes, that's only muscle memory.

Learning about scales is useful. Just cause that way you can learn some simple chord progressions, make basslines with the right notes,... (as already mentioned above by others)
but even for that there are many shortcuts.
Live has chord or scale plugins, I presume most other DAW's have something similar. You can just drop the scale plugin of the scale you choose in front of each instrument, add a chord if you want a certain chord,...
That way your life is made easy.
Personally I never use those myself.

No offence, but you strike me as a rather impatient person, to be honest.
There are no real shortcuts, seriously.
Or you gotta just try pasting loops on top of each other.
Which is about as creative as serving entrée's in a restaurant where it's all just opening up a few packs of already cut carpaccio, already cut salad, putting some framboise coulis on top and charging 20€ for it.

[innovine]

Does learning to read music help your understanding of music (besides enabling you to study texts which would otherwise be incomprehensible)? I know from my experience of reading drum music that it really helped. It's the same timing notation as standard sheet music, but I get quite lost when it comes to the pitch element, and am wondering if it's worth approaching scales, keys and harmony from a visual, written angle (not for techno, just in general).

[Hades]

Does learning to read music help your understanding of music (besides enabling you to study texts which would otherwise be incomprehensible)? I know from my experience of reading drum music that it really helped. It's the same timing notation as standard sheet music, but I get quite lost when it comes to the pitch element, and am wondering if it's worth approaching scales, keys and harmony from a visual, written angle (not for techno, just in general).

well, if you've made it that far already and had enough patience to learn how to read drum music, I'd try moving on and learn how to read sheetmusic in general.
But do remember this : as a piano-player, I have to read in 2 different keys (G and F), and I can assure you reading the more general notes is learnt easy enough,
but every note above or underneath that middle part will only come natural if you play (read) enough sheetmusic, otherwise you'll always be counting up or down the last note you can still read easy enough.

I've picked up big time on my piano playing after I finally bought a real piano 14 months ago, and since I'm now playing approx. 4 to 5 hours a week (contrary to the 4 or 5 hours a month I did for years), I've gotten a lot better at reading those notes, but it's just like learning a language : if you don't speak (in this case : read) it enough, it's no use, and you might reconsider before you spend your time learning it, cause chances are really big you won't ever get very good at it.

So does it help ?
I can take any piece I play and use the chords (or even chord progression) on some synth sound and nobody will probably notice (and those who will are definitely the trained kind, I spotted a Prince track in an ambient piece once , not that it made any difference... ),
so sure enough, I could probably "steal" a lot more if I wanted to (which I really don't unless on a subconscious level, which can always happen, one soaks up so much when one listens to a lot of music, you're just a sponge really ), but I don't like doing that, so yeah, I guess it could help a lot.

I feel it's more sad if some girl/guy plays the guitar or whatever and he/she has been playing for years, and he/she can still not read sheetmusic.
I find that kind of sad, cause the fact that he/she has been playing that instrument for years means a certain commitment, and yet there's a whole world of music that remains shut just cause he/she can't read sheetmusic.
Kind of like if you'd have been using Live for years and never learned any of the short keys like "cmd+m" or "cmd+shift+m", but even way more sad...

When you say it really helped you to learn how to play drums, then why not go another step further.
I know your post made me feel like I should learn what you learnt.
But is it necessary ? not really.

[Mslwte]

Or just download so midi files and sound like whoever you want!

Sorry

It all depends on want you are trying to achieve I suppose. If you want to sound like ludovico einaudi then you probably need to do a bit of theory, but if you want to go for a bit if whitehouse then I guess you just need a fucked outlook on giving a fuck.

[Hades]

It all depends on want you are trying to achieve I suppose. If you want to sound like ludovico einaudi then you probably need to do a bit of theory, but if you want to go for a bit if whitehouse then I guess you just need a fucked outlook on giving a fuck.

I actually play this one from Einaudi from time to time.
didn't need any theory for that one at all, in fact I found it very easy to learn...
Probably took me less than a week in total to play it fluently.

youtu.be/rmj3iU36Mmw

funny part is I really don't know this Einaudi guy at all.
I mean, I know, love and play pieces from composers like Max Richter, Francis Lai, Dave Grusin, John Barry, Michael Nyman,...
but I never heard of Einaudi untill I played that song.

I have a hunch half of his work is far too cheesy for my taste, but that one above, I really do enjoy playing,
and I can assure you, you need very little theoretical knowledge for that piece if you know how to play the keys.

[Hades]

wanna know how's a real pain in the ass music theory wise ?
Danny fucking Elfman !!!

I bought 2 of his pieces a month ago.
One is the "Ice Dance" from "Edward Scissorhands", the other one is the theme from The Simpsons.
The last one I bought just to have some fun with the kids.
I play quite a few of the tunes from their favourite DVD's on the piano, I usually find them just by ear, improvise some left hand arpeggio, it makes them happy, and it's fun to fool around with and change the "genre" so to say (play it bluesy, play it rock 'n roll,...)

But fuck me, that Simpsons tune, it would probably take me several days full practice 5+ hours a day before I could only halfly play it.
That thing changes key every 5 measures or so. I just gave up after playing it a few times. It ain't worth the hassle (and I don't really like the tune anyway), my time is better spent elsewhere.

And the "Ice Dance" tune ? Same thing. It changes key lots of times.
If it wasn't for the fact that I absolutely love Edward Scissorhands (and most Tim Burton films), I'd have given up long ago.
Danny Elfman makes Einaudi look like pure child's play !

[innovine]

Ha! I am actually one of those sad people who can play guitar but not read sheet music. I know how to finger chords and construct them, although I'd need to think a bit to make some 9ths and 13ths and inversions. But I never read proper music since guitar tab is a lot easier and if you know how the piece sounds it's enough to read the tab to play it (tab has little to no timing info). But I still struggle with calculating, from the top of my head, what the minor fourth chord is in G#, for a random example, and which notes are in that chord. I'm wondering if being well versed in sheet music allows you to visualize this in a quick and easy visual way. I can visualize scales along the neck of the guitar and count up the notes but everything there is always relative to the position of the root, I'd be pressed to say what the actual note value is. Ie To go from a major to minor barre chord you just move a finger one way or the other, and it's the same finger movement for all chords, but actually saying which note is getting flattened requires some mental gymnastics. And I wonder if this becomes easier with visualizing things on a staff rather than a guitar neck.

[Barfunkel]

Like Hades said, note reading is mostly useless for techno. Knowing how to play is useful though, particularly with chords. By just sequencing them, it takes ages to go through just some basic chords, and when you go to inversions, you could spend all day finding something that suits.

I unfortunately can't play, but plan on learning how to, as soon as I got the extra money for it and find a suitable teacher who understands what I want and need and doesn't just force me to play Fur Elise for 5 years.

[Hades]

Für Elise was actually called "Für Marie-Antoinette" or "Für Louise" or "Für ..." whoever Beethoven wanted to bang at that moment.
He'd just change the title and send it to them, saying he composed it especially for them.

I always cringe when I hear that piece, it's good for ice-cream-trucks and stuff, that's it.