With any theory, there are a ton of different ways to comprehend it and think about it mentally. The quoted post below is exactly how I think of it. I'm REALLY lazy, and prefer things to be complex, but concise, meaning, hard to understand but very easy to apply once understood.
Before trying to understand the post I'm talking about below(
Lodger's,) first you HAVE to understand a few things:
Quickly:
I. there are 12 major scales, and 12 minor scales. Any musical passage played in one scale can be moved to another of the same type by shifting all of the notes up or down. This is called transposition.
II. You can transpose a song you're working with(like, one you're trying to diseect and figure out) by figuring out its key, and moving everything up or down to where you can play it in A minor.
III. A minor is the only minor scale on the keyboard which does not make use of the black keys. This makes it easier to understand what's going on.
If you don't understand these things, or want to know more, read my long winded explanation below.
Firstly, understand that there are a variety of scales, however, you can transpose from one key to another (of the same type - like - A minor to F# minor) by simply shifting all of the notes up by a certain amount. An octave consists of 12 semitones(a fancy word for a half step, A half step is the distance between a C and C# for example.) The keyboard is PERFECT for understanding this concept because the piano already has two scales laid out for you which DO NOT REQUIRE THAT YOU USE THE SHARPS OR FLATS. This means you only have 7 notes to deal with, and you can see visually which ones they are. The scales already laid out are from A to A(A Minor) and C to C(C Major.) All songs are in a "key."Sometimes that key changes, but in most of today's music, the song stays in the same key the entire way through. This means that you just need to move(formally called transposing) all the notes (you play - or the song itself plays) to match each other.
Here's how you use this trick:
1. Take a song you like. Just in case you don't grasp the part that relies on your ear, you can follow along with what I'm doing to understand. I'm going to use the intro of Lil'Wayne's Lollipop as an example.
a. First we need to figure out what key it's in. To do this, just listen to the first note and find it on the keyboard by comparing the two. The first note of the song is a D. Through trial and error(This part requires LOTS of practice, and training your ears) you will get better and better at this, but you should at least be able to tell "These two pitches are the same." Listen to the first verse of the song, and be sure that you can tell what pitches are being played, and of course, which keys they are on the keyboard. In this particular song, the initial progression is "D - E - F - G, D - E - F - A" You can play these on the keyboard and play along with the song.
b. Now, there's two approaches to this part , broken down into i and ii.
i - The technical approach(for untrained ears) You can simply keep sounding out the song, figuring out what pitches are what. You will, 99% of the time, not stray from the 7 tones included in any of the 12 major or 12 minor scales. Now that you know what the notes are, simply find the scale that includes only those notes - I like the tool at
http://www.pianoworld.com/fun/vpc/piano_chords.htm for this. As a training exercise, I like to play the scale the whole way through, up and down, several times, to make sure my ear knows it. The scale is D minor, which consists of D, E, F, G, A, Bflat, C, and D again.
ii - The "semi trained ear"approach - Listen to the song and play it on the keyboard. Listen carefully to which notes sound dominant, and which notes give way to others. In the case of this song, it's VERY simple - D is very dominant, so everything starts on and returns to it. The song is broken up into bars of 4 beats(as is 99% of popular music today) and at the beginning of each 4 beat phrase is the note D. We also notice that the note E F and G, then E F and A, follow D. This means that the scale consists of DEFG and A, and some other unconfirmed(but not necessarily unknown) notes. From there, start playing notes upward on the keyboard, starting on the root note(in theory, called the tonic,) D. If the song did not have a straightforward progression in the beginning, for example, if it went, DFAGA, (notice there's no E) you would simply figure out what note is missing. A scale will ALWAYS use EVERY letter of the musical alphabet, but not the same letter twice, for example, in this case, the scale of D minor, we have D E F G A Bflat C D. We would NEVER say D E F G A Asharp C D, even though A sharp and B flat are the same note(we call this "enharmonic" - meaning, they're the same note.) You can use this rule of theory to help you rule out what notes you won't have in the scale. In this case, we have D F G and A in the scale for sure, but there's got to be an E something in the scale - an E flat, an E sharp, or an E natural(the note E itself.) E sharp is the same note as F natural, and we've already used F, so that can't be it. If you play D Eflat F G A, it sounds like sh**, so then you try D E F G A, and low and behold it fits perfectly. We now know that our scale contains the notes D E F G A.
You may want to listen to more of the song, to get a better feel for it, but I presume you're familiar with the song, as it got overplayed to no end on just about every hip hop station in the US. Anyway, when playing notes, going upward on the keyboard, keep playing til you hear the first note that just DOES NOT FIT. You will be able to tell (I hope) immediately, which note that is, and in this case, it happens to be B natural. It just doesn't follow the "feel"of the progression we just played, so we try first B sharp, which is the same as a C. C does fit the progression, but it's too big a jump(you should be able to hear that. Even if you can't tell, remember the rule, you have to use each letter of the alphabet in any scale, so B something has to be in there, and we already know it's not B natural, so let's try B flat. EUREKA! It works. Now, go on to the next note, C, which also works, then D, which we already know will work because we've used it before. Now, if you have a good ear, you'll be able to tell which note is dominant, and which notes are what. You can sort of cheat, by playing the TRIAD(very important word - just meaning, a note, a 3rd interval, and a 5th interval.) of the scale that you THINK you are working with. I (actually know, but) think we're in the scale of D minor, so let's play that triad. The D minor triad is D, F, and A. You can tell because, we know the scale is DEFGABflatCD, so just take 1, 3, and 5, E F and G, and that's your triad. Play it as a chord and see if it matches up. Your ear being trained is important here, but most people should be able to tell, when comparing side by side "Hey that chord (fits/doesnt fit) that song." If it fits (D minor triad does,) that's your scale - plain and simple. Once you know your scale you just need to set your keyboard or DAW to transpose everything you play into the correct key.
2. On your keyboard, play the entire scale you just figured out - D E F G A Bflat, C. Remember, you can transpose from any key, to any key, and almost all songs are made of up of 7(different) notes. Also remember, that the keyboard comes with two scales already laid out for you, A minor, and C major. This means, we can "cheat"and transpose D minor into A minor, so that we can play in the key of D minor, without having to watch out for B flat, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, allowing us to better visualize how the chords themselves are being constructed. To do this, we just need to find the key A on the keyboard, and then count how many notes D is from it. Each individual key counts as one, so you'd count, A-0, Asharp/Bflat-1, B-2, C-3, D-4. This means that we need to move everything up by 4 half steps(which is similar to, but not exactly the same as, two half steps, for reasons you'll understand eventually) To do this, just set your daw up to "Transpose your playing up by 4 semitones." How you do this varies from daw to daw, but in Ableton, there's a "Midi Pitch"plugin, which you drag onto a midi track, and simply turn a knob, or key in, how many semitones you want to move up/down.
Once you're done setting that up, try playing the song you're comparing, and the A minor scale. They should match, and you should now be able to play the entire melody, with only the keys A B C D E F and G, aka the A minor scale. If you can't, you did something wrong.
Now you can see very simply and clearly what chords you are making. Now, try playing along with the song, with your now vastly narrowed and perfected palette (I tend to think of your scale as an artist's palette because, artists will sometimes use other stuff than what's on the palette, but very sparingly, and in very rare occasions, much like most songs always stick to a given scale.)
Now, follow the instructions in this dude's post I quoted below, to understand how chord progressions work.
As a side note and a blurb, I do agree that sticking to music theory will vastly narrow your possibilities as an artist, I must also remind you that there's a reason it is what it is, and there's a reason that 99% of the music on the radio today follows it(tightly or loosely, varying by artist) - our brains LOVE it. Many artists will make tracks that simply don't follow or conform to music theory, and they may sound cool to them, or a few other folks, but they're not in line with what the general population wants to hear. I don't make music for me - I make music for my audience - to feed on their(approval? praise? a whole nother conversation....) The more people that hear and like my track, the better.
Random occurrences are pretty sweet when they turn out favorably, but let's be honest, what would happen if you(I presume you have no culinary experience) read the back of a chineese TV dinner, and bought all the ingridents it listed, then attempted to make the same thing, but with your own twists to it. You yourself may like it, so if you're cooking for yourself that's fine. If you're cooking for company,(or making a beat for an audience) you'll have a lot more to take into consideration.
Now, imagine the same situation with a trained, experienced, expert chef. He's going to be able to see the ingredients list, and he'll know, not only how much of each thing to put, and when to mix it in, he'll probably even know what brand or variant of ingredients (like - an 808 kick, vs a 909 kick, where to EQ the bass to make room for the kick, etc...) He'll also know, from years of experience, how to accent his dish, for the intended eater.
I'm getting hungry, so I'll have to wrap this up quick - What I'm getting at is, with years and years of experience, through experimentation, you'll undoubtedly eventually come up with something that's awesome, but why bother wasting all that time experimenting, when you can learn the guidelines and theories that others have already discovered through hours and hours of experimentation. Why do the dirty work if you don't have to? Once you know all the basics, and all the fundamentals, you can establish a starting point, and "bend" the fundamentals to suit your needs, just as a gourmet chef may not put quite as much spice in his meal if he knew it were being served to a 70 year old lady. Now you may be thinking, well that's a gourmet chef, of course he's going to make that adjustment, but remember, you as an artist should be striving to ALWAYS be better - you want to be a gourmet chef, not the fry cook at whataburger, or the hobbyist cooking for the family on the weekends.
Peace
chords have properties that make them "resolve" into other chords....
to understand how to make chord progressions, you first need to know how to make chords based on all of the degrees (notes) of the scale.
since there are 7 notes in the standard scale, there are 7 chords that are primary to that scale.
here's a good strategy for forming chords:
write down all of the notes of the scale that you are working with, putting the number of the note below it
For example
C Major:
C D E F G A B
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
now to make a chord, simply start on that degree of the scale and add add every other note (for the next two or more notes):
for example- to make the chord based off of C,
take the 1, 3, and 5
C E G
to make the chord based off of the 3rd, E min, take the 3, 5, and 7
E G B
for the 6th, it would be the 6, the 1, and the 3
A C E
this strategy will work for any reg major or minor scale.
now to finish answering your questions of what will resolve or lead to what other chord
------------------------------------------------------------------
Chord leading reference
1 -----> any chord
2 -----> 4,5, 7
3 -----> 2,4
4 -----> 1,5,7
5 -----> 1
6 -----> 2,4
7 -----> 1,3
------------------------------------------------------------------
Before anyone gets sketchy with this, there are exceptions and extentions of this, but this is a good starting ground for understanding the basic properties of chords for resolving into each other.
to make progressions, start on a number and have that go to a number that it resolves to, such as
1, 4, 5
1,4,1,5, etc
the only general rule is to make the chord progression end with something that would resolve back to the chord that you started on (for example, if you started your progression on 1, ending on 5 would work well because it would naturally lead back to one.)
If you have any questions about this, dont hesitate to ask....
_lodger_
