Trance Music Melody Theory Cont'

[i-clan]

Try this all you taoists...
Take the C Phrygian major scale. Go on take it it's free, hehe.
it goes 1 flat2 3 4 5 flat6 7 tonic
or in the key of C...
C Bflat E F G Aflat B C
okay so ...
harmonise 4 note arpeggios up and down the scale..
the "initial arpeggio note architecture" will be...
1 3 5 7
which for the first arpeggio would be
C E G B
then go to the next scale degree and "overlay" that initial arp. architecture through the scale except starting on the second note, flat2. which is Bflat. the arp is still based on the 1 3 5 7 idea (basically skipping a scale note each time) but starts on the second scale degree.
thus: flat2 4 flat6 7
or... Dflat F Aflat B
n
e
x
t
...3 5 7 [flat9 (flat2)]
or... E G B Dflat
n
e
x
t
...4 flat6 8(tonic) 3
or F Aflat C E
n
e
x
t
...5 7 flat2 4
or E B Dflat F
n
e
x
t
...flat6 8 3(or tenth) 5
or Aflat C E G
n
e
x
t
...7 flat9(flat2) 4 flat6
or B Dflat F Aflat
.
Whew.
Play them up, play them back down, mix it all around and show ya mum.

 

[thewanderingdaoist]

dang... okay, i'm messing w/ that in fruityloops (btw. fruity 3.0 is so cool, but man, 128mb ram is not enough for this thing! it's like i'm running the unreal engine in it or something!!!)

i noticed, with that first e.g. there, it makes a really dizzying melody if you loop it.. (well, don't just have it be 1357135713571357, but like 135757573757371737573751737571 ect)

TWD

 

[thewanderingdaoist]

not that this has to do w/ the topic, but too lazy to start a new thread, my trax in fruity do seem flat, one of my friends was trying to explain stereophonics to me (but having no working knowledge of music, he wasn't help at all)... anyone have experience in fruity? how can i make tihngs seems "phatter"?

TWD

 

[i-clan]

Aha! Now u r getting it - MESSING with the arps, in different ways more. Goood veeerry .
Concerning phatness in fruity, try exporting the result into T-Racks on the Mac or Waves C4 on PC - using a software "Finaliser" can add chunk to the phunk. All these really do is compress/limit and eq. But that sort of thing can help.
Stereophonics means do weird pans from left to right in stereo or something. Have different insts sitting in different parts of the spectrum eg. drums centre bass slightly left synth slightly right hats panning slight;ly left right left right every 4 bars or summin.

 

[Mikhail Josef]

not that this has to do w/ the topic, but too lazy to start a new thread, my trax in fruity do seem flat, one of my friends was trying to explain stereophonics to me (but having no working knowledge of music, he wasn't help at all)... anyone have experience in fruity? how can i make tihngs seems "phatter"?

TWD

Several things can be done to counter your little problem. First Fruityloops, unlike almost all other music software doesn't "sweeten" the sound. It will trigger the samples or play the generators exactly the way they are supposed to sound. Therefore for "phatness" as you put it you will need to add effects to each of your instruments. A little reverb, chorus and some delay will do wonders. The you will have to start playing with panning the instruments around so they aren't all right in the middle fighting each other. Fruity 3.01 has a great plugin called Panomatic that allows you to choose where the instrument sits within the audio spectrum. When all is finished use the EQ and Compression on the master FX channel. Their are a ton of things I haven't mentioned but this should help your tunes sound slightly more "alive"!!