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aleksvanrohrer
02-13-2012, 04:57 PM
So, I understand this may seem like a dumb question but I will ask it anyway. Does house and most edm follow normal chord progression. For example if the melody is in A minor would my bass and other harmony's and synths be playing chord progressions of the A minor i.e 1-4-5 etc?

I know music theory fairly well, but am kind of confused on how to structure my tracks with melody's harmony's etc.

jonistaken
02-16-2012, 12:09 AM
It depends.....

Some house music will sit in one or two chords the whole time and make use of pitch bending to make a melody. I am thinking mostly of Fidget here. Some of the nu-jazz house producers have very complicated chord progressions. Electro seems to generally follow very simple rules, you almost never hear complicated chords in electro.

Standard western music theory is still applicable to EDM. The main thing to remember is that synths produce very very rich harmonic content over their tones and really rich sounds make for very bad harmonies, 5ths seem to work sometimes, 4ths can work but shouldn't be over done, 3rds are a little better that 4s but not as good as 5ths. I would pretty much avoid 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, 13ths, ect for this reason. It is the same reason you never hear jazz guitarists playing with heavy distortion, all that sound makes the tones hard to pick out.

thehadgi
02-16-2012, 12:31 AM
Well, not sure if this is going to help, but you could just make up your own progressions and harmonies?

To start, pick a progression (if you have one in mind) and just put instruments on the different parts of the chords and see how it sounds. Then switch up the instruments. Then switch up the actual notes. Pretty much just play around till you get something you like I guess? That's what I do sometimes

Hygro
02-16-2012, 12:47 AM
music theory still applies but it's dance music, man, if it makes 'em dance and it sounds good, it's good.

Austin GoGreen
02-16-2012, 02:13 PM
How many guys like Afrojack, Luke, Samson, ect. do you guys think actually know chord progressions (like the op) and theory and what not? I think music can definitely be taught/learned through theory. BUT, when it comes to talent you either have it or you don't. And if you have the talent, I don't think you necessarily need theory.

mostapha
02-16-2012, 02:15 PM
No, there's no equivalent of the blues riff for EDM.

thehadgi
02-16-2012, 02:26 PM
If afrojack would just stop producing music I think the world would be a better place

dooooOOOOOODOO DOO DOO DOO DO dooooWEEEWEE WEE WEE DOOO

TheFrenchWay
02-16-2012, 02:26 PM
music theory still applies but it's dance music, man, if it makes 'em dance and it sounds good, it's good.

I fully agree with this statement.

I made lot's of hip-hop in the past years and making House I found myself being able to add more ''random'' noises or melodies to the tracks to make it ''pop'' a little more. Basically creating a dance atmosphere.
If you know your music, It should be obvious when something does not sit right in the song like in any genre and style of music. Fix it and try again.

Giran
02-16-2012, 03:48 PM
No, there's no equivalent of the blues riff for EDM.

There are "standard" lead/chord sequences though. "We Found Love" uses a really old 90's piano riff sequence, and tonnes of Trance producers rely on it.

zaxl
02-16-2012, 07:03 PM
No, there's no equivalent of the blues riff for EDM.

12 bar blues:

yCqZTfwpRes

drumpusher
02-16-2012, 07:45 PM
I would pretty much avoid 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, 13ths, ect for this reason.

Nonsense, loads of deep house tracks are based on those minor chord variations.

Hygro
02-16-2012, 09:39 PM
exactly. loads of tracks in all dance genres use darker, dissonant chords and scales.

have you ever heard the arpeggios in Daft Punk's Alive 2007? Like in the Too Long one, and in the HBFS/Around the World? It's like C, Eb, G#. It sounds amazing. It's rather unorthodox. A minor scale with an augmented 5th?

jonistaken
02-17-2012, 05:09 AM
Nonsense, loads of deep house tracks are based on those minor chord variations.

I mentioned that the nu-jazz folks don't really follow those rules. A lot of deep house that does that fits in that category. Even in those tracks they usually only have sampled real instruments play those chords (guitars, pianos, strings, vibes, ect.). However, they (almost?) never play those chords on their synth parts which was all I meant for that to apply too, they may however have monophonic synth lines that run through the sampled chords (like pretty lights) but that line still usually sticks to pretty natural sounding intervals. This is not true for all house but it sure is for most of it, there are exceptions.

drumpusher
02-19-2012, 12:35 PM
Pretty Lights is not deep house :rolleyes:, neither is most of that bubble gum cookie cutter shit on beatport that's classed as deep house.


Deep house is a style of house music which fuses elements of Chicago house, 80’s soul, jazz-funk and Detroit techno. The Jazz influences of deep house are most frequently brought out by chords using more complex than simple triads (7ths, 9ths, 13ths, suspensions, alterations) which are held for many bars, which give the tracks a slightly dissonant feel. The use of vocals is also more common in deep house than in many other forms of house music.

xyloft
02-19-2012, 01:58 PM
I really think it's going to differ from Genre to genre, but i dont think anything is really off limits. There are Drum and Bass songs that have heavy wobbley bass synths and there are Drum and bass songs that use piano and strings.

I think your chord progressions will be guided more by instrument selection than by genre.

mostapha
02-19-2012, 01:58 PM
:stupid:

I've also been hearing more about really good deep house that's only released on vinyl as small runs. I wish I had a better clue where to get it.