Where should a Newbie go for music theory?

Hello -I am just getting into learning the Force and have no problem spending weeks/months diving into the YouTube tutorials and manual to slowly learn the different parts of it.

What I am more worried about is getting to a point where I am somewhat comfortable using the Force...but don't really know how to compose/combine the music etc. So I think I. might needs some simple and practical courses, videos on music theory? Any great YouTube channels or other places to get this education (fairly quickly)?

For what it is worth I plan on making mostly melodic EDM.

Check out the Royal Composer & Jameson Nathan Jones, both on YouTube.

Sounds like your overthinking, just get & see if you can have some fun with it first, make some clips & make a sketch...

OK, so there are a couple of answers.

The first, most dismissive, is: theory is just theory, OK for describing what you've done, but it doesn't really tell you what to do. If it sounds right, it is right, so try stuff and use what works!

The second, more realistic: Check out tobyrush.com - he has great resources. This will get your foot firmly in the door of western music theory, as well as some references to other things that you could check out. Mostly wikipedia is broken dogshit, but the music theory pages are worth rabbitholing once you have the basic vocabulary.

The third, perhaps more relevant: you want theory that relates to what you want to do. The topics (I'm guessing here) that you might need are things like arrangement, form, voice leading, harmony, and rhythmic practices. Feel free to ask about any of those, and we'll offer you advice and examples right here.

The fourth: listen to music that you like, pick out the bits that you like most, and try to copy them until you learn the shapes that most do what you want. For example, listen to Whole Lotta Love and duplicate the riff, or Sleng Teng and copy the riddim.

I have almost none direct knowledge of theory at almost 61, after making music for more then 40 yrs……

Especially the force is nice in this respect; use scales and chords in the shift note menu

This way, you are always in the choosen key or scale…….

Oh, and what the others said is so true, just try, and what is good is good!

This book is a good start point

https://bookbot.com/g/661295/m/747710?f ... g0QAvD_BwE

Music is the thing you actually hear, and theory is any kind of logical, verbal and cognitive stuff you use for thinking and talking about music. The Force in itself can be "theory", if it provides you with a physical map of where things are, the buttons, pads, knobs, the screens etc. it can be theory for you. But using those for communicating with other people only works if they know the Force as well.

How much "proper", classical music based theory, i.e. the kind of stuff that's taught in a conservatory you need... probably very little. If you know names for notes, you can talk about them and write things down. It helps. Knowing basic harmonic terms is good too, like major chords, minor chords.

IMO, the most important skill is playing by ear, and with EDM, it can mean that you're able to recreate songs you know, using whatever digital contraption you have as your instrument.

Can you recreate "Happy Birthday" with your Force? If not, I think you lack some essential skills.

Thanks everyone for the tips!

+++Music Theory for Computer Musicians by Dr. Michael Hewitt+++

I own a few of his books and so far they are all good and worth having, but for someone who wishes to learn basic music theory I could not recommend this book enough. It is designed for the student working with a DAW and electronic gear. Each chapter is structured like a lesson with a quiz at the end to drill home the important points and corresponding audio files readily available online and included as a CD with older pressings. It starts from the very beginning instructing the reader using both the piano roll, familiar to DAW users, while simultaneously teaching how to read and write using the musical staff. If you treat each of the chapters as a lessons, you will have a solid understanding of music theory and will be able to understand and compose using proper rhythmic and melodic musical notation.

Musical Scales of the World is another of his books I really like that gives you a basic introduction to how different scales evolved around the world, a ton of modern scales to play with, as well as a basic introduction to micro-tuning that anyone can understand. Just from skimming the book, I was able to understand and start adding Ethiopian and Balinese scales that i programmed with micro-tuning to the custom user scales in my Erica Synths DB-01 Bassline. It's a fantastic reference for anyone who might be interested in that sort of thing, but for a general overview of music theory definitely go with Music Theory for Computer Musicians...

https://www.amazon.com/Music-Theory-Com ... 121&sr=8-3

Apparently this is a newer, second edition that was just released in January, but if you need to save money you can find used copies of the first edition for less than bucks.

Koekepan wrote:The second, more realistic: Check out tobyrush.com - he has great resources.

Better than I expected.
https://tobyrush.com/theorypages/pdf/en ... da-set.pdf

WEsty wrote:somewhat comfortable using the Force... don't really know how to compose/combine the music etc.

..I plan on making mostly melodic EDM.

Counterpoint:

Look into the many different ways producers/artists start and think about making a new song.

- Chord Prpgressions. Deadmouse is big on this, will fool around with chords to get started. He's not a theory guy and just sort of plays around with his favorites using automation, once he gets something he likes he'll build on that. Maybe add an arpeggio next using the chords, or a bass line and not necessarily the root note, or drum rhythm. LOTS of ways to do all this on Force. I waste hours doing arps with synths from chord progressions. And Force rules for this because you just set up a 4x4 beat or even just kicks and when you start running arps it instantly sounds like music. Do this, add a bass line, some drum tops and pod you have a 4 or 8 bar jam to work with.

- Chopped Samples. Fool around with a synth, go crazy, record your output. Find some stuff you like then use sample chopping much like a hiphop producer and spread that around using the 16 pads feature changing pitch and/r articulations, experiment until you find a cool progression or groove. Record that and lay drums or bass over it next. 64 pads is insane for this. Also fool around with the sequencer mode that has 8 lanes on top and 32 pads below.

- Chopped Samples v2. Chop a sample of literally anything that has notes in it. Mangle the crap out of it, chop it up, experiment. Lots of examples in industrial and hip hop.

- A Bass Line. This is very common in all sorts of groove and dance music for pretty much ever. Find a 3 or 4 note series of bass notes you like, lay them down over 4 or 8 bars. That will tell your ears what sounds good to layer on top of it and Akai is great for experimentation and easy to transpose notes. SO MANY hit songs started this way. Read or find a video if how michael jackson wrote Bille Jean this way, and the guy doesn't even know any notes let alone chords or scales. He hummed the bass line to get started.

- Arpeggiator. I think all the synths can do this in Force, and some have some pretty advanced options to experiment with. Just play around with options, find something that sounds cool. Acid House with Roland 303 was born from this method. They called it "happy accidents" and it's also really fun for us guys not good with theory.

I suggest find chords you like, save them as custom chord progressions, then you can use these to start with bass lines or progressions or arps. Then it's easy to transpose up/down and change as needed. Or start with the "DANCE" progressions already built in to see how this works.

Then look into how songs you like are structured. Example first 4 bars just a growing synth line that gets louder ad the filter opening up and maybe a pumper with a riser at end, then 16 bars of everything going at once with a downlifter at end, etc. Most big songs have already been disected this way online as a quick starting lesson which is a lot faster than play/pause/pencil/rewind/play/pencil/pause/etc.