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Finding chords for a melody


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Very interesting.

 

One thing that I always do when "noodling out a melody" is play to the Metronome. I think that it makes a difference when improvising to try to align your musical ideas to some kind of "beat," because this affords rhythmic possibilities as well as melodic ones.

 

Another thing that I routinely do is to edit my "original noodling" track – which is then forever muted – in an attempt to arrange the "noodles" into some kind of sensible progression. (I might do this several times, taking care to preserve each and every one of these "experimental" tracks. I never worry about running out of disk space anymore, and every one of these "attempts" might be "just what the doctor ordered" someday.

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Very interesting.

 

One thing that I always do when "noodling out a melody" is play to the Metronome. I think that it makes a difference when improvising to try to align your musical ideas to some kind of "beat," because this affords rhythmic possibilities as well as melodic ones.

In the Apple Loops library, I use 70s Ballad Drums 01 as my metronome. It's got a nice slow beat but not overwhelming.

 

Very interesting.

Another thing that I routinely do is to edit my "original noodling" track – which is then forever muted – in an attempt to arrange the "noodles" into some kind of sensible progression. (I might do this several times, taking care to preserve each and every one of these "experimental" tracks. I never worry about running out of disk space anymore, and every one of these "attempts" might be "just what the doctor ordered" someday.

+1

Hate when you do something and then forgot how you did it. That's why I use Capture Recording now. :mrgreen:

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  • 5 weeks later...

What I like about scripter is you can do a proof of concept to see if doing a Objective-C program would be feasible.

 

So here's a scripter I'm testing on that harmonizes a melody on the fly to a chord progression key/scale that I chose in the scripter but only after determining all the available key/scales the melody is in then choosing which key/scale to use.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
While I sincerely appreciate the potential value of tools like these, "for a composer in a hurry," I frankly would caution you to avoid too much reliance on them ... if you're trying to use them to "guide you through unknown waters for which you do not have a chart." Computers can be terrific time-savers when they "do the routine math for you," but they cannot hear, and they [still ...] cannot think. Remember that. If you don't yet understand the underlying theory, please take the time to learn. Only then will you be able to leverage computerized tools in the way that their designers intended.
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While I sincerely appreciate the potential value of tools like these, "for a composer in a hurry," I frankly would caution you to avoid too much reliance on them ... if you're trying to use them to "guide you through unknown waters for which you do not have a chart." Computers can be terrific time-savers when they "do the routine math for you," but they cannot hear, and they [still ...] cannot think. Remember that. If you don't yet understand the underlying theory, please take the time to learn. Only then will you be able to leverage computerized tools in the way that their designers intended.

You're more than welcome to post your music on this thread and explain "music theory" on how you see it. :mrgreen:

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  • 4 months later...

Harmonize a melody and having some fun with Synthesizer V

 

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Two useful things you can do and they're right there on your keyboard:

 

(1) Play "all white notes" but start on a note other than "C" and emphasize that note as being your selected tonic. Presto, you are now playing in "modes." (Start on "A" for example and you get "minor.") This is what "modes" actually are: a rotation of the sequence of intervals which "all white keys" makes extremely obvious: a "whole step" where there's a black key in the way, a "half step" where there isn't. (Starting with "C": W-W-H-W-W-W-H. There are seven rotations of that sequence. Each one has a pig-Latin name that you had to memorize in school, but "#1" through "#7" works just as well.)

 

(2) Play only the black keys and you have a pentatonic scale. It sounds "oriental." There are many such scales.

 

Music Theory teachers are a demonstration that you can make any very-simple concept very-difficult if you work at it hard enough. :)

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Wow, I have a lot of 3rd party instruments/effects and so many presets within those instruments/effects too.

Plus with the scripts that I have, I create some pretty cool MIDI songs.

The Kinetic Metal demo is me just playing out something cool, then I use the scripts to find chords and generate music.

 

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