#104

Yup, you don’t actually have to learn it, but even the things you learn all alone are theory. And it’s easier to learn it formally than to learn it by ear. You have to listen wider, but it helps to learn wider too. Jazz theory, for example, is a mess to understand by yourself. It’s just easier to have the written rules to make your ears understand what happens more easily. The more complex forms of music or languages require a lot of work to learn, when you want to go out of the simple rythms or basic chord changes.

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#105

ok, so i just randomly stumbled across a video analyzing the donkey kong country soundtrack, of all things, but it actually provides one of the most informative lessons on concepts behind ambient composition that i’ve ever seen. for the folks in here like me who have no formal theory training, i actually found this still very easy to follow along with.

Youtube Link

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#106

This was really lovely, thanks for the link!! I also loved his take on Chrono Trigger’s nonfunctional harmony—the intro of a younger him going “whaaaaaat this is wrooooooong” in response to strange chord progressions is something I definitely have felt myself too :sweat_smile:

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#107

Thanks for posting this. Aquatic Ambience is one of my favorite video game tracks; I used to put DK in the corner of that level and stop playing just to listen to it.

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#108

Now I just desperately want to play Chrono Trigger. …

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#109

Works for me if I let Flash run in Chrome:

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#110

I built a computer for David Wise many years ago. Kinda didn’t really appreciate who he was at the time. It had been a long time since he had done anything at the peak of his powers to be fair. Hindsight makes me feel like I could have got a lot more out of the encounters we had together though.

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#111

I finished it for the first time 2 nights ago – such a good game!

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#112

The user guide on that is super helpful. Thank you for the link.

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#113

Thanks for being so thorough and thoughtful. I went to the same university a few years after you, though I graduated from the liberal arts school after getting discouraged with the BA/BFA program. That was always something of a disappointment for me, and I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what if. I’d studied theory, and was good at it, but because of red tape, it was a nightmare to take classes there. Instead, I just played in indie rock bands and recorded musicians for grocery money when I was sick of eating cream cheese and ketchup sandwiches.

I learned about Eurorack after getting well-enough established in a non-music career. Initially it was Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith who drew me in, and only after I bought my first oscillator I learned about the YouTube videos. I’ve approached this with the opposite point of view as you: I’ve felt like I didn’t have enough theory or performance hours under my belt, and have tried to cram about six years’ worth of downtime into the last year to catch up. I’ll come up with something that I like but then worry that it isn’t, I don’t know, theoretical enough.

Anyway, I appreciate this thread. This has made me confront a lot of the biases I’ve had in approaching music, and the roadblocks that have stopped me from actually making it.

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#114

Ah, it’s the feeling that the grass is greener. It’s helpful to hear your perspective.

I think we discovered Kaitlyn’s music around the same time. February 2015, Euclid. Just before I bought my first module. I heard the album and started to consider getting an Easel instead of the Eurorack direction I had been researching for so long. But then my friend Sean brought over his, which he had just gotten and I had too much trouble with the intonation, so I went Eurorack. Ha. Whatever the case, that album holds a special seat in the ears of my heart.

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#115

I have enjoyed immensely going through this thread and reading everyone’s contributions, from suggesting reads to their thoughts on how they approach it. Thank you.

For me I enjoy learning about theory because it helps sometimes in putting what I’ve done into a framework. So if for example I come up with a 3-4 note sequence I can cross reference modes and when I’ve targeted where I’m at its liberating to then be able to work inside that framework. Ofc I allow myself to go outside if I want but the sense of grounding is helpful.

I have a question: is there any reason to avoid learning music theory by way of “mod12”? So for example (and please correct me if I’m wrong) a minor key is: 0-2-3-5-7-8-10-12 and I know a 7th chord in minor is 0-3-7-10. Since working with synths and sequencers I find this a much easier way to try things.

Thanks again!

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#116

If mod12 works for you then I would say go with it especially if it makes music making easier for you. The alternative way (or just adding another layer) is to think in terms of scale steps. For example both minor and major chord are built on 1, 3 and 5 step of their respective scales. But in the case of minor chord the 3rd step is lowered by semitone. I guess most sequencers doesn’t allow to enter notes in terms of scale steps but such approach often allows to easily change scales used in pattern without the need to manually change notes.

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#117

For some reason I am reminded of my admittedly fleeting experience of “chaos magick”…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_magic

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#119

This thread is interesting but a lot of it seems to revolve around the theory of harmony. That’s all nice and fine, but it’s only one aspect of music out of many. For me as “Ambient” musician (i hate hate word) harmonic shifts are not very prominent at all. Also all this harmony theory for me is an expression of a certain bourgeois high-culture that doesn’t really represent me.

Spectral shifts are a much bigger part of my music. A track can be carried by an extremely simple folk-like chord progression, say Cmaj to Amin. That can be perfectly sufficient. All the rest happens in the shifts in overtones, transients, in tonal density, in the harshness or softness, the dynamics and all that. Maybe you can call it the Scelsi- or Dumitrescu- approach if you want to root that somewhere in high-culture.

I am not implying that I am special here, a lot of people approach things like that in modular, especially because placing harmonic shifts precisely can be quite a challenge in modular, so maybe it almost comes natural to do it like that. I am just saying that you don’t necessarily have to worry about modes and the circle of fifths too much in order to make “ambient music”. Sometimes this knowledge can even be in the way maybe.

Then again there’s artists like Tim Hecker who I know is very specific about notes and harmony. Different people different approaches.

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#120

Nice points. I would add:

  1. Harmony is the least necessary part of music. I spend four decades studying it, so you know I love it. But I’ve spent the last two years doing nothing but Indian ragas. A melody and a drone can potentially contain every harmonic relation in the universe. When the melody is in perfect tune with the drone, chords are superfluous.

  2. Tuning is closely related to timbre. Micro-tuning a note around a drone makes the timbre of the note change.

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#121

isn’t this precisely an harmonically-dependent definition of timbre—or rather, timbral dynamics are an harmonic effect and function thereof? thus, to say that

seemingly contradicts your definition of tuning and timbre here…

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