composing melody on keyboard vs guitar

anyone notice a striking difference in writing melodies on different instruments? i would consider my keyboard skills comparable if not better than my guitar skills, and i just got a new keyboard and i've been writing some melodies on it as opposed to writing melodies on my guitar the past few years, and the melodies are all bright and kinda gay. i mean i know how to write the same tune on the guitar on the keybaord, but my melodes tend to be way better on the guitar. maybe i just suck at the keyboard without realizing it. but last track i had to write the tune on the guitar first, then play it on the keyboard. then it sounded fine.

yeah, what you write on definately affects the kind of music you put out. there have been composers that wrote symphonies that were criticized as sounding too much like piano music, or were obviously written at a piano.

everything has its ups and downs. personally I write all my melodies with the pencil tool. Its not too often that I use the keyboard. Usually I use the keyboard just for sketching out harmonies.

Whatever works, ya know?

Have you ever considered buying a midi pick up for your guitar? That way you could control your softsynths etc with your guitar.

I have a tendency to be way more dischordant and dissonent (but in an emotional way) on guitar. plus i thinking my timing is just different on plucked instruments.

I think keys (unless manipulated) are just too in tune.

  version2006 said:

I have a tendency to be way more dischordant and dissonent (but in an emotional way) on guitar. plus i thinking my timing is just different on plucked instruments.

 

I think keys (unless manipulated) are just too in tune.

then write weirder harmonies!

  version2006 said:

I think keys (unless manipulated) are just too in tune.

yeah.. and no one stops you to manipulate them - it might not be as easy as with a guitar but way more flexible if you are somewhat fluid in handling midi data..

when i use a guitar i think more calculated about the harmonies, more technical, while with keys its more a matter of instinct because i'm so much more used to keys.. compared to keys, i rarely use a guitar - i don't even have one, but i often borrow it from mates who do have one...

i'd love to get myself a string instrument sometime and become as fluid in that as i'm with keys - a cello, if possible.. something that really makes you rethink the way you use harmonies when physically playing (as in, not writing a score). then again, i treat my keys as a tool, more as an interface for my other instruments, i rarely sit down and play symphonies or some shit..

  Burger said:

anyone notice a striking difference in writing melodies on different instruments? i would consider my keyboard skills comparable if not better than my guitar skills, and i just got a new keyboard and i've been writing some melodies on it as opposed to writing melodies on my guitar the past few years, and the melodies are all bright and kinda gay. i mean i know how to write the same tune on the guitar on the keybaord, but my melodes tend to be way better on the guitar. maybe i just suck at the keyboard without realizing it. but last track i had to write the tune on the guitar first, then play it on the keyboard. then it sounded fine.

then stop playing the white fucking keys, there's things called scales you know.. if there's one thing piano does well it's daaark stuff.. i like arpeggios on the piano, and it's such an emotive instrument, playing soft then slowly playing harder as youre going into a crescendo. you can go all over the spectrum of keys and it sounds great when you modulate

but i agree, the feel affects it alot. i really like making melodies in bed with my microkorg before i go to sleep.. you have less of a critical eye and simple melodies work great.

The guitar is more inituitive in a sense because the keys arent marked out as much as on a piano, it works best for really melancholical stuff, but i prefer writing on the piano, it has chords and melody at the same time, you have two hands, with the guitar you just have one. i found out the melody to aphex's w32.mydoom on the guitar however

  Quote

I think keys (unless manipulated) are just too in tune.

a full blown piano is never too in tune.. a piano is consisted of strings

nothing really comes close to playing on one, i can agree that i play entirely different on my piano than on my midi keyboard.. i usually have to come up with the melodies on the piano

but then again the keyboard has pitch bend! :D

  Kcinsu said:

yeah, what you write on definately affects the kind of music you put out. there have been composers that wrote symphonies that were criticized as sounding too much like piano music, or were obviously written at a piano.

 

everything has its ups and downs. personally I write all my melodies with the pencil tool. Its not too often that I use the keyboard. Usually I use the keyboard just for sketching out harmonies.

 

Whatever works, ya know?

 

Have you ever considered buying a midi pick up for your guitar? That way you could control your softsynths etc with your guitar.

yeah, i still havent quite gotten into MIDI, though i'm definitely understanding it more. right now the only synths i have are coming from the stereo output of my microkorg. i have the MIDI cables though and i was just able to play some default soft synths and stuff with the keyboard. but sequencing is just something i'm not familiar with. i think that would be a matter of learning the software. i'm a goldwave cut and paster, through and through.

controlling soft synths with guitar sounds fucking wicked though, that might be some extra incentive to learn the stuff . . .

  Derelic7 said:

then stop playing the white fucking keys, there's things called scales you know..

lol there was an article i had read a year or so ago about latent racism in the structure of a keyboard and why racist songwriters compose happy hardcore tunes. it was pretty funny.

but for real, yeah, i think the fact that those notes are in different positions makes them sort of outcast notes. naughty notes. so maybe i do stay away from the black keys. whereas on a fretboard everything's the same. all equal opportunity and shit.

  Burger said:

  Derelic7 said:

 

 

then stop playing the white fucking keys, there's things called scales you know..

 

lol there was an article i had read a year or so ago about latent racism in the structure of a keyboard and why racist songwriters compose happy hardcore tunes. it was pretty funny.

 

but for real, yeah, i think the fact that those notes are in different positions makes them sort of outcast notes. naughty notes. so maybe i do stay away from the black keys. whereas on a fretboard everything's the same. all equal opportunity and shit.

LOL @ the happy hardcore thing. maybe thats why so many pop artists make stuff in the c major scale

yeah thats true, it feels much more natural to go up or down a semitone on the guitar because there's no difference.

but in reality the white and black keys are just semitones, combining them in a certain pattern.. just changing a single semitone will change the feel substantially and that's kind of what makes it so cool

the major and minor chords all comprise different keys. C major is just white keys, while d major contains D, F# (# means raised a semitone) and A

c minor contains c, d# and g, e minor contains e, g and b. its just simple math, the difference between c and c# and e and f is completely the same.. a major chord is 4 semitones up from the root key (c if the chord is c major), and 3 semitones up from there, so its c, e and g.. 4+3 basically, while a minor chord is 3+4

count in that manner and you can make up any minor and major chord, and for a jazzy minor or major 7th chord, add a note 3 keys up from the third key in the chord

and the truth is (well, at least in my opinion) the best chord progressions comprise both minor and major keys.. my favourite progression is d# major, g# major -> c minor

ebony and ivory you know, "the ink is black, the page is white, together we learn how to read and write". eventually the semitones just become second nature and you realise theres no difference between the keys, a major scale in C and a major scale in d# is exactly the same.

i never write anything on the white keys only just like that, like c major because its boring as fuck and overused. except maybe e phrygian (basically E to E on the white keys, phrygian is a scale aphex twin uses in a lot of tracks, its recognised with its nostalgic, playful slightly childish nature. examples are Flim and avril 14th)

  iep said:

  version2006 said:

I think keys (unless manipulated) are just too in tune.

 

yeah.. and no one stops you to manipulate them - it might not be as easy as with a guitar but way more flexible if you are somewhat fluid in handling midi data..

that brings me to another point:

I have no problem with fluidity of midi, clever usage of velocity as a controller and stacks of vari-tuned oscillators. I'm just sick of the fucking virtual setup. Plugins with digital knobs and such I'm just over it. Neato sounds and what not but I really like instruments. not acoustic organique or any non sense, I just feel like "it needs a synth line...walk over to synth and begin playing and turning knobs." not "it needs a synth line, open plugins and begin automating and right clicking and left clicking and patching midi track to correct plugin"

I've done it for 10 years and it just ins't as fun as a real keyboard. whatever, i'm completely full of shit. I don't even know if i just made a point or not. disregard. oi

i have no keyboard skills but i can see a huge difference between the melodies/chord sequences i compose on the computer and on the guitar. totally different stuff.

derilic7: with regard to the best progressions containing major and minor keys, i reckon you are wrong, the best chord progressions contain major, minor, chromatic, dissonant, suspended, atonal ,modal and bitonal chords.

bitonality is fuckin beautiful, ive been experimenting with tri and quad tonality recently but i cant seem to master the horrific dissonance to a point where there is a decent pattern in the harmony.

I prefer writing music on my computer keyboard rather than a piano keyboard. It's much more comfortable for me and I can write down my ideas faster...

  version2006 said:

  iep said:

  version2006 said:

I think keys (unless manipulated) are just too in tune.

 

yeah.. and no one stops you to manipulate them - it might not be as easy as with a guitar but way more flexible if you are somewhat fluid in handling midi data..

 

that brings me to another point:

I have no problem with fluidity of midi, clever usage of velocity as a controller and stacks of vari-tuned oscillators. I'm just sick of the fucking virtual setup. Plugins with digital knobs and such I'm just over it. Neato sounds and what not but I really like instruments. not acoustic organique or any non sense, I just feel like "it needs a synth line...walk over to synth and begin playing and turning knobs." not "it needs a synth line, open plugins and begin automating and right clicking and left clicking and patching midi track to correct plugin"

nah i meant that when you use a keyboard to control, say, another device (whether it is soft or hard, that doesn't matter), you can manipulate the data that the keyboard sends to that device.

for instance, i often route the midi data from my master controller through a pc that's running max msp. you can easily tell max to take the incoming midi notes and convert them to notes in an entirely different scale.

microtonality etc are also easily possible that way - you just make a simple patch to modulate the incoming note data. that way you aren't limited to the chromatic division of a regular master controller. then you just take the modulated midi data and feed it to your synth/sampler/whatever, whethers its soft- or hardware.

and if you despise software so much, you could even try to write a midi modulator into a programmable dsp chip and build a case around it: instant 'hardware'. because, no matter how you look at it, most recent (digital) synths are just dedicated processors running software.

  کhamanix said:

derilic7: with regard to the best progressions containing major and minor keys, i reckon you are wrong, the best chord progressions contain major, minor, chromatic, dissonant, suspended, atonal ,modal and bitonal chords.

 

bitonality is fuckin beautiful, ive been experimenting with tri and quad tonality recently but i cant seem to master the horrific dissonance to a point where there is a decent pattern in the harmony.

I was trying to keep it a little simple, you fucking pretentious avantgarde genius

chromaticism is overrated.. i don't appreciate it as much as proper tonality

i do agree with you on the subject of bitonality, its a very interesting area. but i think it's abit out of place in this thread

yeah i'm just trying to make pop electronic music tunes for the wimmins

chromatisism is absolutely excellent for build ups, there is nothing more suspenseful and expectant than a horrendously fast bur of all 12 notes crescendoing to the next bit

  Derelic7 said:

I was trying to keep it a little simple, you fucking pretentious avantgarde genius

also this sounds like a a compliment tbh cos i dont know what pretnetious or avantgarde mean really.

Once you "master the horrific dissonance to a point where there is a decent pattern in the harmony." do the girls start taking their clothes off on the dance floor?

i can program till the cows come home, but ask me to play and you get a lot of plinky plonky noise.

all you need is soul and funk

your born with these things

  version2006 said:

Once you "master the horrific dissonance to a point where there is a decent pattern in the harmony." do the girls start taking their clothes off on the dance floor?

heh pwnt.

i like speaking like a tit about chords and stuff, cant help it.

If you like playing the white keys, then do stuff in the key of D minor. Anything you mash will sound good.

for a while i tried composing using a keyboard but i ended up making everything in C or D major without noticing, so i just stick to computer programming

d minor has a c sharp and a bflat.