Why is it my tracks always turn into beats?

I'm trying to actually make songs which change quite a bit.

But they tend to be so repetitive. It's a bit annoying.

Should I perhaps study music theory or what? Help me.

  On 1/18/2010 at 7:22 PM, The Dark Lord said:

I'm trying to actually make songs which change quite a bit.

But they tend to be so repetitive. It's a bit annoying.

Should I perhaps study music theory or what? Help me.

Yes you should start with music theory, then move on to talent theory, and then, for diversity, you should look into imagination theory. I also found it very revelatory myself to study hard work theory and experience theory. A very new radical approach to composition can also be found in Richechre Squarepusherbeat Yam's new book "Read the rules".

create different patterns, different sequences. chain them and you get a track.

a good thing would be to have a melody in your head, and try to reproduce it.

i don't know there are many ways to make music

  On 1/18/2010 at 7:44 PM, Brian Tregaskin said:

create different patterns, different sequences. chain them and you get a track.

a good thing would be to have a melody in your head, and try to reproduce it.

i don't know there are many ways to make music

Yeah that's interesting. I always have a melody in mind.

But I find it difficult sometimes for certain sequences to sound right together.

But your saying work on different patterns beforehand or what?

yeah i mean, create one sequence, create another, and another, and then chain them. easy. the hard thing is to make something interesting to hear. it helps if you know what you want to express. what do you make music with btw?

  On 1/18/2010 at 8:08 PM, Brian Tregaskin said:

yeah i mean, create one sequence, create another, and another, and then chain them. easy. the hard thing is to make something interesting to hear. it helps if you know what you want to express. what do you make music with btw?

I use the amazing FL Studio haha. But yeah it's interesting you say what you want to express.

I thought about that yesterday. I said to myself, it's not like I'm Aphex Twin or anything.

So why am I trying to recreate music like that? I like to listen to him every now and then.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that I should strive to make tracks like him. That defeats the purpose.

So that kind of left me hanging in a way. It made me think, so what kind of music do I want to make?

I thought hard and I didn't really have an answer. I don't really know... You know what I mean?

  On 1/18/2010 at 8:18 PM, The Dark Lord said:

  On 1/18/2010 at 8:08 PM, Brian Tregaskin said:

yeah i mean, create one sequence, create another, and another, and then chain them. easy. the hard thing is to make something interesting to hear. it helps if you know what you want to express. what do you make music with btw?

 

I use the amazing FL Studio haha. But yeah it's interesting you say what you want to express.

I thought about that yesterday. I said to myself, it's not like I'm Aphex Twin or anything.

So why am I trying to recreate music like that? I like to listen to him every now and then.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that I should strive to make tracks like him. That defeats the purpose.

So that kind of left me hanging in a way. It made me think, so what kind of music do I want to make?

I thought hard and I didn't really have an answer. I don't really know... You know what I mean?

hi richard!

i think studying some theory would definitely help. I have the exact same problem and just wish i knew scales, chords, or chord progressions that can follow one another so i can at least have an idea of where the song could possibly go. Unfortunately whenever i try to learn theory i feel like i already know the basics but not well enough to learn the more complex stuff, so i just get bored.

One basic trick you can learn would be to create a nice melody out of one-bar notes (for instance, G, B, Bb, A or something) Use this as your main progression for the song, do the first part of the song in the key of G, the second one in the key of B, and so on. What do you do when you get to A without having to repeat yourself? i dunno, but this should give you enough to go by to make an interesting song or at least an interesting segment to bounce ideas off of. Theres a certain name for this kind of progressions but i forgot what its called

oh fruity loops is the perfect tool for doing this! maybe you could try to recreate an existing melody that you like. from this, ideas will come maybe. it kinda works for me.

  On 1/18/2010 at 8:45 PM, Brian Tregaskin said:

oh fruity loops is the perfect tool for doing this! maybe you could try to recreate an existing melody that you like. from this, ideas will come maybe. it kinda works for me.

True. But I must find inspiration firstly.

i personnally think inspiration will come by messing around, and copying other's tracks can sometimes help to find your own ideas.

lay a pad on it. there you are

  On 1/18/2010 at 9:15 PM, yek said:

lay a pad on it. there you are

That gets old.

  On 1/18/2010 at 9:09 PM, Brian Tregaskin said:

i personnally think inspiration will come by messing around, and copying other's tracks can sometimes help to find your own ideas.

I hope so. But I don't wanna copy anyone.

yeah i know, i just said maybe you could begin by copying, only in the goal of finding your own personal ideas, not in the purpose of copying others music. do you understand? by copying, maybe it will give you ideas of melodies, and it can only help you to understand how a track works, structure, progression, effects etc. i don't know, it's just a suggestion. in my case it helps me to find new ideas. it might not work for everyone

Repetition is a cool thing though.

do you have a midi keyboard?

  On 1/18/2010 at 9:33 PM, sneaksta303 said:

do you have a midi keyboard?

No. All I have is FL.

  On 1/18/2010 at 9:31 PM, impakt said:

Repetition is a cool thing though.

How so?

make some techno init

some of the most epic, amazing tracks that make me feel like wow they couldn't have made that any better have been really repetitive(nearly all of which have used at least nearly the same primary melodic progression the whole song)

Ive got nothing against dynamics and for a while I really worried about making sure I had enough rhythm and melodic changes in my songs but I'm starting to realize that my favorite songs have always been really hypnotically repetitive.

  On 1/18/2010 at 10:02 PM, Blanket Fort Collapse said:

some of the most epic, amazing tracks that make me feel like wow they couldn't have made that any better have been really repetitive(nearly all of which have used at least nearly the same primary melodic progression the whole song)

 

Ive got nothing against dynamics and for a while I really worried about making sure I had enough rhythm and melodic changes in my songs but I'm starting to realize that my favorite songs have always been really hypnotically repetitive.

What songs are these?

most electronic music ever?

My #1 complaint with most electronic music is that I can click around the track in winamp and it sounds the same the entire time. To me there is nothing more damning than skipping a minute or two of a song and hearing it pick up right where I left off.

I've always found it pretty easy to come up with a bad-ass 30-40 seconds of music, the hard part is then extending that to an interesting whole piece. A lot of artists give up(or don't care) and just loop it, maybe switching up the instrument selection a few times or playing with the cutoff on the lead. But since that's what everybody is used to, you can get away with it.

One thing that has helped me in the past for those songs where I'm not sure what to do next is to think of the different sections of a song as different tracks entirely but with a similar set of chords and arrangement. Don't feel pressured to come up with the very next part of the song after you get started, start mostly fresh and it's much easier to be inspired. You can then write bridge sections to glue together these different chunks in any order. And if a chunk isn't working, you can split it off into a song on its own or throw it away. The only trick then is to make sure that they are cohesive, which I think is a lot easier than coming up with the progression with no building blocks to work from.

Ideally though it will come naturally, the best tracks always do. But I think even a patchwork song with a handful of ideas is a lot more interesting for the listener than a tune with just one.

  On 1/18/2010 at 8:38 PM, 42Orange said:

Unfortunately whenever i try to learn theory i feel like i already know the basics but not well enough to learn the more complex stuff, so i just get bored.

 

I've got the same problem somewhat..

get a cheapo midi keyboard with a few knobs

It's all about striking a balance, really. Many of my favourite songs are the kind where you skip a few minutes forward and the song is pretty much the same, only MORESO. But the trick to that really is, figuring out the element(s) to make moreso of. Dynamics that change so subtly that you don't even realise they are changing until the song leaves you in a different place than when you started - those are my favourite kind.

I don't think that learning a little music theory is ever going to hurt anyone. That said, there are so many different facets to it - learning about keys or chord structure or even composition can help you immensely. One tends to think of so much of music as being instinctive but you realise once you start studying it, how much of it you absorb the conventions of just from listening to music all your life. Learning the actual rules behind how it works can help you to figure out your own patterns, and break them if they've got stale.