Learning Music - Day 9 (Blog)

[Savage]

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Steve Pavlina's blog:

Learning Music - Day 9

[pjhaggerty]

Steve-

If you want to learn how to create melodies, there's one piece of music theory that will really help you and a lot of pieces that won't. You should focus on learning a major scale- and ignore the other theory for now. You don't need to know counting or chord progressions or any of that stuff to write simple songs. Just learn the major scale and play notes and chords with notes from it.

The easiest way to do this would be to just compose only using white keys- the C major scale. If you start just making songs with chords which are only white keys and notes that are only white keys, they will not sound hideous. I can't guarantee they'll sound good, but it'll be much easier to get to sounding good than if you try and use the black keys as well.

I'm not familiar with the music of Depeche Mod, but I know that most pop songs you hear on the radio use mostly major scale notes in their melodies and harmonies. It's part of what makes them all sound the same- and all sound consonant.

So if you want somewhere to start, I'd suggest starting there.

[neilarthur]

I decided at the age of 20 to learn the guitar and starting writing songs almost immediately.

I found not knowing much quite helpful .. I tried working out songs I liked and through my incompetence ended up with something else.

The basic structure was there so anything I did over the top held together but sounded nothing like the original starting point.

Lyrics were easy .. being young I had plenty to say.

I am now 59-years and I still perform some of these early songs.


I think Garage Band is fantastic for learning about arranging music and developing musical ideas.

[mjpetrie]

Hi Steve, your site has been a huge help to me over the past several years, and the least I can do is offer some free advice or informal lessons (over the phone or Skype).

After getting a degree from Berklee College of Music, I taught piano for five years. These days I compose music full time for TV shows, films, games and trailers. In amongst the hundreds of tracks I've written, some of them have been pretty similar to Depeche Mode's style. I have a good sense of what you need to know (musically and production-wise) to produce music like that.

I'm sure the support and advice here has been really helpful, but please feel free to get in touch with me - the offer of free informal lessons in composing/piano/production is definitely for real!

Have fun!

Mark Petrie
mark@markpetrie.com