T w e n t y S i d e d

Previously I talked about the difference between major and minor scales. So far all the tracks I’ve shown you have been in A minor. I also mentioned that songs written in major scales are (roughly) happy / upbeat and songs written in minor scales are moody, sad, angry, anxious, or suffering from irritable bowel syndrome.

I thought it would be fun to illustrate this, and at the same time share a little more of my badly misunderstood over-simplifications of music theory. As before, keep an eye out for the music majors. They will say things that are deeply confusing. If a music major tries to teach you anything using words like chromatic, octatonic, consonance, or “Shamus Young is a clueless hack who doesn’t know what he’s doing”, then slam your hands over your ears, close your eyes, and begin singing the Batman theme at the top of your lungs. Actually, you should be doing that sort of thing anyway. It’s like yoga for the musical parts of your brain: It makes you look silly but it feels good.

Here is a song I made in C major:

That’s pretty different from the stuff I’ve been doing. It’s bouncy, jubilant, and playful. That’s a result of it being written in C major. As I said before, to make a major scale you pick a starting key (C in this case) and walk up the keyboard this many keys at a time:

2 2 1 2 2 2 1

If you follow that pattern from C, you’ll land on every single white key and no black keys.

If you want to make a minor scale, then you follow this pattern:

2 1 2 2 1 2 2

If you do that from A, then… you’ll land on every single white key and no black keys? So A minor and C major use the exact same keys on the keyboard. Does that mean they sound the same? Actually, no. Very no. Here is the same song from above, translated into A minor:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Bad and Wrong Music Lessons, Part 2”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

The system we have here is really simple: My hobbies feed the blog. If I code, I write about code. If I play a game, I review the game. If I read a slightly annoying news story about a games publisher, I write a meandering 2,000 word screed denouncing the entire enterprise and everyone who took part in it.

The problem is that I’m composing music. I’d write about music, but I don’t know anything about music. Sure, I made some music, but that’s mostly because I am a hard-working and resourceful idiot, not because I have any musical talent.

Speaking of which, here’s another track I made:

Since I can’t share my knowledge with you, I’ll have to share my ignorance. Let me tell you about all the things I don’t know about music. Or to be more precise, all the things I think I know but are most likely profoundly, dangerously wrong.

So let’s say you want to make some music. To keep things simple, let’s say you’re doing it on a keyboard where 1 input = 1 note, and not one of those devious string or wind instruments where you can make a large number of notes from a small number of inputs. You want to make some music-type sounds, but when you ask people to explain how it works they baffle you with a bunch of nonsense about “Seventh augmented fifth” and “an augmented fourth/tritone”. They draw these “circle of fifths” things that have twelve points and are numbered with letters, and you can’t even tell if the gibberish they’re saying actually makes sense or if they’re just making stuff up to avoid answering the question.

Ignore those idiots. They’re trying to confuse you with knowledge and facts. Here is what you need to know…

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Bad and Wrong Music Lessons, Part 1”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Ages ago I dabbled in making music. How long ago was it? Well, I was making tunes for the Doom 2 mods I was building. So, sometime around the mid-90’s. While writing this post I searched around and found that my mods are still out there in the wild, still being played. Here is someone playing through one of my levels with the music cranked.

That is a pretty good demonstration of my musical approach at the time: Find a few notes that sound barely tolerable together, then loop that arrangement to the limits of human endurance. Seems ghastly now, but I remember thinking it was awesome.

I never really understood music or music theory. My music-making was purely brute force. The software I was using at the time (Cakewalk) let you build MIDI music a note at a time. This is ideal if you can’t play an instrument and don’t know what you’re doing. Just shove the little notes up or down until you find something that doesn’t sound dissonant. Didn’t understand chords. Had no idea how different keys worked. I had no idea what the sharps and flats were for. (They always sounded dissonant, so I stuck to the “white keys”. I suppose this means all my stuff was technically in C major?)

Recently I got the urge to try my hand at making music again. I have no idea why. I have important projects that need doing. But in a mad impulse I bought myself MAGIX Music Maker 2014 Premium on Steam. It wasn’t even on sale.

I’ve hammered out a couple of tunes. Here is probably the most complete effort:

On Soundcloud I said this was my “first effort”. Technically it’s my first full-length piece of music in 20 years. (I made a shorter tune on Saturday.) But you get the idea.

If you’ve never used a program like this, here is how it works:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “MAGIX Music Maker”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.