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The big chords guide for electronic musicians Welcome to the big free chords gu

The big chords guide for electronic musicians Welcome to the big free chords guide for electronic musicians. You have come to the right place if you want to know more about chords and how to use them in your own productions. No previous knowledge is required. You neither need to be able to read notes from a note sheet, nor do you have to be a piano player to get the most out of this guide. And you certainly don't have to be a music theory expert to understand the following chapters. But at the end of this guide you will surely know a lot more than before. This is what you will learn: • How chords work and how you can use them in your productions. • How different chord types sound (+ free ear training). • Different ways to change the mood of your chords. • How you can create nice chord progressions for your songs. Ready for some action? Let's dive in! - 1 - 3 5 7 9 10 14 18 19 21 23 24 25 26 28 30 32 35 36 39 40 Contents • Why are chords so useful? The secret weapon for your song writing. • So, what is a chord anyway? • Ear training • How the chord pages are structured • Triads • Four note chords • So, what is a chord anyway? Part 2: Voicings. • Voicing recipes • Inversions and slash chords • A quick look at advanced chords • Chord progressions: How to string chords together • A short introduction to scales • The basic principle: Chords on scales • Important chords of the Major scale • Chord progressions of the Major scale • Chord progressions of the Minor scale • Chord progressions on other scales • Advanced: Modal chord progressions and borrowed chords • Other software tools for chords and scales • Final words - 2 - Why are chords so useful? The secret weapon for your song writing. It's easy to think that chords are just something that provides background flavour in your song. Like some lush pads or strings that fill the sonic space a bit. But chords are so much more. They are not only useful to intensify emotions in your listeners. They can also help you to know exactly which notes you are allowed to play at any given time. Do you know this problem? You wonder which notes you can use for your different instruments while your song evolves. You juggle around with various notes, try to make the instruments sound good together. Sometimes it works, sometimes it scares the hell out of your neighbours. But behold! Chords are here for the rescue. Here's the trick: If you start with the chords, your whole life will be easier. At least regarding the songwriting. If you know which chord notes you want to play, you also know which notes you can use for your bass lines, arpeggios, and background instruments. The concept is very simple. A chord is made up of different notes that sound good together. Let's take the so called C Major chord for example. It consists of the notes C, E, and G. If you choose a pad sound and play all these notes at once, you will create a flowing background atmosphere. Now choose another instrument. Maybe a piano. This time you don't play the chord notes at the same time, but switch between them every now and then. Simply pick a random note - C, E, or G - and jam around. Do the same with another instrument. And another. Even though you may end up with dozens of instruments, they will always sound harmonic together. As long as you stay on the chord notes, nothing "bad" can happen. Here's another trick. Pick a bass sound. Now always play on the deepest note of the chord (which is called "bass note", by the way). In our example this is the C. This note is perfect for bass lines, as the human ear already identified it as the lowest frequency in - 3 - the spectrum of your background chords. Always play rhythmically on the deepest note of your chords and you will have an easy way to generate nice bass lines. So, is this everything you have to do to write a nice song? Sometimes, yes. But in many cases it would be too boring if everything sounded harmonious from start to end. Good music finds a balance between predictability and surprises, harmony and tension. However, there is an easy solution for that. In many genres there is a clear distinction between "background" instruments and a lead instrument. The lead instrument might be the voice of a singer, a guitar, a powerful synth, or anything else that cuts through the mix. This special instrument is not only allowed to play notes outside the chords, it is even encouraged to do so! These outside notes bring some tension to the song and make it more exciting. When you work on the lead melody, you can always take a look at the current chord notes. Stick to these notes when you want to play it safe, stray away from them when you want to turn up the tension. And always keep in mind: There are no fixed rules for music! If you want to go fancy with background melodies - do so! However, the concepts from above are a proven way to write songs that sound good and harmonious. And they work for many, many genres. From House to Metal. It can't hurt to know your chords! - 4 - So, what is a chord anyway? A chord itself is a very simple thing: Take at least three different notes, play them together and you have a chord. Two notes aren't enough, as this is simply an interval (interval = the difference/distance between one note and another note). However, although there are quite a few possibilities to form a chord, not all of them are common or useful. In this guide I will show you some of the most widely used chord types and how you can build them. Each chord type has an own feeling or emotional quality that might be useful for your song. In this regard, there are no "good" chords or "bad" chords. They are either interesting for the atmosphere you want to create or not. Each chord type can be created using a special recipe. This recipe will tell you which notes you need to stack together to build the chord. Let's work with an example. One of the simplest - and greatest! - chord types is the Major chord. It uses the following recipe: • Start with any note (the so-called "root note"). • Add another note four semitones above the root note. • Add a third note three semitones above the second note. Let's create a C Major chord using this recipe. We take a look at the name: The "C" in "C Major" tells us which root note we need to take. We add four semitones and get an "E" as our second note (one semitone -> C#, two semitones -> D, three semitones -> D#, four semitones -> E). If we add another three semitones to the "E", we get a "G" as our third note. The simplest types of chords are triads. Triads consist of three notes. They can sound very pure and harmonic (like Major and Minor triads) or full of tension (like Augmented or Diminished triads). - 5 - Four note chords are the next category. Many of them sound very nice as well, but even the most harmonic four note chord has more tension than the most harmonic triad. Due to the added note, the complexity is higher here. This can be very interesting for sophisticated chord progressions where triads might be too simple. On the other hand, four note chords might be too much for some styles. The choice is yours. - 6 - Ear training It is important to develop a feeling for the different chord types. How they sound, which emotions they evoke, how they sound in comparison to each other. There are several ways to do so: 1. Play the chords on a real instrument, e.g. a piano. 2. Listen to the accompanying soundfiles of this guide. 3. Use the free software based Sundog training. Obviously the piano technique is important for you, if you want to play these chords live one day. However, if your main goal is electronic songwriting, then the other two ways might be even more interesting for you. After all, they are much quicker to utilize. And you don't need to twist your fingers to hear a sound. Listening to the soundfiles of this guide is a good starting point to get a first impression of the chords. However, I highly recommend the third technique, because it has several benefits for electronic musicians: • You can listen to uploads/Industriel/ chords-guide.pdf