I‘ve been to a Nils Frahm concert the other week and he played this wonderful tune:
Generally speaking i‘m a big fan of Frahm’s slowly developing synth sequences and incoporate those a lot in my own techno productions.
With the sequence in this track (playing from the very beginning) i was wondering how he might have sequenced it. It sound kind of polymetric/polyrhythmic or Euclydian to me.
I‘m generally trying to figure out more ways to get interesting sequences that play off each other. Maybe some of you could identify this more specifically or Gove some tips how ypu approach creating those type of sequences
Learn and practice more music theory. It’s really the best way to get into this kind of harmonic development. Theory is full of useful ideas, tricks, history, games to play and guides. Music theory isn’t a single set of rules you must stick to that sucks the life out of your creativity, it’s a body of knowledge accumulated by experiment and discovery over centuries, discussing the subject of “what sounds good”. Dip into it. Nils did, probably every day for years.
And although it is still a complicated topic, there are really good videos on Youtube that can give you at least basic understanding. Together with the scale modes of modern devices this really makes a difference.
Through this video I understood more about music theory than in all the music lessons I had in school (which is an absolute shame for both past me and my teachers I suppose)
And I can recommend this channel. It is more about pop music but it’s really interesting and things seem to stick with me although I don’t fully understand it
And by the way, Nils Frahm live is really really good. I saw him at a local festival a few years ago and before I thought “why do they book that piano guy as headliner on saturday evening” and I was completely blown away by his set and also by his presence, how he works with all his stuff on stage.
I maybe should have said upthread: learn some basics and then just what you want/need. No need to learn it all. it’s too big a subject to learn it all, anyway. Start the process of learning and immediately start playing about with the new knowledge. I certainly did not mean “only do lots of study and come back when you’re an expert”. That would be a total buzz-kill
Thanks for the advice. I‘ve had music theory for a year with a teacher who couldn’t really help me a lot with it. Since then i took some online classes and read a lot in forums/ watch youtube etc… might just have to look deeper into rhythms and sequencing.
Guess i‘ll stick to researching on the internet and invest more of my time init… thanks for the video recommendations!
im not familiar with this artist and how they produce music, but im going to throw an idea out, that maybe, its not sequenced/programmed, but played and recorded live.
sometimes its easier to feel, than to know.
instead of internet research, i would suggest starting from recreating rhythms that intrigue you.
visual aid will give clues onto why music makes you feel a certain way.
Almost certainly not sequenced; I think the original version that he was playing 10 years ago begins with a Juno-60 synth sound played with arpeggiator (three notes, two-octave range, upward direction at the beginning) and messing around with a tape delay.
My ears are messed up today so I can’t tell whether that’s the same on the video version that you posted.
Here’s a close-up view of him performing the same piece, with the epic change at 7:30:
As Peter says, it’s 3 notes at one octave, then the same 3 notes an octave above (or below, depending on where you count the start point). You can get a pretty close version using the A4 or DN’s arpeggiator with the track in Minor scale, and changing the root key from C to surrounding keys…
To me (never studied music theory) it sounds like, in the first few minutes, the dominant pattern is groups of 3, rather than 6 beats divided clearly into two sub-groups of three. So far as I understand it, the conventions would classify that as 3/4 ?
EDIT: Yup, at 1 minute in on this version, it certainly sounds like a waltz to me.
EDIT 2: That is, I’m hearing the top one of these two, not the bottom one)
Interesting. I watched the tutorial you linked, and then listened to both versions of Nils again. Sounded to me like 6/8 up until the epic change, and then 12/8 for the final section.
(Even more interesting, when I listen to jungle, d&b I tend to hear the “half-time” and when I listen to dub and dubstep I tend to hear the “double-time”. I think it’s where I feel comfortable dancing that drives the beat perception)
Thing is: All music theory is IMHO an attempt to put an explanation on top of things that already exist and work. There is no definitive answer to: Is this 3/4 or 6/8 ?
Kinda, IMO. It’s like maths. It’s partly description, partly “what’s already there” that made you go looking for a description.
The video you linked suggests otherwise. The tutorial goes into how the two feel like each other when tempo reaches lower/upper bounds. I guess that reflects the n/4 n/8 nature of the signatures. More interestingly, I’d like to hear it the way you do, in threes. I tried! (This reminds me of those face/vase optical illusions.)
When I listened to it, firstly I thought 3/4, and later in the song it seemed more 6/8… it is just a feeling question. What I wanted to say with that is that it wasn’t something complicated or strange or euclidean or… it is, as u sais , a waltz…
I would suggest checking out the HY-SEQ32 VST. That will allow endless awesome sequences to emerge without theory or any of that crap. It has scales etc to make things play better together.
