Chords in propellerhead reason 4

since I haven't actually stood still with writing a simple guide about notes, chords and such, it has been brought up to my attention that I should actually write one! I mean, really.. duh! that I haven't actually done one yet, is simply put stupid in a way, since making music is everything about notes... we play midi sequences inside Reason and it all comes down to making this oblivious track that everyone will be blown their socks off right away... but what do we do when we don't know anything about notes?! We can google for it, and come across a crap load of "buy online piano lessons" everywhere on ads by google. Or we could get some online Dvd stuff to actually learn to play notes the real HARD way! Seriously, I have been having troubles with this one myself in the oldschool days when using tracker software, and recently I have bought a 'learn the piano really quick' dvd and it just makes me wanna throw up because I just want to put in sequences inside Reason, rather then having some dude telling me to hold the fingers on that specific position and telling me to use the middle finger.. the middle finger, and the middle finger again...(I mean, that just says enough I think ;))

Ok, right now you get the idea on what I am going in to... Notes, and the sequencer! Simply said, I am going to try to work my ways to comes up with a simple guidline about notes, what notes to use, what chords to play... etc.

In first, let me start of with the main sequencer window, which looks like the following:

It has these white keys and black keys and some letters next to it with C1, C2, C3, C4 (which is not an explosion), C5 etc.. Each number stands for an octave, and the letter C is the base note on which each octave starts off with. I could start talking about the F-Keys and G-Keys which are common inside piano music sheets. I am not going to go indepth about that part, since we have C-keys on our sequencer ;)

The basic notes go from C till B, so we have C, D, E, F, G, A, B and then the same series of notes on a higher octave. Some notes have black keys, like C#, D# and F# (E does not have one). The # (Sharp) is also known as "Flat". A# is the most refered one, as it called B-Flat. Remember the rolling stones? They have used B-Flat alot in Jumping Jack Flash!

Playing single notes is probably not the real issue with creating music.. The most common question I often get (hi thaMonk) is how do you use multiple instruments and play those in harmonic sync. Well, thats the name of the game we are going to discuss with this topic... since this is probably the part that most people struggle with to start off with...

Playing around chords is the key!

To get a complete sequence up and running, playing around chords will be the key. While most notes are in harmonic sync when using the same chord, sometimes it works to use alernate notes in between that even go outside the chords. This is done by practice, experience and listening to the ear as much as possible. There is no real guideline about playing notes individual, the only guideline there is, is the ear that says "ouch! that is off key". Since that is the biggest problem with making music, some people listen to it and think "it all sounds good", another person might listen to it and goes "its almost off key".

This is common, since some might listen to it with a total different ear... however there are some tricks that one can apply to it to make it solid. The way I usually refer to it, is playing around chords. To do that, one might want to understand what chords are. So, here we go!

Chords

Chords are simply put, multiple notes played at the same time. There are 2 finger chords (where you play 2 notes at the same time), then there is the 3 finger chord (where you play 3 notes at the same time) and then there is the 4 finger chords.. where I think you guessed how many notes you will need to pull of a 4 finger chord.

The basic idea behinda 2 finger chord is that you will go a couple of notes higher from the base note. So, for instance a base note is C, a fifth chord will be a C F (since a fifth is nothing more then going 5 notes higher then the base note). Another common 2 finger chord will be a seventh, which is nothing more then a base note like a C and then go 7 notes higher like G.

So, to give a minor example file over here:

5th chord

7th chord

The basic idea with using a 2 finger chord is to fill up the melody a bit, since 2 notes sound fuller then having 1 single note that plays along. In the beginning you will probably start counting notes to get to a fifth or a seventh. However ,with experience you will probably get to a point where you think "D" and the 5th is "G", and the 7th is "A".

One usuage of these 2 finger chords is either use them as a constant 5th (going from C till D just to give an example). Another method will be using a 5th combined with a 7th.

from D to C 5th chord

from 5th to 7th chords

As this is just for setting up the melody, one could also use this method for its advantage to create basslines, submelodies the works. Since the only thing you probably end up doing in most cases is playing around the chords which either the melody is playing or the background string sessions are playing. To start off with making a song, one might think about what the leading thing is. In this case it can be either the bassline that makes the song, either a chord string session that plays in the background or melody that takes the upperhand. It really depends on what you are going to start of to make progress in the song itself.

Just as another example here, I have started with the 5th to 7th chord session, which has a base note set on D. Then it goes from G to A (where DG is the 5th, and DA is the 7th). So basicly, the thing I am doing with the bassline is playing around the chords session. One minor sidenote on this, I am going one octave lower with the bassline. Which really does not matter since playing an A on octave 4 together with an octave playing on octave 2 would play pretty much in sync. The notes that will most likely have problems are B in this case.

from 5th to 7th chords with a bassline

So, in a way it all depends on base notes and what kind of chords we are playing to make a complete track from scratch. Even while the base note of this sequence is D, and then goes from G to A on the high note, one thing we could do is also transpose the whole thing with one note in height. So in that case the basenote becomes a D# (one of those black keys) while the rest of the chords are playing on G# and A#. Which still plays in sync with the rest when we have moved the bassline one note heigher aswell.

from 5th to 7th chords with a bassline transposed

Yet, we are playing a complete different note in a sequence yet it all seems to work rather insync. The fifth remains a fifth, the 7th remains a 7th.

What would also play in harmonic sync with 2 finger chords?
Sometimes a third (which isn't a regular term, but just to use the same words, I will just call it a third). With this one, we take the basenote, and a second note that goes 3 notes heiger. With D this will result into an F.

Thirds 2 finger chord session

One minor problem you might encounter with a sequence like this one is the G note that plays in the complete bassline sequence. In a way, the D plays along rather well, the A also does the trick (since it is a part of D-minor, something I will get to when explaining 3 finger chords), however the G note combined with the D,F chord session just does not sound that harmonic in a way. This might be a discusable part, since I am personally no expert on using notes. But anyways, the way I would get rid of the minor disusable part is using the G note and place that on a high F in this case (since we are already playing a D and F 2 finger chord in the melody).

Thirds 2 finger chord session minor fix

3 finger chords

I will just jump on ahead to 3 finger chords right now, since I already mentioned the word D-minor in the previous paragraph. A 3 finger chord comes in many flavors and methods. The are some really solid once, like the minor and major, however there are some odd once that one might want to try to avoid when having problems in the beginning of using 3 finger chords. Just to give a minor example of a A-minor chord, I will give you A, C, E (Which is one of my favorites).

A minor contains of a base note (in this case I went for A), the second note is 3 notes higher and the third note is seven notes higher (thats also why notes comming from a minor or major also works in combination of sevenths).

So for instance, when we take a look at our ACE chord it looks and sounds like the following:

A Minor aka ACE chord session

To cheat the whole 3 finger chord session, we could also use and abuse a thor patch (since it comes with a 3 oscillator slot). One thing that we could do (a technique I rarely use, but it is an option to do so), is place 3 oscillators inside a thor patch. Put the first one on the native height (leave it as is), take the second oscillator and put the semi note height on 3, then the third oscillator is going to be on 7 semi notes. Which will result into a thor patch playing minors with the stroke of a single note.

A Minor aka ACE chord session cheated

A Major works almost similar as a Minor, but it has a different middle note. With a Major you take a base note (for instance A) then you go 4 notes up (instead of 3) then go 7 notes up from the basenote. With a A-Major, it will look like an A C# E which sounds like the following:

A Major aka AC#E chord session

Then there are some other offsprings based on an Major or Minor (on which I don't know the terms for). But one thing you could do is make a minor and adjust the high note with one note in height. So, if A-Minor is A C E, we can make an alternate note for the highnote which results into A C F.

A minor with an alternate highnote

To do the same on C, it works the exact same way... you will only need to recount them and notice that the notation itself will become a little bit different. Since a C-Minor = C D# G and a C-Major is C E G. The only thing you need to do is count the number of notes (3 for minor, 4 for a major) and add a seventh to it and you have a full scale 3 finger chord.

Combining a bassline with a 3 finger chord

One thing that almost works similar with using 2 finger chords and basslines, is using the same notes from the chord, look ahead what other chords are being played in the sequence. Write the notes down somewhere (notepad ;)) and use those notes that are inside the chords session as a sequence for the bassline. Just to give an example here,

if we would use D F A as a D minor chord, make an alternate key stroke as D F A#. Simply put, we now have a range of keys which are being triggered in the complete sequence. Namely D, F, A and A#. So, we could use those as a complete note sequence using the bassline. Another trick that usually works is going 2 notes lower from the bassnote. The bassnote in this case is an D, so going 2 notes lower, which in this case results to a C. Another helpfull trick that most commonly works is make good use of the octaves. Since a note like A on octave 2 sounds pretty much in sync with an A on octave 3, we can use those octaves to our advantage.

In this single example I am using the base note from the sequence (which is D). It is probably very monotomic but at least it is a start:

playing around a 3 finger chord session

In the next example I am going more nuts on the bassline, while playing around the same notes of the chord session, I also use a note alternation on C (which is 2 notes lower then the bassnote):

playing around a 3 finger chord session part 2

4 finger chords

4 finger chords are probably the hardest to explain in just a few words, that is also one of the reasons why I am not going to go that much indepth about them. Since first of all I rarely use them, second 4 finger chords are most commonly used on guitars and piano arrangements and third when screwing around with a series of 4 finger chords it always tends to get really hard to create a really descent sequence from them (that is also one of the reasons why they are simply hard to use from time to time).

another problem with the 4 finger chords I personally have, I personally don't know the names of them all, since I haven't actually had any notation lessons what so ever. So yeah, even I dare to type a single tutorial about chords even while I don't even know everything about them. Simply put, I am just writing down this guideline to get youself started using a simple set of chords to begin with... since some major tutorial sites even forget to bring up a topic like this since most people think like: "if you want to create music then you need to know how to write music". That is where my philosiphy differs from the rest I guess...

Ok, that was just a little bit offtopic... but then again, I have brought it up ;)

The whole idea why I am posting this whole 'basic' guideline is plain and simple. Some people just can't get their hands on how a chord sounds like. Some people can't really recognize what kind of chord is playing while listening to a piece of music. When you are willing to experiment with chords, and use your own imagination with it, it might also become more clearer in a way when listening to other music that you understand what is being played. I personally am almost in situations when I listen to music pieces and think like "thats a 2 finger chord", "thats a 3 finger chord". But that comes with experience I guess.