Music Theory 101

Every Musician, Producer and this case Trance Producer needs to know the basics of music theory. For that we provided you a link at the end of this post where your all answers will be answered.

Short Definition:
Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods. In a grand sense, music theory distills and analyzes the fundamental parameters or elements of music: rhythm, harmony (harmonic function), melody, structure, form, texture, etc. Broadly, music theory may include any statement, belief, or conception of or about music. A person who studies these properties is known as a music theorist. Some have applied acoustics, human physiology, and psychology to the explanation of how and why music is perceived.

Music Theory 101

M-Audio: Ignite by Air (Free Software)

Inspiring Sounds Ignite includes over 275 instruments, many of which are taken from our renowned instrument collections - including Strike, Structure, and Velvet. All sounds have been optimized to load quickly, and the editing controls are automatically mapped to your connected M-Audio keyboard. These extraordinary sounds include keyboards, drums, percussion, basses, guitars, synths, strings, brass, and woodwinds.

Powerful Creative Tools
Ignite features Smart MIDI technology to help jump-start your ideas and enhance your music-making skills. The Chord Player generates a chord pattern from a single key, while the Phrase Player can provide a single-voice line to add to your composition. Both the Chord and Phrase player include dozens of patterns in modern music genres - these aren't canned, boring MIDI patterns. Tailor the performance of these Players by adjusting feel, speed and intensity. The Flexible arpeggiator plays held notes individually, either as a musical flourish or in a rhythmic pattern.

Designed to Work with M-Audio Keyboards Simply connect any current M-Audio keyboard controller to your computer, and Ignite provides seamless integration. The keyboard is automatically detected and controls are automatically mapped when connected to your computer. Adding or changing your keyboard? The controls are automatically updated and mapped.

Share Your Passion Share your latest creation with friends, fans, and family - or collaborate with other musicians - by taking advantage of direct uploads to SoundCloud. Plus, you can export your individual audio (WAV or MP3) and MIDI files, which can then be imported into any computer-based recording software - including Pro Tools.

Feutures

• • Creative Workflow
    • Capture your ideas quickly and make music - without getting bogged down with technical jargon and complicated steps.
    • Individual musical ideas are captured as phrases and are placed in the Arranger. The Arranger is an organic "stage" where you can organize your music ideas and phrases in whatever way make sense to you.
    • Clips can be any length, and don't have to be aligned into a pre-determined structure (such as tracks and lanes). Multiple clips can be played back together, or even grouped to create more complex phrases and song sections.
  • Instant M-Audio Keyboard Integration
    • Ignite will instantly recognize any current generation M-Audio keyboard controller once it is connected to your computer.
    • Key parameters will be automatically assigned, or mapped, to the front panel controllers. The on-screen image labels the controllers with their current parameters, providing visual reminders.
  • Superior AIR Instrument Sounds
    • Included with Ignite are over 275 remarkable instrument sounds developed by AIR Music Technology. This international team also created the acclaimed Hybrid, Strike, Transfer, Structure, and Velvet instruments for Pro Tools - the industry-standard professional music and audio workstation.
    • Instruments include keyboards, drums, percussion, basses, guitars, synths, strings, brass, and woodwinds.
  • Creative Kick-starters
    • Smart MIDI technology provides both a Chord Player and a Phrase Player.
    • The Chord Player plays a chord pattern using either simple or advanced voicings.
    • The Phrase Player can be used to deliver a single-voice melodic phrase, or even a drum pattern depending on the instrument selected.
    • The arpeggiator plays notes individually, either as a musical flourish or in a rhythmic pattern.
  • Collaborate, Send, and Share
    • Share your musical ideas and songs with other musicians through SoundCloud.
    • Export WAV, MP3 and MIDI files, and import them into any DAW recording software - including Pro Tools.

 Grab your free copy from here

Re-Compose Music Producer Magazine

Two days back, we received this very informative email.

Hello,

The new year is already a month old. We are busy working on updates for our intelligent music production tool and providing relevant content to you.

Here are some articles about first steps, what's going on behind the doors at Re-Compose and how to make great music and optimize it with Liquid Notes:

• Building Chords and Harmonic Movements out of the Ordinary by Adding Tension
  Learn about how to spice up your composition by adding tension notes so that the harmonic movement throughout a song becomes much more exciting and unique.


• Algorithmic Creativity: How Artificial Intelligence and Music Come Together at Re-Compose
  Get to know the inner workings of Re-Compose. More precisely, the intersection of artificial intelligence and music, and how we think about the future of music production.


• The Basics: Set Up Routing in Logic to Work with Liquid Notes
  Understand how to get started with routing in Apple Logic.

Questions?
Do you have a question about the articles listed above? Reach out to us by replying to this email and we will be happy to answer your questions.

We hope you had an awesome start into 2013!

All the best,
Re-Compose Team

We suggest you take a look and get inspired !

Uplifting Melodies Vol.1

HighLife Samples presents 'Uplifting Melodies Vol 1'. If you are a Trance music producer and you're looking for catchy uplifting MIDI melodies then this is the pack for you! The pack contains 20 MIDI Kits featuring sub bass lines, pads, hooks lines and arps. You can use the MIDI files on your DAW as you like. You have the flexibility to rearrange the melodies with your way and style. 'Uplifting Melodies Vol 1' is the ultimate toolkit for producing professional, top level Trance tracks. Product Features: • 6.60 MB • 20 Trance MIDI Kits • Total MIDI Files: 57 • 100% Royalty-Free Please note each MIDI file contains multiple channels in a single fil.

 

 

'Uplifting Melodies Vol 1' is the ultimate toolkit for producing professional, top level Trance tracks. 

 

Product Features:

 

• 20 Trance MIDI Kits

• Total MIDI Files: 57

• 100% Royalty-Free

Music Studio Monitors

 A thorny subject to be sure, with as many opinions as is believable. As with microphones and sequencers, the debate often turns into flame-fests. Yet there has been some progress in our understanding of monitors. Nearly everyone seems to agree that one needs a "near field" monitor to accurately assess the music they are creating. A near field monitor is one that you keep pretty close to you, typically between 3-5 feet. The idea here is that the music we  hear is dramatically altered by room acoustics.  Go try a little experiment. Take any speaker and put it in the corner of a room. You will hear bass resonating through the room that does not exist when the speaker is in the middle of the room. 
 

Those with big buck studios can afford to treat their room acoustically, with bass traps and other devices.  Perhaps those are the only places where one still sees the mammoth monitors that create wall sized sound. The near field monitor is the solution to minimize as much as possible the interaction of sound with the room.  Because they are positioned close to you, you hear the sound directly.  Because they are so close you need less volume, so less of the sound travels to walls and corners and bounces back at you. 
 

Unlike a hi-fi speaker, which is designed, hopefully, to make all audio material sound pleasing to the ear, the studio monitor has as it's main objective to paint an accurate audio image of the material, with no unnatural emphasis or de-emphasis of particular frequencies. This is what it means when a monitor is said to be "flat".  and "uncolored" or "transparent". That's the theory at least. Reality sometimes paints a different picture. And this is where the arguing typically begins. 

What makes a good Monitor?   

 So, then, what makes a good monitor, other than the sound it produces?  A good monitor is rugged, and can handle peaks, overloads, feedback mistakes and come back ready for more. It's funny. I started my sound development business on hi-end 3-way audiophile speakers, which worked great for a year. But with the constant tweaking of sound experiments in sub bass regions, the woofers just popped right out of their cones with a 360 degree rip around the cone. Bummer. Hi-Fi speakers are not made to take abuse above typical programmed material. Sure you can use them, just don't use them as the main monitors.  

A good monitor does not artificially exaggerate frequencies. You do not want a speaker that sounds like a "disco smile". That's where the bass and the treble are boosted and the mids are cut. They call it a "smile" because that's how it looks on a graphic equalizer. Lots of people really like that sound. If you like that sound, mix up a nice smile for your monitors. Then it might actually translate on other systems. But if you speakers make that automatically, you mix will be shown lacking in bass and high transients. Using that principle was the secret behind the Yamaha NS-10s, the most horrible sounding speaker ever made. On an NS10 there was no bass, no high end, just screeching awful sounding peaky mids. People who referenced on them had to boost the bass massively and cut the mids. The resultant mix?  Yep, the disco smile. It made hit after hit and people thought they were magic. If you could make the shrill box sound passable, it would sound great everywhere else. 

Trance Music Production: Questions Answered Part 3

11. How do I get vocal and stutter effects like BT, Hybrid, etc.?
At some point in time, I will get around to creating a tutorial on this. For now, use the search function and check this page:
Fractal Tendencies

12. How do I make basslines like Benny Bennassi, Eric Prydz, etc.?
Search for something called "sidechaining" or "side-chained compression". Please do not create a new thread about it. I'll have a clean tutorial on this later as well, once I get the appropriate information for certain sequencers that I'm less familiar with.

13. How do I make a super saw?
If you want to make a lot of people happy, then don't make one. If you absolutely must, there are some super saw links in the tutorials thread.

Making It Professional

14. How do I make good leads/drums/pads/basslines/etc.?
The best way to learn how to do this is to read some tutorials.
Some particularly useful and famous threads are:
Exploration of Sound
Your Favorite Basslines: The Fight Against Oompa-itis
Derivative's Theory Tutorial
The Perfect Kick

15. How do I master my track (to make it sound professional)?
The most important things to understand about mastering are:
a) Mastering is about the "subtle" changes. Mostly, it's about raising the overall volume, although it can also be used to "soften" or "sharpen" a track sometimes. If you think your track needs a *major* adjustment in order to sound good, then the problem is probably in your mixdown, not your master.
b) Poor mastering can easily wreck a great track, but the most brilliant mastering in the world cannot save a poor mix. Very often, producers with dull-sounding tracks will assume that the problem is simply their lack of experience with mastering, but a well-mixed track doesn't need to be mastered at all in order to sound great.
c) Mastering involves compromises. Most of the time, the purpose of mastering a track is to make sure that it sounds "good" on all mediums and all sound systems, rather than "great" on a few systems and terrible on others. Thus, during your mastering phase, you need to try and listen to your track on as many systems as possible!
d) Mastering requires emotional detachment. I can't stress this one enough, folks - TAKE A BREAK from your track before attempting to master it. If you are still very "intimate" with your track, then you are not going to be able to make objective decisions.


Troubleshooting

16. My CPU is maxed out / my sound is stuttering/freezing. What should I do!?
Since this is such a long-winded topic, I've created a thread dedicated to answering this one solitary question:

CPU maxed out? Sputtering? Freezing? Read here!

17. Why does my track sound great in my sequencer but terrible when I render it?
In almost all cases, this is evidence of clipping. Unless you're mixing in the analog domain, make sure that the master volume on your track never goes above 0 dB (in the analog domain it's 2-3 dB). If it does, then your track is clipping.

Some people don't understand why this would make a track sound bad on the render but not in the sequencer. The answer is simple: most people have the master volume on their computers set to a moderate level, significantly below 0 dB. If that master volume is, for example, set to -6 dB, and the track volume in your sequencer goes as high as +6 dB, the resulting volume on your PC will not go higher than 0 dB. However, if someone else's PC had their master volume cranked all the way up, it would distort on their system. And when you render the audio, it is simply not possible to encode values higher than 0 dB; attempting to do so will only result in distortion and noise.

A more detailed and technical explanation is beyond the scope of this FAQ; if you still don't understand what clipping is, read this link.

18. How do I prevent clipping?
There are two answers to this question. The first one is easy, but doesn't really solve the problem. The second one does solve the problem, but you won't like it.

The easy answer: Use a master limiter. This will prevent clipping, but if your mix has extremely high peaks, then it will cause another artifact called "pumping", which is very noticeable on high-fidelity equipment and every bit as irritating as clipping. To make a long story short, pumping sounds like someone's holding onto the volume fader and jacking it up and down very quickly. Sometimes producers will intentionally use this effect in a more subtle way, but in those cases it is rhythmic and controlled; pumping caused by too much limiting is random and unpleasant to listeners.

The hard answer: learn to mix. Mixing is not just the art of balancing out all the elements, it's also the art of controlling the dynamics enough to leave headroom. Many beginning producers want their mixes to sound loud and proud, but mixdowns should actually be kept quiet - mastering will increase the apparent "loudness".

Wrong forum!

19. Can I get some feedback on my latest track?
You sure can, if you post it in the Music Producers Promotion forum.

Please note: your odds of getting useful advice if you post your track in there are proportional to the quality and quantity of reviews you've given to others. Your odds of getting useful advice if you post it in here are near zero.

20. My track kicks some serious @$$. Which DJs/Labels should I send to?
At best, this question will probably be ignored by most of the community - at worst, you might get flamed for it. Signed producers are generally going to be pretty wary of giving away their contacts (and with good reason!).

If this is your first time submitting a track to labels, the link below might help:
Submitting a demo for the first time

Here's another link that might help you:
Electronic Musician Bookshelf