Hey guys, I’m Alex. Welcome to the only place you need to become a master of music production.
In today’s lesson, I’m going to show you how to produce music without knowing any music theory at all, or without any musical background at all.
I’ve taught 1000s of my students who had no music theory, knowledge, or musical background at all how to make music, including a student this year who went from an absolute noob with no musical background at all in core music theory to signed tracks on Spotify collecting royalties, literally every day from streams, in just three months.
And he was even paid in advance for that track by the label, which wanted to promote it for him.
So that just goes to show that anything’s possible.
If you’re considering getting into music, Or if you’re still a beginner and you’re worried about your lack of knowledge of music theory.
You don’t need it to make music.
Music isn’t all music.
Music theory has something to do with it, but it’s not going to make or break you.
And you kind of just pick up music theory as you go anyway.
So, that being said, let’s go ahead and jump into the video.
So the simplest way to make music without any music theory knowledge is to simply use all of the white keys on the keyboard, or all of the black keys on the keyboard.
If you stick to all black keys, there are only five keys that you have to navigate yourself around.
If you stick to all the white keys, there are more than 12345677 keys you have to stick to.
If you go with the black keys, your music will sound a little bit more mediocre, not so emotionally driven.
You’re going to have to stick to something that isn’t as melodic, because it’s just really hard to make something interesting with just the black keys.
However, if you stick to just the white keys, you can make anything you want.
Because all of the keys are either C major or A minor, which are both very popular scales in pop, hip hop, and electronic music.
But what we’re going to do in this video is that we’re going to stick to all the white keys.
So, I know you’re thinking there are a million white keys on this keyboard, but how do you make a nice chord set or melody?
Please have no idea which keys are used, there are far too many.
I’m going to show you how to do it, and we’re going to our middle C, or C.
So every keyboard has that C key that is directly in the middle of the keyboard.
And we’re going to make four notes as our guide notes that are the length of four bars in total until each note is one bar in line.
You get four one-bar notes, and the next thing we have to do is try to harmonize with our guide notes.
And the easiest way to harmonize with our guide node is to pick any of the notes in the same octave.
And try to harmonize with this guide node.
So, I like to skip this white key and then help raise it with these three white keys right here.
So each of these notes is going to get one of these three notes under each of them.
So watch how easy this is.
I’m just going to put a note here on that white key note here on that light key, this key.
And we’re just going to pick either of these three will work for our fourth note.
Now watch this.
We already have half a chord now, because this will sound good.
Keep in mind that we are only allowed to use white keys and cannot use any black keys.
So that’s going to make things really easy.
Now we must begin constructing the chord; forwards must have a minimum of three notes played at the same time.
Our chords only have two nodes playing at once.
So we have to set them up so that we can have all three playing at once.
We don’t have any music theory knowledge, but I’m telling you, making courses is easy.
It’s just simple math.
We have to make these notes five steps apart.
So, for example, I’m going to go to 1234 so that these notes are each five steps apart, including this bottom note, and we’re going to count four notes on each of these notes.
And then we’re going to put in our top note and that will be almost a chord.
Watch this, 12340123401234.
Notice that math will always work.
We’re always going to be on the white keys, can’t you He’s only black.
He is now.
That is the easiest part.
I used to think it was the hardest, because there’s no math that can help you with the hardest things.
Instead, his personal judgment, we need to know what’s going to be in between each of these notes here.
So if you notice directly in between these notes, we can actually get directly in between these notes.
We can either use this note that’s closer to the bottom note, or this note that’s closer to the top note.
Which one do we take?
Well, this note is a black note, so we can’t use that one.
So I guess we have to use this one.
Again, we’re stuck in the same dilemma.
We can either use this note that’s close to the top note, or this note is closer to the bottom, but the bottom one’s a black note.
So we can’t use that one.
So I’m going to use this one and this one, because they’re both white keys and, look at that, you have chords.
Like that.
That’s it, you have your set of chords and watch this.
You don’t know music theory.
However, your chord progression now works in any key signature you desire.
Or we could come down to key signatures.
Look at that, we’re using all black keys and white keys now and all our chords still sound good.
Because if you master all of the white keys, you will automatically know all of the other key signatures if you just know how to use the lying key.
So you can build any chord or melody in the white key.
And then, if you don’t like how it sounds, if you don’t like the mood, then you can switch it to a different key signature without actually building up that key signature.
Isn’t that awesome?
I think it’s pretty awesome.
So here’s how songs are written.
We have chords that are in the middle octave, which is going to be around C three.
It’s not exactly C three all the time, but it’s around the middle octave.
So we’ll call it around C 3, and you’ll have a melody in the upper octave, either a lead melody or a top line melody, and then you’ll have your baseline, which will be in the lower octave, that deep, low pitch bass.
So now we’re going to do it.
We’re going to make a melody, but we don’t know music theory, but we do know that we have to stick with the white keys.
That’s it.
So what do I do when I know I have to stick to the white keys, but I don’t know music theory?
Give yourself a guide today.
And my guide notes will always be in C because it’s the simplest way to write a melody in a minor key.
Why?
I’m not sure why we don’t use them more often; they have a lot of potential.
But, you see, it’s just the way I found to be the simplest.
Now with melodies instead of four notes like this, like we did for the chords.
Because the melodies kind of dance and prance over the chords, we’re going to make these a little bit shorter.
So, take a look at the swatch; isn’t there an Alan Walker song that sounds similar?
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo.
Maybe it’s a Chicago song.
Now we have got our guide notes for our melody.
And all we have to do now is move the notes around on different white keys and see what they sound like.
This is like there’s no skill.
You need to actually move the notes around and see if they sound good.
They make a bad noise when you move them around.
Or you move around; either way, it sounds good.
And I already know I can’t use the black keys.
So we’re not even going to step out of the key.
There’s no way, because you know that you can’t use any black keys.
So watch this.
Watch this.
I’m going to just take this and duplicate it.
Melodies are structured in patterns similar to poetry and hip hop, earning patterns such as A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, BIt’s just like what we learned in poetry if you learned poetry, but this melody has a pattern of A, B, A, D, just like that.
And to give you an idea of what that means, just to clarify, if you don’t know what that means, it means that our pattern is the same in both hearts, so we have a part of our pattern here and an A here.
There you have it.
Exactly.
The same, or B, is exactly the same here and here too.
So that’s our melody.
Now let’s go ahead and make an A B, A C pattern.
How do we do that?
All we have to do is change this part to make it our own own thing.
You’ve got yourself a lovely little Melanie.
So watch this.
We can do this all day long.
We can pick whatever white keys we want all day long.
We’re never going to step into a keyhole.
And in the worst case scenario, we get a different melody, and it might sound cool, and why not?
Watch this.
I’m going to break this one down into two.
All I have to do when making a melody is make it about half the length and then duplicate it.
And then we can change something back here, just make it interesting.
And then, boom, you get a new melody.
So let’s recap.
What is this, an A, B, A, B, A B, or a B, A, C?
It’s going to be good, and here’s another ad right here.
As a result, it’ll be a blank, a blank.
It appears that it will be A, B, A.
And this one’s completely different than both of those.
So, you see, we have an AB AC melody.
So now we need a nice baseline.
And keep an eye on this, because this is where making music becomes so easy that it already hurts our baselines: it’s the bottom notes of the chords, right here.
So I’m just going to copy them, paste them, and, whoops, drag them down.
Depending on how deep a base we want, we can paste them here, way down here.
And then we go.
We have our bass down in some low octave, and we have our chords down in some mid octave.
It doesn’t have to be this one, it could be the lower one.
Like that.
And then we got our top line melody that could be some higher octaves above the core and above the baseline.
So now that doesn’t sound interesting, it just sounds like a cheap piano making some sort of melody and blah, let’s go ahead and start producing music.
The music theory part is done.
You’ve made it this far, you’ve made it this far.
So now what you do is you do the most fun thing in the world, which is sound selection, and you use sound banks, we call them to make sound selection possible.
So what I’m going to do is I’m going to use a synthesizer that’s built into the logic here, because I’m going to try super hard not to use any of my expensive third party plugins, because I know, if you’re watching this video, you’re probably a beginner and you probably don’t have a lot of plugins.
So I’m just going to use free plugins for this.
So let’s go ahead and take the Aerie synth lead.
I hope it sounds good.
And I’m going to take my top line melody, and when you’re making a song, you have to start getting organized because you’re going to accumulate a lot of layers that will make up a song, so we got it, and let’s go ahead and add Reaver to it to make a really really spacey and big song.
True,Just like that, we now have this big, beautiful, sinful lead leading us to it.
It’s kind of beautiful, but, whatever.
And the courts Let’s go ahead and take these cords and copy them and paste them down here.
I’m just going to mute them again.
And then this one has to be sent to.
Because we’re making an electronic song and everything has to be electronic, we could use a piano, but I don’t like that piano.
It’s kind of cheap.
And this is just more fun.
Let’s go ahead and find a really cool, plucked sound.
That will give us a really cool, fun electronic sound to mess around with.
Let’s apply this to our chords.
The chords are fine, but we could totally add some rhythm to them and make them really nice.
Just like that, same chords, different.
Electronic music is all about that funkiness and that rhythm.
So that’s all we’re doing.
Boom, doesn’t that sound awesome?
We’re still going to make the baseline and we’re going to make a little drum loop.
That’s going to be really nice.
Alright guys, and now, we’re going to take our baseline and make a really big sub bass 808 line, like a boom, boom, boom, boom, something really nice.
So I’m going to take our notes here.
Actually, I’m going to take the new notes from our old chords.
That’s what’s cool about the bass.
It’s like you make it based on your chords.
And, as most of the time, if you make it based on your chord notes, something cool will come out.
I’m going to use these nodes for some of what we’re trying to do here.
I’m just going to take these down to a nice bass octave, and we can get started on our bass notes.
We need a nice boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,So I’m going to come in here to our logic stock plug in and select our eight awaiting presets.
Oh, listen to that.
Now this one, let’s make this funky.
Let’s just take those notes.
Pick them up.
Because music is all about having fun, there are no rules.
Okay, now we’ll give you some drums.
So, to get drums, every producer in the world uses a service called splice splice COMM.
And then you download a splice, which gives you access to as many drums as you want.
So all you have to do is to pick certain pieces of the drum kit that you’re trying to lay down and you just drag them on in so we can get our nice house here.
We’re going to step on the grid as soon as possible so that everything is on the grid.
We’re going to get a small round of applause.
We’re going to use the Lex Luger clap even though we’re making a house beat right now.
Lex Luger is a hip hop producer.
It makes no difference.
Like I said, we’re not following the rules.
We’re just enjoying ourselves.
Nice.
Okay, so let’s go ahead and grab a high hat.
So I have nice high hat loops here.
And I’m lazy.
I don’t feel like making high hat loops from scratch.
So I pretty much just find nice high hat loops and I download them.
And then one last thing I’m going to do is add some bounce to all this stuff.
Doing what we call side chaining.
Now, if you’re not into music yet, you’re just a beginner.
Side chaining is one of the big things to make friends with as a producer.
You might not have ever heard of it, but it’s going to be a big part of your life when you become a producer.
Now listen to the difference between side chaining without, so here’s without side chaining.
Here’s an example of side chaining.
like bumps.
What’s the point of making everything?
Bob is how you make electronic music without knowing any music theory.
Alright guys, I hope you get some value from this video.
If you do it, give me a thumbs up.
Give me your best comments in the comment section of this video.
I love you.
