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MIDI chord progressions sets - The end of musicianship as we know it?
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #31
Gear Nut
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcana ➡️
A great melody or hook, a great rhythm or interesting choice of sounds is of much more importance to me than a chord progression, yes.
I'm not even sure why this is a subject in 'Electronic music' forum.
Feels like it should belong in a 'Prog rock' forum. Which electronic music artists are all about chord progression?

Taking your favorite chord progression ever, does not make it easier for you to make a great song. It's a small part of the puzzle.
Aww come on, are you saying chord progressions are the pursuit of prog rock artists only ?

I always thought electronic musicians had the least constraints ?

Have you never come up with a wonderful chord progression ? you should try, it's magical !
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #32
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Tomás Mulcahy's Avatar
 
🎧 15 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by CAL. ➡️
Aww come on, are you saying chord progressions are the pursuit of prog rock artists only ?

I always thought electronic musicians had the least constraints ?

Have you never come up with a wonderful chord progression ? you should try, it's magical !
Syllogism alert.
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #33
Gear Nut
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tomás Mulcahy ➡️
Syllogism alert.
No, only my assumption is true
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #34
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7Wave's Avatar
 
🎧 5 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by grumphh ➡️
While you are right in your evaluation of the musical quality, you are wrong in assuming that nobody will want to listen to derivative uninteresting crap.
Actually derivative uninteresting crap (aka. pop music) is consumed by millions (billions?) of people - much like McD is one of the most succesful fast food chains in the world.

Large percentages of populations all over the word just love their derivative uninteresting crap music.
The derivative uninteresting crap I’m referring to is the music created by people who buy these products. Actual professionals who make pop music (at least the ones I’ve known) don’t use these kinds of tools.
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #35
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Tomás Mulcahy's Avatar
 
🎧 15 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by CAL. ➡️
No, only my assumption is true
Touché

It's not the chord pack that is the problem. The most irritating thing about these ads are:
1. Targetted at you
2. The notion that there's a shorcut
3. The shortcut is to "industry standard" or "pro sound"
4. What is the point of a creative process that is so goal oriented?
5. I have not seen any women demonstrating this stuff. Only 18-24 yr old males.
6. Does that mean only they are the target market?
7. LOL at targetting algorithm, given the responses on this thread
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #36
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Arcana's Avatar
 
🎧 10 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by CAL. ➡️
Aww come on, are you saying chord progressions are the pursuit of prog rock artists only ?

I always thought electronic musicians had the least constraints ?

Have you never come up with a wonderful chord progression ? you should try, it's magical !
Constraints?
I make a wide variety of music (13 genres just in 2019-20), but I just don't base songs around chord progressions. My songs would be just as good with different chord progressions IMO.

As I mentioned earlier, I don't dislike chord progressions. They are just not a top priority for me. Melody/hook, rhythm, texture, choice of sounds are more important - to me.

This conversation is the same as the good old 'is it cheating to use drum loops' or 'is it cheating to use synth presets'.
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #37
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grumphh's Avatar
 
🎧 10 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by 7Wave ➡️
The I’m referring to is the music created by people who buy these products. Actual professionals who make pop music (at least the ones I’ve known) don’t use these kinds of tools.
Not buying those tools does not in any way prevent their output from being derivative uninteresting crap.

Pop composers have created derivative uninteresting crap ever since the moneymaking potential of the combination of music and mass media attracted serious businessmen.

After all, it is pop music we are talking about - the stuff you want to sell to millions of ignorant consumers who are as satisfied with pop as they are with McD.

Pop = music made purely for profit, not for arts sake.
Of course it gets watered down to the lowest common denominator.
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #38
Gear Nut
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcana ➡️
Constraints?
I make a wide variety of music (13 genres just in 2019-20), but I just don't base songs around chord progressions. My songs would be just as good with different chord progressions IMO.

As I mentioned earlier, I don't dislike chord progressions. They are just not a top priority for me. Melody/hook, rhythm, texture, choice of sounds are more important - to me.

This conversation is the same as the good old 'is it cheating to use drum loops' or 'is it cheating to use synth presets'.
All good points !

I only reacted to your original comment "Feels like it should belong in a 'Prog rock' forum. Which electronic music artists are all about chord progression"

because that was like putting things into boxes and constraints

I don't think Herbie Hancock is big on prog, but I do hear his great chord progressions.
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #39
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Arcana's Avatar
 
🎧 10 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by CAL. ➡️
All good points !

I only reacted to your original comment "Feels like it should belong in a 'Prog rock' forum. Which electronic music artists are all about chord progression"

because that was like putting things into boxes and constraints

I don't think Herbie Hancock is big on prog, but I do hear his great chord progressions.
Herbie Hancock is certainly good at what he does, but I just don't find him very relevant in 2021. That might not be important to you, and that's fine.

Besides, he's about as much an electronic music artist as Prodigy is a rock band, because they use guitars. Even Coldplay uses synths, but calling them electronic artists would be a stretch I think.
Last edited by Arcana; 4 weeks ago at 03:12 PM..
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Old 4 weeks ago
  #40
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Breaks Dude's Avatar
 
1 Review written
🎧 5 years
If I had a time machine, I'd go back 40 years and not fight my mom about taking piano lessons (I won that one). It's very difficult and frustrating to understand and remember this stuff now. My fingers just won't go anywhere I want either. I'll learn a scale or chord progression by memory for about a day and then it's gone.
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #41
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SkyWriter's Avatar
 
🎧 10 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by Breaks Dude ➡️
If I had a time machine, I'd go back 40 years and not fight my mom about taking piano lessons (I won that one). It's very difficult and frustrating to understand and remember this stuff now. My fingers just won't go anywhere I want either. I'll learn a scale or chord progression by memory for about a day and then it's gone.
I take joy in what I can do. I took piano lessons in my late teens and played drums. I never learned a 'song', except stuff like 'take five' on the drums - it's drums though, not like the piano part!

Then I stopped.

After I retired I picked it all up again. I spend as much time as I can on it all now; many hours a day. And while I still can't play any other folks tunes, I can wack out something I do like. Even my Jimmy Buffet wife likes what I'm doing lately.

Unfortunately, mere mortals like you and I have to practice :0)
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Old 4 weeks ago
  #42
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Snorktop's Avatar
 
🎧 5 years
As a musician, I feel utterly useless and replaced since MIDI chord progressions were invented. It's had a tremendous impact on my life.

I have no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

Scatter my ashes over the Suwanee River.
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #43
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Muser's Avatar
 
1 Review written
🎧 10 years
what with cigarettes being replaced by people sucklin on those robococks and now midi chord packs, i’ll give us five years.
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #44
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Everyone's trying to make an easy buck leveraging something they can do, and everyone's angry about something. Bring those together, and you get a thread.
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #45
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Tomás Mulcahy's Avatar
 
🎧 15 years
Who's angry? At most we have irritation. I get where you're coming from though. Definitely people are more on edge than normal. I think it's a symptom of lockdown.
Last edited by Tomás Mulcahy; 4 weeks ago at 04:33 PM..
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #46
Gear Head
 
LOL, hello fellow Masshole resident
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Old 4 weeks ago
  #47
Gear Nut
 
I actually saw some kid playing with pads the other day

I mean,,, no fingers on keys
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #48
Gear Nut
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by PuggaMahone ➡️
Everyone's trying to make an easy buck leveraging something they can do, and everyone's angry about something. Bring those together, and you get a thread.
Another person who's not angry here

Just having conversation and different opinions, healthy discourse.

May as well have some distractions before the virus gets me
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Old 4 weeks ago
  #49
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Gothi's Avatar
 
Chords, chords, chords. Bah. The bane of tonal music. Give me some modal polyphony/counterpoint in Palistrina style instead. 5 voices obeying the species as outlined by Knud Jeppesen, plz. Have never heard any auto-program come anyway near this. Those AI generators on YT just spout coincidental counterpoint, and that should be pretty noticeable to the trained ear. No idea, no soul, no talent.
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Old 4 weeks ago
  #50
Lives for gear
 
🎧 5 years
A friend of mine taught me the 2 -V -1 'classic' chord progression and as its in SO many songs etc its already completely dead to me... then again I'm just a tinkerer not looking to get a top 10 'hit'

I prefer jamming around however the mood takes me, there's no 'rules' in music really... just play about, use your ears and have fun... who 'cares' if somebody uses a midi programme and makes a $1,000,000... good for him...

I would rather master an instrument and be a virtuosos no ones ever heard of ... that would give me pleasure...
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Old 4 weeks ago
  #51
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🎧 5 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Style Guide ➡️
Perhaps I am slow on the uptake, but I have recently come across "mega" sets of MIDI chord progressions for purchase. At first I thought these might be a useful instructional tool for musicians looking to master a given style and its standard chord progressions. But the more I thought about it, the more I see these chord progression sets as just one more step down the ladder to laziness and a lack of commitment to master your craft. We aren't too far off from having AI algorithms write all of our pop music for us. That would be a sad day. For me, coming up with clever chord progressions is one of the most enjoyable aspects of writing music. Hence, I would never use one of these preset chord progressions for one of my own songs. To study, yes. But to actually use as my own creative work, no way.
What are chords anyway - nothing even remotely special.

It's all about parts.

Plus it's just bizarre to have chords sets as in the absence of the melody, you can't select a chord as it has no function.

I'm with you - useful to a student of music, not useful for original creativity.
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #52
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tomás Mulcahy ➡️
Who's angry? At most we have irritation.
I guess hyperbolic would be a better description... "The end of musicianship as we know it", because of MIDI chord progressions? When the early synth music that we esteem here was created, people claimed that synths were a sign of the end of musicianship as we know it. No more rock and roll. Rock and roll was a sign of the end of musicianship as we know it, at that time. Cars were the end of horsemanship as we know it. Time keeps on ticking... Maybe people could learn to play the loops and chord packs as you would play an instrument, do something interesting with them? It's better than getting irritated by them. Otherwise, they're easily ignorable, unlike cars
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Old 4 weeks ago
  #53
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music is about emotion and personal expression. just like chord books and DAW's didn't end music because they put more tools in people's hands, MIDI packs wont either
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #54
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Tomás Mulcahy's Avatar
 
🎧 15 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by IncarnateX ➡️
Chords, chords, chords. Bah. The bane of tonal music. Give me some modal polyphony/counterpoint in Palistrina style instead. 5 voices obeying the species as outlined by Knud Jeppesen, plz.
With you on the bah. Not so much on species counterpoint though. That's just a style really. How about Messiaen, Debussy or Stravinsky? Or even Chopin.
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #55
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7Wave's Avatar
 
🎧 5 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by grumphh ➡️
Not buying those tools does not in any way prevent their output from being derivative uninteresting crap.

Pop composers have created derivative uninteresting crap ever since the moneymaking potential of the combination of music and mass media attracted serious businessmen.

After all, it is pop music we are talking about - the stuff you want to sell to millions of ignorant consumers who are as satisfied with pop as they are with McD.

Pop = music made purely for profit, not for arts sake.
Of course it gets watered down to the lowest common denominator.
Yes, but this is a thread about consumer level drag and drop chord packages, so that’s what I was referring to.
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #56
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SkyWriter's Avatar
 
🎧 10 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by IlSalentino ➡️
LOL, hello fellow Masshole resident
We're everywhere...
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Old 4 weeks ago
  #57
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #58
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Gothi's Avatar
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tomás Mulcahy ➡️
With you on the bah. Not so much on species counterpoint though. That's just a style really. How about Messiaen, Debussy or Stravinsky? Or even Chopin.
It is not "just" a style, Tomas. It is THAT medieval style of polyphony without which there would have been no Debussy, Stravinsky and Chopin. It is the style that had to sneak into the church during the renaissance, because it invoked outrage in the field of sacred music and was even banned from the church for a period. It was also the style that Johann Joseph Fux thought he wrote about when Gradus ad Parnassum became the bible for e.g. Bach and Mozart. However, as Knud Jeppensen has explained, it was rather Fux's very personal interpretation of Palestrina, which rested upon lack of knowledge of certain works, but nevertheless his interpretation bridged the eras of modal and tonal music.
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #59
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🎧 10 years
"They're using evil chords, this is the end of music!"

"They made a piano that plays itself, this is the end of music!"

"They figured out how to record music so you never have to play it over again in person, this is the end of music!"

The sky is always falling.
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Old 4 weeks ago | Show parent
  #60
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Tomás Mulcahy's Avatar
 
🎧 15 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by IncarnateX ➡️
It is not "just" a style, Tomas.
OK then, I'll say "a methodology". I think we are broadly in agreement- you used the word "bible" pejoratively (gradus ad parnassum). This is where the problem is, for me- it's commonly still taught that way.

Notwithstanding that, it's still a tool in the box. For the composers I mentioned especially the French ones, it was sand in the oyster... and none of them did anything as grossly over-simplifed as a chord progression either

Edit: And now the GS algo is telling me similar threads are: a coupe of Plugin Boutique Scaler update annoncements
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