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Music Theory

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Submitted By Glazba
Words 1999
Pages 8
I started writing this a while ago, and it seems like I've come across a lot of questions regarding theory lately, and scales in particular. So, I figured I'd post what I have so far and write this as a series of sessions on basic music theory concepts used in EDM.My plan is to start with major and minor scales, work our way through modes, chords, and chord progressions, and ultimately talk about melody writing and any other topics that come up in the meantime. The intent here is not to bore you with irrelevant trivia or bog you down with concepts typically associated only with classical music, but to introduce you to some very useful and practical concepts that will help you understand what you and others are creating, help you speak and understand the language of music theory and, hopefully, stimulate some new ways of thinking about your own EDM compositions. It will be very elementary to the more advanced musicians, but hopefully it will help people struggling with basic music theory concepts and practices. My original plan was to make this a blog, but given the other knowledgeable theory minds around here (e.g., RichieV, Diginut, Sonic_c, etc.), I think it would be better to keep it in an open forum format to facilitate an open dialog, Q&A, etc.So, for this first session, I am going to talk about major and minor scales, which are typically used in EDM. This session will lay a foundation for later sessions discussing the relevant modes, the relationships between chords and modes, how chords are structured and arranged, and ultimately some discussions of melodies and harmonies. I will assume for this first session that the reader is familiar with note names and can locate the notes on a piano, has a general understanding of how to read music (e.g., treble vs. bass clef, notation), etc. I am going to focus on the familiar diatonic (7-note) scales in this

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