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Content from our social media — music theory, songwriting, engineering, mixing, synthesis, and more — collected in one place. If you saw something on our page and want to find it again, it's here. Read it, search it, share it.

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level up

Fluency on an instrument, beat making, these aren’t things you achieve.

god only knows

These are the chords from Brad Wilson’s "God Only Knows." The song’s originally an E, but we’ve moved it to C to conform to our ten chord toolkit.

chorDLE! ear training — identify the constant note and name the chord

chorDLE!: Try To Accomplish Two Things

An ear training exercise: identify the note that never changes and name the chord at the end — by structure or by function.

Video thumbnail: Producers have this habit of trying to understand music theory without understanding one really...

Form: Music Theory Unlock Code

Producers have this habit of trying to understand music theory without understanding one really basic thing, which is form.

Video thumbnail: If you’re starting to make your own music, there will come a time when you find yourself scratching...

naming chords a three step series

If you’re starting to make your own music, there will come a time when you find yourself scratching your head looking at a bunch of notes and asking what chord is this?

Learn This Chord Progression — common tone diminished vs dominant

Learn This Chord Progression: Wrong Answers Only

A useful chord progression that compares a common tone diminished with a dominant chord. What do you call that chord?

Set Aside Five Minutes

Set aside five minutes today to do something that you love.

Phase in Sixty Seconds

Phase in 60 seconds, let’s go.

vocal overdubs

Inexperienced producers tend to make a tactical mistake when they’re working with vocalists.

Video thumbnail: Here are two really fast workflow features that’ll help you with labeling things and making markers...

Two Workflow Hacks in Logic Pro

Here are two really fast workflow features that’ll help you with labeling things and making markers in Logic Pro.

Wait!: sample those drums!

You had a great session.

Reach: Keyboard Extremities

Thoughts on playing wide intervals on piano, plus a couple exercises from physical therapy for extending your reach.

Weather Sonification

What if you could hear everything? Sound waves are spheres with pressure in one dimension and time in the other.

Basic Beep Boop

Here’s a little tip to help you find your way around a synthesizer.

Video thumbnail: This diminished chord resolves nine places and the first eight are easy.

Diminished Chords Resolve 9 Ways — Here's the Pattern

A diminished chord resolves to four roots, major or minor — that's eight resolutions. The ninth is the surprise. How diminished chords function as rootless dominant 7ths and where each resolution leads.

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Showing 12 of 611 articles (Page 36 of 51)

Video thumbnail: If you know someone who’s making cool beats but they’re still adjusting stuff by ear, getting...

Relying on Luck

If you know someone who’s making cool beats but they’re still adjusting stuff by ear, getting things sounding good without entirely understanding what …

Video thumbnail: I didn’t make something clear when I said the difference for me in moving from tape to digital was...

Certification

I didn’t make something clear when I said the difference for me in moving from tape to digital was in that pause when you had to rewind after you did …

Forget What You Learned

A music production environment is a complex one.

Tape Digital

For me, the most impactful part of the move from tape to digital wasn’t the sound quality.

Don't Make Peace the Enemy

Taking a break isn’t just critical for your body and your mind, but also your spirit.

Distortion

Distortion comes in lots of flavors, but one thing they all share is that distortion adds high frequency content to your program material.

Temperament Modulation

A sawtooth wave, a mod wheel, and the space between equal and just tuning. The harmonic synthesizer crossfades between temperaments so intervals drift …

Video thumbnail: Beat Kitchen harmonic synthesizer — additive synthesis built from the overtone series

Oops, I Made a Synthesizer

What started as a way to visualize the harmonic series turned into a harmony-aware additive synthesizer. It folds overtones across octaves, tracks …

Super Locrian

I had the most delightful realization today, which is this.

Learn to Record Your Own Vocals

Learn to record your own vocals or somebody else’s because regardless of whether or not you’re making vocal-based music I can’t think of a better way …

Make Your Own Rules: music theory

Music has rules, but the thing is, you get to write them yourself.

Cinematography Workshop: ad 2

I think I know a lot about music and I consider myself a pretty decent engineer and producer.