What Is the Saddest Chord Progression in the World?
The next time you’re writing a heartbreaking, gut-wrenching tune, try using this handful of chords to drive your sadness home.
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How to Add Bittersweet Emotion to Your Chords with 7ths
You might understand the construction of a chord or triad, but here’s how to make your music express the heartbreaking lilt of a seventh chord.
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What Makes a Great Debut Album? These 5 Classics Can Teach Us Everything
What makes a great debut album? Its reflection on its time and place in contemporary society? The hype it generates? An ethereal and indescribable showing of artistic genius and virtuosity? While there are certainly patterns and similarities within the athenaeum of commercial music — the “sophomore slump,” the “edgy cover artwork,” or the scorched-earth PR campaigns…
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6 Electronic Tracks That Kick Butt Without a Kick Drum
There’s nothing quite like a four-on-the-floor beat to get your feet tappin’, heads bobbin’, and butts movin’. But as any truly clued-in musician knows, sometimes less truly is more. In fact, there are many creative ways to produce rhythmically forward-driving music without that dependable low-end kick pulse. So let’s look at six tracks broadly fitting…
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How Missy Elliott Works the Beat in ‘Lose Control’
As someone becomes more and more familiar with rap, he or she realizes that — in a genre that encompasses the styles of everyone from riddlers like MF DOOM to philosophers like KRS-One — there’s no problem finding completely different artists to enjoy completely different styles. If you want good party music, it’s Drake. Try 50 Cent if…
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Intro to Electronic Drumming: Connecting Your Percussion Pad to a DAW
One of the best ways to explore complete drumming versatility when using a percussion pad is to combine it with your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), such as Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Logic Pro, or Reason. In this article, I’m going to break down the steps to connect your percussion pad to Ableton Live. One thing to note:…
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The Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up a Home Studio: Free and Affordable DAWs
+ Learning to record and mix at home? Check out Soundfly’s acclaimed online courses on mixing, production, and beat making — Subscribe for unlimited access. Unless you’re recording to high-fidelity magnetic tape or into a four-track recording device, your digital audio workstation (DAW) is a critical element of your home studio. You don’t need a giant mixing…
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Into the Wild: Making a Beat in Ableton Live With Found Sounds
+ Master the tools and techniques of producing pro-level electronic music and audio in Ableton Live with Soundfly’s course, Intro to Music Production in Ableton Live. By Niall McCallum There’s never been a better time to get into beat making. Editing software and audio processing tools are better, cheaper, and more readily available than ever before. Not…
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How to Make ‘Pew! Pew!’ Laser Sounds with a Synth
Learning to play music should be more of just that — playing! Why not make everything fun? With that in mind, here’s a new miniseries exploring how to make your synthesizer of choice do whatever you want: from burping and farting to shooting out lasers (sonically, of course)! Why? Because laser sounds are actually pretty ubiquitous in music today.…
