*Music Theory*
In all my years of experience, I can easily say the question I most often get asked, and most often see asked, by all new rap producers is (besides "how do I get pha.t drumz?!"), "how do I make good melodies?". Simply put, messing around and hoping to accidentally make a good melody will only get you so far. A little knowledge can go a long way, so if you're truly interested in coming up with great melodies, the only answer is to put in the work. The real problem, though, is that while there are TONS of resources on music theory, barely any of them will help you with writing rap music! The next post or two here will run you through the basics of music theory - the same info you can get anywhere else. Now, you have to learn this stuff - there's no way around it. But after that, I'll show you what nobody else is teaching - how to apply music theory to rap music. Enjoy.
* NOTE LENGTH *
First things first - we need to get on a common ground here. I need to introduce you to a couple music terms that will make explaining all of this to you a whole lot easier.Â
We should start with measures - this diagram shows how long one measure lasts:
As you can see, one measure lasts 16 counts long. Now, let's look at what we call notes depending on how long they last:
That would be a "whole note", because it lasts a whole measure.
That's a "half note" which, as you can guess, is called so because it lasts half of a measure.
A quarter note lasts 1/4 of a measure.
An eighth note lasts 1/8 of a measure.
And, finally, a sixteenth note lasts 1/16 of a measure.
* THE NOTES *
Okay, I'm going to start this off with the very basics; I'm going to assume you know nothing at all about music theory. So the first thing we need to cover are the notes:
C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B
That's right, those seven white keys and five black keys make up the twelve notes used in music. Starting at the bottom and moving up (or to the right, if you're looking at an actual keyboard), the pitch continues to go higher with each successive key - a "D" has a higher pitch than "C" does.Â
Now you may notice that the black keys don't get a unique name; their names are variations of the white keys. Despite this, jumping from "C" to "C#" is just as much of a leap in pitch as "E" to "F" would be. They just get named this way because of their appearance and placement on the keyboard. The "#" (as in, "F#") would be read "sharp" (as in "F Sharp") ... which makes sense when you think about it, since "F#" is higher in pitch than "F"; it's a step above it. But here comes the part that may confuse you; depending on the way you look at it, a black key could be either "sharp" or "flat":
The "b" (it actually looks a little different if you look at an actual composition of music, but "b" is the closest thing you can find on a computer keyboard) means "flat". So the black key between "C" and "D" could be thought of as either "C#" (higher than "C") or "Db" (lower than "D").Â
Now, you're probably thinking, there are more than twelve keys on a keyboard, right? What comes after "B"? The answer is - "C":
A set of 12 consecutive keys on a keyboard is known as an "octave", since after the 12th key, the first key will occur again. "C" to "B" would be an octave. "D" to "C#" would be an octave. And so on. Now, this concept may or may not be difficult for you to grasp, but a note can actually exist a number of times on a keyboard, in different octaves. Try it out yourself - grab a keyboard if you have one, or open up Piano Roll and play "C", and then play the "C" the next octave up:
If you listen closely, you can tell that both notes have a similar tone; they're both definetely "C", but one is clearly higher pitched than the other. Just to put some perspective on things, most instruments in real life are pretty limited to how many octaves they can play - for example, a guitar can play about four octaves worth of notes. The concept of octaves will become very important later on in the tutorial.
Finally, FL makes it easy for you to tell what note you're playing, even if you haven't memorized the layout of a keyboard yet (trust me, it doesn't come overnight, but it'll be natural if you use a keyboard enough) - just hover your mouse pointer around someplace in the piano roll and watch this window:
That's right - the note I'm on is "G#4", that is, "G#" in the fourth octave.
* SCALES *
Alright, now it's time for our first bit of theory. Just knowing your notes doesn't mean jack if you don't know what to do with them. And scales are pretty much the heart of music theory. Basically what a scale is is a collection of notes you can choose from to write your song - in general you don't use all twelve notes to write a song; you choose a scale which lets you know which notes you can use. So, how do you determine what notes are in a scale? Intervals. An interval is basically the number of keys you have to travel to get from one key to another. Let's look at some examples:
Let's jump from "E" to "F". This interval is known as a "half-step" - you aren't really jumping over any keys to get to the next key, you're just jumping from one key to the next - that's a "half-step". This also counts for the black keys:
Jumping from "D#" to "E" would be a half-step.
So, as you might have already guessed, two half-steps equal a whole-step:
"E" to "F#" would be a whole-step ... you have to jump all the way over "F" to get to it.Â
Now, let's use this knowledge of steps to build our first scale - the "major" scale. Here's the formula for the "major" scale:
0, 1, 1, 1/2, 1, 1, 1, 1/2
Confused? Well, let's say we want to make our scale "C Major". So we'll start out with the note "C":
Now, that "C" represents the "0" in our formula - we aren't jumping anywhere yet. The "C" is the start of our equation; it's the "root" note of the scale. But after the "0", you see there's a "1" - so we have to jump a whole-step interval:
So now we have the notes "C" and "D". Next, another whole-step:
Which adds "E" to the scale. Now, we need to make a half-step:
And that gives us "F". Continue on from there ... and when you're finally done with the scale, you get:
Notice how the scale takes us full circle; the scale starts on "C", and ends on "C", only an octave higher. You'll also notice that it only uses the white keys, making the "C Major" scale an easy scale to practice for beginners. Now compare that to "A Major":
Complicates things a bit, eh?Â
To help you out a bit with the scales, here is a VERY handy chart of all the major scales:
Along the bottom of the chart you can see the intervals (1 = a whole step, 1/2 = a half-step), along the left you can quickly see how many sharps or flats are in the scale, and along the top you see Roman Numerals that let us know what position the note is in in the scale - for example, if a "C#" is in the "V" column, we'd say it's in "5th" position. We'll see later on why the hell this even matters.
But, of course, that's not all. There is another scale known as the "minor scale" that uses this formula:
0, 1, 1/2, 1, 1, 1/2, 1, 1
Here's the chart of the minor scales:
However, I should clarify that that minor scale above is technically known as the "natural minor" scale, since there are two variations of the minor scale; melodic minor and harmonic minor. I won't bother getting into these because, frankly, they're barely ever used in any of the music we'll be talking about (the only exception I can think of off the top of my head is Eminem's "Cleanin' Out My Closet").And other scales DO exist; Arabian scales in particular have been popular lately with producers like Scott Stortch and Timbaland. But quite frankly, all you really need to concern yourself with are the major and natural minor scales; like 95% of the popular music of the last 50 years is based on these scales.
Now, you may be wondering why you should use the major scale rather than the minor scale, or vice-versa. Well, in general, major = happy and minor = sad. However, music theory was created like a billion years ago for the construction of classical music, and it even still appears in alot of recent pop music. But black rock has broken alot of music theory rules, and one of them is that, even if you're playing a minor scale, if the way you play it is funky enough, it can sound like happy, dance music. And with that said, from my experience, the VAST majority of rap songs use the natural minor scale.
And you may be wondering which natural minor scale is the best - should I use "A" or "F#"?! Truthfully, there is no one best - since they're all based on the same formula of intervals, you could take a song written with the E Natural Minor scale and move those notes to the notes of the B Natural Minor scale - it'd be a bit lower in pitch, but you could still tell it's the same song. However, I notice a lot of rap songs using a scale somewhere between Eb and G. The reason? Alot of rap either samples, uses, or mimmicks guitar-based music (funk, jazz, etc.). And since the first note on the guitar is an "E", and it can easily be tuned up or down a few notes, alot of guitar music is based off these scales. However, I repeat, there is no one "best".
Finally, I just wanted to point out some really useful features FL offers us for working with scales. First off is the scale helper - simply turn this on, and then whenever you're in piano roll, it'll make a guess at what scale you're in. Now, there are a LOT of things that could make this thing guess the wrong scale, and, for the most part, it is off alot, but still, if you're having alot of trouble figuring out a song's key, this might get you on the right track.
Second, and this might come in handy if you don't like to look at the charts I provided above, FL can show you what notes are in just about any scale. Simply click the drop-down menu in Piano Roll and choose Chords -> and along the right hand side you'll see a list of a bunch of scales - we'll go with "major":
Now, if you wanted to know what notes are in, say, D Major, just post a note in Piano Roll on "D", and you'll see it:
*Chords*
Now, time to put those scales to use. You've probably seen me say it before, but I can't stress enough how important chords are. When most of us start out beat making, we make songs with drums, bass, and a melody. The simple truth is, so few beats are actually made that way. Chords are very much the heart of a song. As I've said before in previous lessons, a chord is a collection of 3 different notes played at the same time. The first two types of chords everyone learns are "major" and "minor" chords - remember thoese two terms?
The two things that give a chord it's "feeling" (it's mood, whether it's happy, sad, etc.) is A) what notes are being played and B) the amount of space between the notes (ie, their intervals). So let's start by looking at the "happy" chord, the major chord.
Let's look at the chord "C Major":
The notes in the chord are "C", "E", and "G". Let's analyze that for a second: from "C", you go up 2 whole-steps to reach "E", then 1 whole-step + a half-step to reach "G". If that seems a bit confusing, just think of it this way - to make a major chord, just take any random note, then jump up four notes, then jump up three more notes. There you go. And this can be a bit easier to remember when you know how a minor chord is constructed - let's take a look at the chord "C Minor":
Yep, nearly the same thing - but just listen to them back to back - the minor chord is rather sad in comparison, right? In making this minor chord, we started with "C", then went up a whole step + a half-step to reach "Eb", then we jumped two whole-steps to "G" (in other words, start with a note, then jump up three notes, then jump up four more notes. presto). It's moving that middle note of the chord down just a half-step that makes all the difference.
Now, the scale you're making your song in is pretty much what determines what chords you can use (see, all of this is starting to come together!). Let's look at, say, the E Minor scale and figure out what chords we can use:
- E Minor (E,G,B)
- G Major (G,B,D)
- A Minor (A,C,E)
- B Minor (B,D,F#)
- C Major (C,E,G)
- D Major (D,F#,A)
You may be surprised to see that there are major chords in a minor scale - the flip of this is also true for major scales. The point is, the overall tone of the minor scale is still minor, or "sad". The way you look at a scale can help you discover it's chords, too. For example, even though the scale of A Minor looks like this:
We can shift everything over so that "E" becomes the "root" note:
There you go, still the same A Minor scale, only "E" is now in "root position". You may have already picked up on this, but when you use every other note on a scale, you usually get a chord. In fact, if you combine a I, III, and a V, you'll almost ALWAYS wind up with a major or minor chord, so looking at things this way makes it easier to figure out.
But now we need to bring up some other chords - in rap, it's VERY rare that a song will just be all 3-note chords, most of the time you'll get four (or even five)-note chords, for the simple fact that they have more flavor, and that rap is based off of two of the most complex genres, jazz and funk. So first we'll look at the 7th chord - start out with a I, III, and V - in the case of "E", that gives us "E Minor" (E, G, B). Now, add the VII (that being the Roman Numeral for "7", thus making this a "7th Chord) - in this case that would be a "D". So, that's a combination of a minor chord and a 7th - together we get a "E Minor 7th" (aka, "Em7") chord (E, G, B, D).Â
Here's another example - D Major 7th (D, F#, A, C).
Adding to that idea, there are also "9th" chords. If you look at a scale, you'll notice it's only 8 notes long, but you can see that the 1st and 8th notes are the same, so you can probably guess that the 2nd and 9th notes are also the same. So a 9th Chord is simply a 7th chord plus a 9th ... so our "E Minor 7th" chord would become a "E Minor 9th" chord if we used E, G, B, D, F.
Finally, I'll cover one more type of chord - the power chord. Power chords dominate nearly every form of rock music; lots of generic punk songs are really just made of three power chords. So how does this apply to rap? Well, for one thing, rock does make it's way into rap quite often; if I remember right, the guitar on Eminem's "Loose Yourself" is just playing power chords, and I can guarantee you the guitar stab playing throughout Jay-Z's "99 Problems" is a power chord. We'll see them a couple times in the case studies, so let me just explain them now. To form a power chord, simply take a note, then find the note four notes up from it on the scale. So, if we were using the E Minor scale, and we wanted to make an "E" power chord, we'd play "E" and "B". It's like playing a minor or major chord, without plaing the middle of the three notes. Lots of times, the guitars will also beef up the sound by playing the root note again an octave higher - so an example power chord might be E4,B4,E5. Power chords are popular because they're easy to play, and, like it's name suggests, they producer a very powerful sound.
There are a ton of other varities of chords, but I'll explain them as we come across them.
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