How do we draw the most popular chord progression, which is I V vi IV into Ableton Live 9?
This will show exactly how to do it. Why would we want to do this?
If we're new to producing music like me and you just want to hear instrument sounds, it can be tempting to just bang on the keys and have complete chaos.
Draw the Most Popular Chord Progression I V vi IV in Ableton Live with C Major!
The nice thing is this chord right here is the most popular in music currently among so many different songs and this chord is one people are used to hearing. It all fits together nicely. It's a good way to listen to an instrument to see if you like the sound of it, which is what I want to do. I want to listen to thousands of different instruments in Ableton Live 9 and the nice thing is I can standardize it by playing this chord in all of them.
The question is, how do I draw this in from scratch?
What does it look like?
I didn't know this myself. I went through my friend @TomasGeorge's course, he has a university at u.tomasgeorge.com.
He shares the most valuable skills there for music production. I've learned almost everything I know about music production in the last year from watching Tomas' courses, from googling, and from deadmau5’s masterclass, which Tomas George referred me to.
This is the basics of writing in a chord progression. You can see each of these chords are for a different key. You've got, for example, the 1 is a major, 2 minor, 3 in this particular key, which I think is C major.
Then, in this lecture Tomas shows this is the most popular chord. I found this on hook theory. Also, this 1-5-6-4 especially switching out, for example, starting on 4 and going to 1 so it's 1-5-6-4. You can do variations on it too.
If you just want to listen to something in a way that sounds good and that we're used to, it's very helpful to draw this. I went through Tomas' lecture here showing exactly how to draw this in.
Then what I do here after watching his, I've given essentially the finished product straightaway in Ableton Live 9.
Now, you can adjust this for different scales. You can do it, however, you want to. If you're a beginner like me or you just want to learn how to do this, it's nice to just start with this exact one, and then play around it from there. I will show you first what each of these are.
This starts with C and I started on the fourth octave here, so it's C4, and then E and G.
This first one is a major. It's a G. You essentially just use the white keys in the C major scale. You've got C, E and G in this one.
It is what's called a 1 chord I believe. Roman numeral one in the major here, and then next is a 5. Then, that starts on G and goes up to B, and then D in the next octave.
Next is the 6, it starts on A4 and goes to C, and then E.
That's a 1-5-6, and then back down to 4 and that is F, A, and then C.
Now, if you play this, it just sounds beautiful together and it's familiar.
If I start this off and play it.
>> Listen to music clip on YouTube
It naturally resolves which makes it awesome for looping, and then I can listen to this on all kinds of different instruments just to get a basic feel of whether I like that instrument or not. I will throw this on a different serum and play it.
>> Listen to music clip on YouTube
That's what's lovely about this, once you've gotten this, it's really easy to test different instruments just using this chord. Then we can do things to have fun with it.
For example, if you want to move the notes, you could take this E5 out and put this on an E4 because it's on just a different octave, so it's still the same chord you've just gotten it on a different octave then.
This can move on any different octave.
For example, if I just highlight all of this, I can put this down an octave, drag it down, and that's the same chord just at a lower octave.
When I play it.
>> Listen to music clip on YouTube
Then, I can move it up an octave if I want.
This is a higher octave now, C5.
>> Listen to music clip on YouTube
I've got that all set up now and the nice thing is then, I can just make basic variations.
For example, instead of having a note that goes for an entire bar, I could have several short stutters of the note. If I right click over here, and put this on an eighth, I could draw out something here instead.
I could just put little short notes and have it play like that. That's still the same chord progression and that will be a completely different sound to listen to.
I put this over to a whole bar here, so it comes out that length, but if I right-click and do the fixed grid at something different, I can have some more fun with it.
I could go throw other random things in here, but just to listen to different instruments make some basic music, this exact set of notes all put together here in terms of a chord progression on the C major scale, this is the very basic.
This is what a lot of us are comfortable with and have already listened to. This is just an awesome chord to have set up here in one of these particular MIDIS, and then I can rotate through all the different instruments and listen to it.
What I'm going to do is make this into an electronic music station using some very basic chord progressions because I don't know much about making music and what I do know is as a listener I'd like to hear a lot of different instruments in a way that sounds good.
Putting a lot of different instruments, I can then essentially just put these different chords or these same chords, and I can do different variations on this, shorter or longer. I could have different octaves, I will know that harmonically it sounds good together because as soon as I stray from just the very basics, I don't know if it sounds good anymore instinctively, and then I can just try all these different instruments on it and that might be fun to listen to.
Thank you very much for joining me in this tutorial. I did this because I was googling and looking for it and I struggled to find one. I'm grateful I was already enrolled in Tomas' class and knew exactly where to look.
This is in his "Music Theory for Electronic Producers" class that I've got as a part of all his courses for life bundle. I'm also going through his "Music Production in Ableton Live 9" class and this is a very specific skill I wanted, so I hope it's useful for you.
If you'd like to join me on my musical journey, would you please follow me wherever you find, whether it's on YouTube or somewhere else because I will be doing live streams using everything I've learned that I hope will be amazing to listen to.
I love you.
You're awesome.
I hope you have a wonderful day today.
Final words
Thank you for reading this blog post, which was originally filmed as the video below.
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Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk on the transcript from @deniskj
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