Hack Music Theory

  Music Is Dead . Good Riddance!   AI killed the recording star. Now what?     Have you heard AI-generated music? It’s better than most of the music that humans are making nowadays. Even worse than that, though, is the fact that music generated by machines ironically sounds more human than most music made by people.   But that’s nothing new. There’s been a dehumanizing trend in music ever since th...

  You vs Phone . Who Will Win?   A musical method to take your attention back!     How many seconds can you sit still and focus on your breathing, without your mind wandering? If you’re like most people nowadays, your answer to that question is somewhere under 10 seconds. Seriously. And that’s the “new normal”.   Ever since the neolithic revolution, when humans first began to live in an unnatural...

  The Uglification of Music .   Can a return to beauty save music?     Okay I know you’ve just started reading this, but please stop (temporarily), then go and listen to the second movement of J.S. Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major. Its nickname is “Air on a G String”, so just search for that. Even if you know this piece, please go and listen to it again. Then come back. I’ll wait…   So how...

  Don’t Trust Me, I’m an Expert . Confessions of an INFJ.   I’m a multi award-winning music lecturer with over 30 years of teaching experience, 10 of those years being at one of the UK’s largest colleges. I studied classical guitar, piano, and music theory (all to the highest grade) at the world-renowned Royal Schools of Music. Then I moved to Los Angeles to study contemporary guitar and vocals at...

  You Can’t Make Music without Using Theory .   “I don’t use music theory, because rules limit my creativity.” If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say that in my 30 years of teaching music theory, I wouldn’t be living in a rented one-bedroom apartment, that’s for sure!   The Oxford dictionary defines language as a “system of communication.” We can’t communicate through speech without...

  Hearing Music from the Future .   Materialist science tells us that we hear with our ears, and see with our eyes. But if that’s true, then how do we explain extra-ocular vision? If you haven’t come across this jaw-dropping phenomenon where blind (or blind-folded) people can see, look it up, and be prepared to have your worldview flipped. If you don’t know where to start, I recommend the work of...

  You’re Listening to Music Wrong .   You’re Listening to Music Wrong. I am, too. We all are. It’s tragic, but we can fix it.   Over the last 20 years, music has been devalued and demoted. It used to be the hero. Now it’s the sidekick. The soundtrack for working or socialising or whatever.   However, if you’re a Gen Xer like me, you’ll remember spending countless hours sitting in front of your hif...

  The 4 Types of Artist . Which Are You ?   Every song is born from an idea. So where do ideas come from? In other words: What or who is the cause of your imagination? Your answer to this question is tied to your worldview, and that determines what type of artist you are.   The first type of artist believes that ideas come from the brain, and are a result of firing neurons. If you believe this, yo...

  AI Is Not a Tool . Stop Calling It That .   I’ve tattooed myself. Three times! You know what? It hurts a whole lot more when you do it to yourself. You know what else? It looks terrible, too. Why? Because a tattoo machine is a tool that an artist uses to create images in the skin. I had the tool, and I even had the imagination to come up with a creative idea for the image, but I did not have the...

  AI Is Killing Music ! This Is How We Save It .   Hardly anything is real anymore! And that includes most people. They walk around staring at their phones with earbuds in, ignoring the reality all around them and instead choosing to live in their screen’s virtual reality. Regardless of what their senses tell them, if their screen says it’s real, then it’s real. If their screen says it’s true, the...

  AI Saves Us Time . That’s Bad !   Time is our only non-renewable resource. People talk about “spending” time and “spending” money, but these two types of spending are opposite. We can always make more money, but we can never make more time.   Therefore, the greatest, most valuable gift we can give someone is our time. Think about it. No matter how much money you spend on a gift for someone, unco...

  AI Can't Make Music .   AI can’t make music. Let me explain…   The reason almost everyone thinks AI can make music, is because the definition of music has changed. As a side note, it’s interesting how more and more definitions seem to be changing nowadays, isn’t it? But that’s a story for another day…   What’s important to us here is the original definition of music. In other words, what music m...

  Making Music is Hard . Why Bother ?   I never thought this day would come. But here it is.   After 30 years of teaching music to thousands of students, I’m facing a previously unimagined challenge: convincing people who want to make music that they should learn how to do it.   Never in human history has there been any other option. But now, there are robots that can make “your” music for you. Is...

  How to Write a Catchy Melody .       Free PDF Tutorial includes multitrack MIDI file     If the link above does not work, paste this into your browser: https://hackmusictheory.com/album/2877864/catchy-melody               Intro .   British band Glass Animals are absolutely massive! At the time of writing this, they’re ranked #257 in the world on Spotify. Most artists as famous as them have achie...

  How to Write Sweeping Arpeggios .       Free PDF Tutorial includes multitrack MIDI file   If the link above does not work, paste this into your browser: https://hackmusictheory.com/album/2639559/sweeping-arpeggios               Intro .   Do your arpeggios all sound rather similar? It’s a common problem for producers.   Arpeggios are when you play a chord one note at a time, and it’s one of the b...

    How to Write Heavy BASS Lines     Step 1. Syncopated Octaves Set up one bar of 4|4 with your grid on 1/16 notes, and your tempo at 110 BPM. You’re gonna start by using only one note, and the octave of that note. We’re using A in our example. So, draw in every 1/16 note on the low A. Now, play around with moving a handful of them one octave up. These high notes will make accents in your bass li...

    How to Write Advanced DRUMS     Step 1. Pattern Set up two bars of 4|4 with your grid set to 1/16 notes, and your tempo at 136 BPM. Now, instead of starting to make your drum beat with the usual kick on beat 1 and snare on the backbeats (like everyone else does!), you’re gonna start by writing your kick and snare pattern on the hi-hats. Wait, what?! I know that seems like a really odd thing to...

    How to Write Locrian BASS Lines   Step 1. Basic Set up four bars with an 1/8 note grid, and your tempo at 97 BPM. You’re gonna start by writing a basic bass line that plays every 1/8 note. This creates momentum. We’re in B Locrian here, which is just all the white notes from B to B. The Locrian mode is exceptionally dark, and what makes it so dark is the ♭2 (which is C in this example) and the...

    How to Write a Beautiful CHORD Progression     Step 1. Beauty   Set your grid to 1/16 notes and your tempo to 113 BPM. We’re in the key of A minor here, which is just all the white notes from A to A. Right, so the first step to writing a beautiful chord progression is finding a beautiful chord. There are many beautiful chords, but a good guideline is to leave space for the harmony to breathe....

    How to Write a BASS Line with Harmony     Step 1. Low   Harmony is when two or more notes are played together. And sadly, it’s rare to hear harmony in a bass line. The word “line” is actually used to convey the fact that it’s a melody, not a harmony. That’s how rare harmony is on the bass! You see, most producers think the bass frequencies are too low to play harmony. In other words, if you pl...

    How to Write a Standout MELODY     Step 1. First Impressions There are many ways to write a standout melody, but it’s difficult to improve on the method PJ Harvey uses in her new single “A Child’s Question, August”. That’s because nothing grabs our attention like a bold first impression. And by first impression, I literally mean the first note of the melody. You see, PJ Harvey starts her melod...

    How to Write a Locrian RIFF   FREE: Download This Tutorial as PDF Includes multitrack MIDI example     Step 1. Octaves Set your grid to 1/16 notes and your tempo to 97 BPM. You’re gonna start by writing a creative pattern using only octaves. If you’re writing this on guitar, use your low open E string and the E one octave higher. And be sure to play every 1/16 note, as that’s what gives the ri...

    How to Write a Catchy MELODY   FREE: Download This Tutorial as PDF Includes multitrack MIDI example     Step 1. Scale There are two types of catchy melodies: annoyingly repetitive ones you can’t stop singing but actually hate, and awesome ones that are memorable cos they’re unique. So, to write a catchy melody that isn’t annoying, you need to make it unique somehow. There are numerous ways to...

    How to Write Energetic BASS Lines     Step 1. Rhythmic Energy   There’s a super energetic bass line in the new single “No Reason” by The Chemical Brothers. To write a bass line like this, you need a lot of movement. Not just rhythmic movement, but melodic movement too. So, start by writing an energetic 2-bar rhythm for your bass line. Just use one pitch for now. We used A. You see, if you can...

    How to Write a Lydian MELODY   FREE: Download This Tutorial as PDF Includes multitrack MIDI example   Simple music  can be great music. Depeche Mode’s lead single “Ghosts Again” from their new album “Memento Mori” is proof. It has a well-written  and creative vocal melody in the verses, but it’s really simple. So, here’s a method for writing melodies from a band that’s been going for over 40 y...