Hey, guys, it's Will from EDM Tips and in this video
I'm going to show you how to take your chords from this
to this
and then finally to this.
You can also download my Chord Bible completely free below this video, which is going to show
you exactly how to build up amazing chords in any genre of music. Okay, without further ado, let's hop
into the DAW and get it done. The first things we need to touch upon really quickly before we build
the chords are notes, scales, and intervals. This is going to be really quick and by the end of it
you should understand it. So, every track that you listen to has been produced in a particular scale.
Now, a scale is just a series of notes that sound good together, and in western music we tend to
use heptatonic scales, which just means there are seven notes in the scale. Now, the simplest of which
is A Minor natural. If we just press scale in Ableton, and most modern DAWs have these now,
you can actually see the notes within your scale. They're highlighted blue here so if we start on A
we've got seven notes in that scale: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Then it goes up to an octave,
and that's the framework, in which we build the chords. And the chords we're going to build today
are called diatonic chords. That sounds fancy but all it means is we are only going to be using
notes from within the scale of A Minor natural but, as I said, these techniques will work for
any scale. It's just A Minor is the simplest to teaching. So, now, let's look at intervals.Well, I've
already counted them for you: one, that's the root note, then you got the second, the third, the fourth,
the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, and then the eighth is the octave. Now, let's look at the most
simple chords - triad chords. Why is it called a triad? Because there are three notes in it
"But, Will?" I hear you ask, "Which notes are in the triad chord?" A standard triad chord has the first,
the third and the fifth, which is this one. So, a standard triad chord for A Minor will be this
and it sounds minor but what other chords are we going to be using today to get to God-Level chords?
Well, we're going to be using seventh chords, so if this is the fifth, we just count up two notes
and add the seventh, and this is a seventh chord, which I love. It just sounds more emotional to me.
Or we could take it two intervals higher and then it becomes a ninth chord.
So, that's the seventh, there's eight, the octave. Take it to ninth and here's the ninth chord.
Now, there are two more chords that we're going to be working with today: a Sus4 and a Sus2. And again
they sound more complex than they are. So, a Sus 4 chord is
where you take the third and just move it up to the fourth position,
like that, and a Sus two is when you move the third down to the second position;
but what I found out is you don't need to be moving the third up to the fourth
or down to the second. You could actually move the first up to the second. So, I don't know if
that's technically still a sus2 chord but it still sounds cool if used in the right place,
and I'll show you the right place; or you could move that fifth interval down to the
fourth instead of the third up to the fourth so now we've got some really cool chords this
is our palette for making pro level chords so that's what we're going to do next let's draw
out a basic chord progression so if we're just using notes from within the scale we've got the
bass notes and now let's build up those standard triads above them so first third fifth first third
and you've all heard this a million times in a million pop songs
ah so let's kick things up a notch take it to pro level i've just added a more interesting
rhythm because really that was properly boring so this is where we are at the moment
like sounds cool sounds okay but it sounds boring so the
first thing we're going to do is add this seventh to some of these chords
so there we've gone from the fifth sixth and seventh and again we'll do it for this chord
and we'll do it for this chord
and then we'll do it for the last chord
now on some chords when you add the seventh it can sound a bit weird and that's because it's
a diminished chord and this last one is one of those so let's listen to the
first three and you'll hear it sounds a bit weird when it gets to the last one
sounds a bit weird right all you have to do in that situation is when you've added that
seventh note and it sounds a bit weird just put it up to the next interval or down to the next
interval within that scale so we're just going to put it up to there and now let's fix the problem
so the next thing that we're going to do for our pro levels chords is what's known as chord
inversions and this is just when you change the order of these notes within each chord
so a is the root note of the chord as we discussed on a standard triad
what we're going to do is just grab this seventh note and bring it down and we could grab this
root note and put it up if we wanted but it usually sounds good when all the notes are kind
of close together on the keyboard so if you're not doing really big jumps if we take these two down
everything's within a smaller range on the keyboard
and we'll have to keep that up there otherwise it's just
going to have three notes in the chord which will make it sound a bit weaker
and now we've got this much cooler sounding chord progression
nice now instead of seventh chords you can use a ninth or an eleventh chord i
tend to find that if you try and use too many of them all at once and then start
doing chord inversions it sounds too cluttered so this is adding the ninth
which sounds really cool at the moment
but if you start doing inversions you have to be a bit careful things don't
get a bit too cluttered because sometimes they can
it still sounds great actually so just
use your ears and decide if it's starting to sound a bit too messy
okay so that's kind of pro level chords i'm really happy with that already
but i really want to show you how you can take this to the next level
and just make people think you're some freaking maestro so again it's just using the chords that
we've already talked about today let's go back to the standard triads as we have done
so the first thing i'm going to do is actually
change the baseline and make that a bit more interesting
again only with notes from within a minor so i'm using this these blue ghost notes here
you can silence all of your chords if you want
so you're just hearing the bass notes if that makes things easier like this
okay that sounds pretty cool so let's turn these triads on again and now we are going
to get really professor so let's add some of these sus2 and sus4 chord positions now as we
discussed near the beginning we could take the third up to that sus4 position like so
but you have the options you could move it down to the sus2 position
like whatever you think is going to sound best and when you add the seventh note in that as well
and then you want to use an inversion no problem
suddenly you're starting to get something that sounds really unique really special
so i'm just gonna go through each of these chords and add some sparkle like this
using the sus2 position the sus4 position and a seventh chord or a ninth chord if i see fit
so this is the second triad boring so let's add the seventh
and let's take the root position up to the sus2 instead of the third down to it because i
remember i said we could do that and let's see how it sounds
but i don't really like that so i'm just going to undo and then i'm going to take the fifth
instead i'll take that down to the sus4 position that might sound better
yes because it's got some repetition to this bit so i'll add the seventh chords here
third fifth seventh actually i'll add the ninth
to really spice things up and then we're going to take it down a couple of octaves just one octave
actually and we'll take this one down on octave 2. so we're just playing with chord inversions
and for the last chord let's add the seventh oh no because that goes to the weird diminished chord so
let's add the seventh and take it down to the closest one which is here and we're gonna try
taking the fifth down to the sus4 position these last few notes instead again instead
of taking the third up to the sus4 we're taking the fifth down to the sus4 let's have a listen
so now we've got our god level cause let's add the melody let's add some
vocals let's add some beats and this is what we come up with
so i really hope you enjoyed that guys if you did please like it share this video with
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each and every day until next time thanks for watching cheers and happy producing