Category Archives for "Music Theory & Arrangement"

How to Make Melodies - Without Music Theory!

Today, I'm going to show you how to write a melody in just a few minutes, even if you've got no musical background.

There are lots of different ways to write melodies, of course, but this is a great technique if you struggle with music theory, or you want to get the quick, soulful melody down without mucking around in the Piano Roll Editor, testing and deleting, and wasting your precious flow, and your precious time.

Produce Like Deadmau5 (in Under 10 Minutes)

In this blog post and video, I show you how to make music like Deadmau5 in under 10 minutes. It's easy to follow – even for beginners!

Deadmau5 has long been one of the world-leading producers in the electronic dance music scene. His fat, tight productions have rocked dance floors for over a decade. By learning some of the techniques he uses you can drastically improve your own music productions in a surprisingly short space of time, and in this video and post I attempt to unravel some of the secrets for you to use in your own productions.

Continue reading

How to Produce Like Don Diablo

Get that Don Diablo, Hexagon sound in this step-by-step video tutorial.

Don Diablo has been storming the world with his energetic future house for the past few years, and today we look at how to get that sound. Yes – developing your own style is SO important – but it helps (MASSIVELY) to breakdown what other (better) producers are doing, to learn some of their tricks which you can then incorporate into your own music.

That being said, let's dive right in...

Continue reading

How to Make Killer Chord Progressions

Catchy chords and chord progressions are often the basis of what makes a really memorable song - regardless of genre – so today we’re going to look at how to write KILLER chord progressions!

In this post we look at changing some different elements of bog-standard, quite “boring” chord progressions, to come up with something more interesting - more memorable!

Continue reading

How to Sound Like Marshmello

If you're one of the two people who hasn't heard of Marshmello, he's a human sweet known for crafting beats (and wearing a big, white mask).

Continue reading

Modes in EDM (and how to use them)

Spice up your music using the 7 different modes!

Using different “modes” can help your track really stand out from the generic scales used in most modern music. The video below explains what the different modes are and how to use them in your Digital Audio Workstation...

Continue reading

Recording Your Own Sounds at Home

Recording your own sounds at home can really make your tracks unique, as if everyone is using the same samples from the same packs, it stands to reason there are going to be similarities in the finished tracks, right?

But how do we go about recording sounds at home (properly)? Do we need to spend a lot of money on a decent microphone and acoustic treatment? Perhaps not...

Continue reading

How to Write Future Bass Chords Like Flume

In the video below, I go through how to make Future Bass chords like Flume, using only the native plugins from within Ableton Live.

I explain the music theory behind the chord progression, and then go into the sound design of those big, sweeping synth chords.

Continue reading

How to Sound Like KSHMR & Tiësto

Sometimes analysing how our favourite producer(s) do things is a great way to gain valuable insights that can drastically improve our own productions.

In the video below, we look at how to recreate the chorus from the smash track “Harder featuring Talay Riley” by KSHMR and Tiesto.

Continue reading

How to Make Chords from a Melody

What if you’ve got a killer melody or lead line, and you want to work out chords that work with it, but you’re not exactly a maestro on the keyboard? No problem! You don't even need to know any music theory for this.

This is a quick, simple, step-by-step technique you can use to quickly work out awesome chords that work with a pre-written melody or lead...

Continue reading