Would questions about music production techniques belong here? As an example, tips on how to program drums so they don’t sound like a robot etc ?
I don’t make the rules, but I think production/arranging is a very important aspect of songwriting.
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Same here… conflict of interest in my case? 
Yeah, depends on the specifcs! If it’s just about how to use a certain mixing tool, then it goes in “Gear”. But a case like your example could definitely go in here!
Edit: like @joebegly says 
In general, the “Songwriting” topic could become a bit of an admin nightmare because it overlaps with pretty much any category! But I think if we use our judgment on a case-by-case basis we should be fine 
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This is kinda getting off topic a bit, but there are ways on many midi based daw drum samplers like EZ Drummer or MT that you can go in and randomize (humanize) the attack velocity, you can also I believe set the quantizing to be humanized as well so that it randomly isn’t exactly on beat. I think you can do this in the midi event screen on a lot of daws too.
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Yeah, I tend to program it in myself though. It takes time, but I prefer it than many of the randomising functions.
I’ll probably open up a thread in here about this whole topic soon. There are quite a few easy to program things you can do which make a huge difference to the feel.
Any self-teaching recommendations for music theory? I think that would be relevant for this section. I can recommend the ‘fretjam’ youtube channel.
I think there already is a theory section
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I love the idea!
Some time ago i asked for some directions on the forum because i stumbled upon a plateau, and I started to feel burnt out.
Focusing on technique too much kind of blinded me to the fact that, on guitar, knowledge really IS power.
So now i´m cutting back on playing the same lick over and over until it´s up to speed, and I invest that time to follow a music theory/ songwriting course that I bought from a guy I follow on youtube. Taking it slow and step by step, i noticed that the mystery of how my fretboard works is slowly vanishing. It´s not like, oh, now i know about X, now i can shred, no…theory has this unveiling effect on me and it has nothing to do with technique, my view just gets clearer over time and now, i´m starting to like it.
Anything you guys would add about theory I would consider a very nice bonus in addition to what i´m learning in my main course. I will definitely try and be a part of this one way or the other.
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I mean we only have 4 fingers so the big pattern list isn’t that big.
1234
4321
123
321
12
13
14
312321
1323
and of course you can play any of those fingers more than once but the basic shape doesnt really change.
we could grow it a bit bigger by adding in right hand tapping but you get what i mean.
It’s funny cause when I started back up playing I had this thought I should try to arrange a routine that would focus on certain techniques for only a limited time, and maybe focus only on certain kinds of technique every few days. Like one day do legato, the other picking, tapping, sweeping, chords, and just keep it to around under an hour then move on to the bigger picture. Either learning the greats phrasing, learning how progressions work, and working on changes. But guess I failed the idiot test.
This seems like a great idea!
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I like this guy
I was messing with Bach style modulations a lot a few months ago
One example in this composition at about 1:40
I had been watching this video which went into a couple methods of cycling through keys back to the original key which I found interesting and borrowed the overall pattern for the above song
That led me to the music theory YouTube channel
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Great addition, tommo!
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Nice one! I’d been looking for some good music theory resources. Just subscribed to that channel.
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Which one? Tomasso’s? Tomasso is good because he approaches it from a guitarists perspective, the only thing that I would caution a bit is that it is still taught largely from the common practice perspective so as usual it really depends on what you are trying to apply the knowledge to.
I also think he has a free ebook too iirc.
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This is a good point! Pop music (so often snobbed by jazz/rock/classical musicians) actually did a great deal to challenge the traditional “rules” of harmony.
“Simple chord loops” used in pop are a very interesting topic, here’s a video about it from a channel I like:
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Another good thing to research in the realm of that, which may get you off the ground faster is chord substitutions/borrowed chords. They are used so frequently, it is a must for writing more interesting progressions in any style.
This seems like an interesting alternative approach, I got the book but it’s on my massive pile of unread books
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This is so cool!
I took all the common-practice theory courses in college (ages ago) but these days I’m really into some simple pop songs. This is a really cool way to think about them.
To this I’d add that pop music being harmonically “simple” is a pretty new phenomena. Go back to the Beatles, and you can absolutely tell that those guys cut their teeth playing vocal jazz standards.
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