J. Anthony Allen explains how traditional musical forms help electronic producers beat writer's block. Listeners respond to familiar patterns regardless of genre, and controlling density across sections shapes how a track feels. He shares practical tricks for building, following, or breaking structural plans.
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Music Theory for Electronic Musicians Part 5. In this class, we're going to focus on structure. Now, structure can also be thought of as the ultimate cure for writer's block. I've been hearing from a ton of students that are saying, I'm working on a track and I'm stuck and I can't finish a track, or I can't come up with another section. I can't figure out what to do next. That is what this class is going to address all of those issues. We're going to analyze some tunes. We're going to look at when we're here in a song, what comes next. So we're not going to look so much at harmony, although harmony and chords and things will play a role in that, because we have to decide what to do with our harmony. And that's one option that we can consider is how to change up our harmony. But it also has to do with texture and style and even the beat. There's all kinds of elements to it. So what I'm going to do is walk you through how we think about form and structure in a tune. I'm going to tell you my tricks for coming up with a plan and then sticking to that plan, or decidedly not sticking to that plan and going somewhere totally different. Those are both good options. This is all an element of music theory. Form and structure is something that you always study in music theory, whether it's traditional music theory or not. So this is kind of a whole new can of worms. But I've adapted it for this Music Theory for Electronic Music Producers format. And I think it's really going to help all of you that are having trouble finishing a track, coming up with new tracks. And even if you aren't one of those people that's having trouble coming up with stuff, this is a great class to examine how you're making tracks and how other people make tracks so that you can maybe achieve a certain sound that you've been looking for. So that being said, please jump in. Let's get started. Forms that people have been using for hundreds of years, some of these are the most basic kind of forms. Some of them are a little more complicated. But what I really like about them is that there's a reason these have been around for hundreds of years. Like, they work and it doesn't. The genre doesn't matter. Like, yes, Mozart used this same form in his piece, or, you know, in a symphony or something like that, but you can use it in a techno track and it's going to work like this is just how humans like to hear things. They like to hear things in certain patterns, right? We like to hear something, and then we. Okay, the next thing, the next kind of parameter that I would look at is density. And another way to think about this is texture. So with density, what I mean is how much that's happening. Imagine that waveform, right? That waveform is nice and thick. Can I thin it out without affecting the volume? So, so far in this class, we've been talking about form and structure as it applies to the whole track. Now I want to zoom in a little bit and talk about form and structure as it applies to a melody. Sam.
