Hey guys,

Looking for some help with them massive chords that shake your sould and make you believe in god again lol.

In oceanlab Sirens of the sea, when the track reaches its climax and drops there are 4 chords playing a pad over 8 bars. I cant work out what progression it is but it seems to embody exactly what im trying to find out.

I understand chords and can write my own but for some reason I can never get chords that are full of energy seem to simultaniously be rising in energy and emotion whilst also making you feel sad and happy at the same time?

Is it just the way those tracks are articulated? because when i checked what chords they were it was a very basic progression, in which the chords that were nothing special (although they were mainly minor 7 chords).

So i loaded a pad and played the chords on my synth and they didnt sound the way oceanlabs did in fact mine were not uplifting at all I checked i was plaing them right etc. Then i thought is it clever voicing or something?

So i need your help if you know anything about theory.

Thanks guys

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Processing a highly structured and complex pattern of sensory input as a unified percept of "music" is probably one of the most elaborate features of the human brain.....understanding how music is perceived and how it may elicit intense sensations is far from being understood.

can you provide a link and time frame and I will help you out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-Iq5sOIKAo

Whenever your ready man its just of personal interest. Its the drop im interested in the chords are so nice and do everyhting i mentioned in the above post but i cant recreate that emotion in my music. Wondered if its just subjective and I am just enjoying the articulation as a whole or if there really is some magic chord secret i havent been able to uncover in the last 18 months of studying.

Thanks richie =)

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Processing a highly structured and complex pattern of sensory input as a unified percept of "music" is probably one of the most elaborate features of the human brain.....understanding how music is perceived and how it may elicit intense sensations is far from being understood.

If you're talking about the impact of the drop I think it's as much about the buildup in the break as the drop itself. The panning, attack of the pads, reverb levels, accompanying basslines and vocals all add the the atmosphere.


In fact

The chords themselves are almost the least importanat part

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Dont forget a sound itself has alot to contibute to the sound as well as surrounding FX.
Not to sound patronising but I make the melodies for my tunes first then faf around searching for the right sounds.
But as RichieV says , get a link up and hopefully it can be sorted.

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I'll save Richie the trouble

It's in the key of F, so all the B's are Bb's, but for the sake of keeping this organized I'm just putting them as B. The upper part of the saw chords and the bassline playing at the drop go like this:

D - E - F - F - D - D-C - D - D
B - C - D - D - G - G-A - B - B

1 measure of each, except for the measure that goes D-C and G-A, it's two beats of each

I couldn't really hear the rest of the chord structure outside of the bassline and the melody, but just following those two notes I'm guessing the notes between them go like this:

D - E - F - F - D - D-C - D - D
F - G - A - A - B - B-F - F - F
B - C - D - D - G - G-A - B - B


Which would make the progression IV - V - vi - vi - ii - ii-I - IV, without the inversions. I had a saw synth play that over the song in the background, and it sounds right.. but I could be wrong, maybe Richie can verify this or correct me if I'm wrong, but I doubt I am.

i think what gives it the colour you are hearing is the leading soprano voice filling the chord adding 7ths 4ths and 2nds. The ostinato that does this in the top voice is the D - A , C -G voicing

key of F major
1- IV major 7 with the addition of the A natural in the soprano
2- V
3- vi minor 7 then minor 7 with G and C making it a minor 7 with an added 4rth
4- ii add 9 because of the added A from the top voice
5- iii minor 7 because of the G from the top voice
6- IV major 7 again

if you just play simple triads and add the appropriate top voice ( D-A, C-G), it will fill out the chord how I mentioned. Also, the 5th was most likely omitted on most chords.

It's actually in Dmin. The chords during the first part (verses/chorus) appear to be:

| Dmin | Dmin | Bbmaj7 | Bbmaj7 | Cmaj | Amin7 | Dmin | Dmin | (repeat)

And, from the breakdown through the outro sounds like:

| Dmin | C | Dmin | Dmin | Bbmaj7 | Bbmaj7 Amin | Bbmaj7 |

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matter of opinion as to which parallel key you chose. I always prefer using major as the bVII to i is essentially an evaded cadence and it just seems more practical of a framework. Your chords however do not match the breakdown.

Another note to Sonic. There is a second pad that adds extensions to the chords that aren't that audible at first. For example, the pad plays the 3rd of B major (D) and then also sounds with C major making it the 9th of the chord doing the same thing for the C to D motion the E being the common tone. Basically hold any tone that can be either a part of the next chord or a flattering dissonance which can really be any note depending on the actual chord.

Last edited by RichieV on Jan-17-2010 at 21:45

But, it's clearly a minor progression with a minor (Dmin) tonic - the song is established in Dmin from the start, uses a repeating i-VI9-VII-v7-i progression (i.e, the 8-bar phrase starts and ends on the Dmin) throughout the first half of the song, resolves to the Dmin at both the drop and the outro, which is Dmin all the way out. Not trying to start an argument here, but it's impossible to make the case that this is anything but Dmin (i.e., not Fmaj) from where I stand - there's not even an Fmaj chord in the entire track.

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you only hear it as minor because it never resolves from the C to F. It is like a never ending loop. But if you did make that final leap to F, it would sound like it was home. That is the only reason. It doesn't really make a difference as how you hear something isn't necessarily how I hear it. The problem is that you have one more chord bVII that you have to account for where as in my system, it is just a V and behaves like a V in major. If there was actual dominant push to D , i would agree that it is in D minor but there isn't. The presence of an E and no C # makes it push to F major more so than D even if it never actually goes there. Again it is a matter of semantics and people will never completely agree because it is just a system of representation.

This debate has been around for centuries. Shumann's dichterliebe is a great example. The first piece hints at F # minor but it never actually occurs. There is a cadence in the relative major but most academics will agree that the piece is in F# minor. The point is that a key is just that. A key to make sense of the chords in a piece. If your reference is different, it doesn't really change the origination of what is being heard, just how you interpret what you hear.

Schumann example

Last edited by RichieV on Jan-17-2010 at 22:01

quote:

Originally posted by RichieV If there was actual dominant push to D , i would agree that it is in D minor but there isn't. The presence of an E and no C # makes it push to F major more so than D even if it never actually goes there.

That's because it's purely in natural minor, which is very (probably most) common in EDM. Yes, it seems unconventional from a traditional theory standpoint, but few trance songs use a dominant V7>i and yet, the vast majority are considered minor for the simple reason that they gravitate heavily toward the minor tonic; however, VII>i resolutions are very common. I'm willing to bet that few people would argue that most EDM songs aren't in minor, including the track in question, which actually uses a fairly standard trance progression.

That said, I agree that, if you're hearing it want to resolve to the Fmaj, then you are 100% correct.

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