2024-01-28 Berlin School
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I'm listening to Berlin Schoool: An Uncomplicated Approach by Synth
Seeker because @phf@social.sdf.org recommended it.

We were talking about music. All I do is create small jingles for my
podcast but every now and then I wonder about music theory. A while
ago I had saved Learn music theory in half an hour by Andrew Huang to
get back to it. But all I had done about it was think to myself: Pick
a scale, like this one, B Major looks nice, OK, so full full half full
full full half, that’s these keys, OK, let me doodle around on these …
beep beep boop boop … here we go. Or maybe do the other one, full full
full half full full half … biep biep boup boup … all right! 🥳

But then I wonder: what would my next step be? Some days I look at the
circle of fifth and wonder if that’s hogwash. Non-European music
doesn't need it! But then again, they also use something. There are
rules because people figured out what generally "works". Well, on the
other hand there are books about many things and they are neither a
replacement for spending ten thousand hours practising and the rules
they espouse are often just there to get you started and then they are
immediately broken.

All I know when I look at a typical drum machine or tracker setup with
8/8 or similar I immediately want to do a 9/8 Karsilama or something
like that. My wife's oriental dancing and all the Turkish, Arab,
Iranian and Maghreb music we listened to must have left an impression…
Or confused the hell out of me, depending on your perspective. Or
mine.

Anyway, writing all of this and I'm still not making music. What next,
I wonder. Perhaps playing C Major and playing a bunch of notes it
shares with another scale and then continuing with that scale is cool.
Or maybe not. I don't know. Or just stay in that scale and do some
drum machine and patterns below that!

That Synth Seeker video had a link to a Key Cheat Sheet Index. The
effect is similar to picking scales in Garage Band or Animoog:
limiting the keys I use in order to stay in that scale. Works for me!

All this listening and writing makes me realize that it's Sunday, late
at night, I should go to bed, and then I'll be working and playing
role-playing games and war-games every evening until the next week-end
comes around. Whaaat!

I must find time between the things I do to do the other things.

This is my life.

​#Music