The Lucent Workshop™

[LucentTear]

This is a thread where you can ask me anything about my sequencing style. I find it difficult to actually explain the way I do things all in one sitting, so I created this thread because I'm sure some of you out there want to learn a specific aspect of my music.

Well go ahead, ask me anything.

[Wafels]

How do you do/figure out/come up with those complex (?) piano chords? Also, can you explain how you do your chord progressions? I think they're really good. Whenever I try making piano pieces or piano parts on my sequences, I always find myself stuck, and avoiding the piano most of the time. Piano has always been my weakness, and if I understand or learn a thing or two from you, I'm sure I'd be able to work on my weakness ^^

[LucentTear]

Chord "palettes" as I like to call them are often influenced so there's no easy way around to making complex chords right off the bat. It will sound weird to you at first when you start using them, but it does catch on rather quickly as you keep using them. Kinda like drinking water if you will.

And like drinking water, you want your sequence to sound like water too. A weird way of putting it, but there is some sort of "drowning parameter" in my music. I view music artistically, depending on how much I want to drown it (or make it chaotically non-melodic, so to speak) I use a certain amount of cluttered notes. "These set of chords have to be at this consistency!" or something like that. I'm also good at visualizing the chord in my head, so I usually lay it out note-by-note mentally and from there I can guess on what to do.

This is an example of a drowned out song. You can see how there are many notes cluttered around the chords. Not only that, there is little awareness as to what is happening in the left hand, and even the supporting chords seem to be slapped out of line with the main rhythm.

You can also use the "drowning technique" to mimic sound effects, therefore telling a story. Take measure 25 onwards from Having Done Nothing Today As Well. The drowning effect kinda reminds you like a bell tower, giving some sort of sense of impending doom or eternity. (It's better heard in the arrangement I did on SoundCloud. https://soundcloud.com/lucenttear/wip-ha...ay-as-well)

I use a lot of adjacent note chords, I think Major 7ths and Flat 9ths in particular. I don't know exactly which extensions I use because I don't pay attention to what types of chords I use. But in either case, mess around with putting some notes right next to the main chords and see how it goes for you. I often have to guess and check my chords to make sure it sounds in place of the music.

Okay, now onto chord progressions. Honestly the only thing that comes to mind for me is "MAKE YOUR CHORD PROGRESSIONS AS WEIRD AS POSSIBLE, IMPRESS SOMEONE WITH SOME OF YOUR FANCY LUCENT TACTICS" and that somehow works. There's really no formula as to how I do my chord progressions, but every now and then you have to visualize how this particular part of the song goes.

Let's say you have a build up. There's two ways you can lead the song, but you think both of them are going to sound too obvious and predictable. What do you do? Change the key to something highly irrelevant to the original key, of course. Make sure people won't see what's coming, but also safely transition it so it doesn't sound out of place. Don't do this all the time either! Abstract key changing should be kept fresh, and normally used once in a song.

Occasionally there are static chord progressions I go with just to "bull*****" the sequence. It lengthens the sequence without making it obvious that you're still repeating the same thing. Take Mirage for example. If you take a gander at the lower part of the song, you can see the notes are just going down by one. It doesn't sound too obvious because you're distracted by how complex the song is in its entirety.

There's also an unnamed technique of adding a "finality" to a section. Just as it looks, this kind of progression is most commonly used near the end of the song, but I often do it to mix things up a little or as an excuse to change the key. You should have heard this kind of progression before (at measure 50), even if you don't know what to call it.

But that's all I can name about chords for now. Feel free to hit me up if there's anything more specific that you need to know about them.

[Potater]

How do you combine different percussive instruments together effectively?

[LucentTear]

How do you combine different percussive instruments together effectively?

It hasn't even been two hours since this thread was posted please don't do this to me.

[Wafels]

How do you combine different percussive instruments together effectively?

I posted some tips on another forum post about percussion. I'll link you to it: https://onlinesequencer.net/forum/showth...59#pid7759

Hopefully this helps you ^^

[Wafels]

Thanks for the info ^^ especially the one about chord progressions, I'm gonna try this stuff out later. I'll be sure to let you know if I need to know anything specific

[Ben]

how do you think of your ideas?

[RiversWilson]

have you ever used a note value greater than a quarter?