Afrobeats Boring Chord Progression & How To Fix It - Krizbeatz Tutorials

So today we're going to explore five reasons why your chord progression might be boring or sound flat and more importantly how to fix them so let's get straight into it after the intro [Music] welcome back to the studio ladies and gentlemen yes quick disclaimer before we continue and by no means a keyboard Warrior myself I mean when it comes to my encounters with pianos you know has not always been harmonious I've not always been someone who oh I just every time I touch the piano it's just fire but yeah when it comes to writing Melodies that really resonates with the people that resonates with the emotions of people remember your instruments your music carries emotion so that emotion is what you want to tap into when it comes to writing Melodies that resonates with with people I've had my share of success both with fast tempo and slow tempo with that said let's explore the captivating world of afrobeats afrobeats often revolves around using two chords progression in a four four counts or even a three chord progression within the same count some song thrive on a single chord progression throughout the track we've seen the example of this simplicity leading to top charting hits with billions of streams take songs like calm down by Rama [Applause] for instance and Panna by techno which I had the pleasure of producing or bugger by KISS Daniel just to name a few however we are here to address the specific issue boring chord progression number one lack of variation repetitive chords and shape and quickly become predictable and monotonous to avoid this it is essential to introduce variation to your music I'm an advocate of repeating things but repeating things without variation is just like a robot hitting pins bam which is why we try to impute different velocities when we're making music you know when you have when you have something boom boom boom on FL when you have the graph and then you reduce the velocity if you're not no Goods if if you have something that should come back time and time in the music don't let it come back the same way use automation to create different things use the LFO to pitch things up and down to just give it a movement because when people listen to the song the first time the second time they already know what to expect so always try to put a code inside your music where every time they come back to it they hear something oh I didn't know this was here if the listing may be on the phone speaker there's oh this thing is here on the phone speaker and it's not blah do you understand so hide your messages in your track so number two reasons why your chord progression might be boring is overused or cliche progression so overuse or cliche progression talks about a certain chord progression that have been exhausted in popular music relying solely on these familiar progressions can make your music sound unoriginal and less fresh when you have a chord progression that is popular for instance when I made Panna by techno the chord progression started going from there everyone started copying the chord progression the drum pattern you can have a chord progression come to life by just adding maybe the 13th maybe the 11th maybe the ninth of that same chord progression you know when you have a normal chord progression your normal Triad or maybe your seven your dominant seven and then you want to add the ninth one to it you add it to it it gives it another few it gives it another interpretation moving on the third reason why your chord progression might be boring is lack of tension and release yes everything is just going boom there's no place where people are wanting to know what's going to happen there's no place where you're adding tension of course chord progressions can attention because most of my students when we say tension they tend to think of the Riser of course that's a way to go but understanding how you mix your major and minor chords together will even help you a great deal to create tension this moment you're happy next moment you are feeling somewhere in between which is what we introduce in major and minor don't worry when we get to how you can make it better you would understand that's when I will go use using a particular song that we all know to explain what the chord progression in that song did fourth reason why your chord progressions might be boring as lack of harmonic complexity so basic Triads like I said before basic Triads what is a Triad your roots your third and your fifth your rules let's say for instance that will be your c e and your G that's your basic Triad the seventh is just two notes ahead of that you know so that's one two three four five on your C major scale for instance you have one two three four five six seven let's say seven for instance of course this comes back sorry of course this comes back to one so seven then you have eight then you have nine you see your seventh is the one before you get back to your one so that is exactly where your Seven's coming so it can be minus seven it can be major seven basic Triads or standard seventh chord may not provide enough color or depth to sustain interest exploring extended chords like model integer can add more complexity and Intrigue to your chord progressions yes so trying to explore so even if you know nothing about all these things I will still go into the door and show you how you can build it from your Triad and try to see what works you know from you having your Triad to seven to even if you're adding seventh seventh alone is a good way to start of course I'm not saying play Crazy progression that you don't even understand but try something extra than that you can see I have my headphones on you can tell it's music time so before I show you the difference between using just a try called and adding extra life to your music by borrowing notes from the chromatic or adding second and third Domino this thing so first tell me the difference or tell me which do you prefer out of the two chord progressions listen to this you know what let me play with the instrument so that it makes more sense [Music] on the same key let me play you another one that sounds like this [Music] you see that the first one has a particular type of emotions it introduces us to the second one has a place has like a tropical island thing is taking us to so the difference between the first one and the second one is the first one uses just a Triad chord progression it's just a basic Triad called progression with the roots playing the bass so that's why it sounds full while the second one uses a 7th and Ninth eleventh a sauce two leave all those English don't worry too much about the meaning of those things worry about how they sound you know so let's go into the door and let's see here are five ways that you can improve your borrowing chord progressions from boring to something that sounds interesting that you can start getting the girls to feel oh some type of way when they listen to your music so let's go pay attention to reading and voicing experiments with different rhythmic pattern and strumming techniques to add Groove and momentum Additionally you can try voicing the chord in a different inversion remember how we spoke about the first inversion being the Triad being your roots the third and fifth you can flip that you can do the first inversion you can try the third inversion just anything that gets you off the normal place you're coming from you can try that when we say pay attention to patterns and readings if you have a reading that goes like this you can go the basic way of course [Music] there's nothing wrong with playing it this way but it gets more interesting when you can go something like this instead of going the normal route you go like this so yeah [Music] you understand that adds movements that adds different type of movement the second thing you can add to your chord progression to bring your chord progression alive from boring to being alive is to explore romantic movements of course I don't know if this is too much of a time to use but yeah is to explore chromatic movement so when we talk about chromatic you first need to understand what a chromatic skill is this is what is chromatic scale looks like it uses all the notes on the keyboard so remember how we say afrobeat sometimes we use two chords sometimes we use three sometimes we use one you are trying to play calm down for instance so I can go baby now [Music] so these notes Here [Music] is not I mean this chord is not part of the sea whatever I just borrowed the flat seventh I just borrowed the flat sevens inside that chord progression so if you are listening to the song and you hear he gets I just borrowed it to get it's just a passing code to get to where I'm going in the case of our chord progression let's see how we can add that so let's play that in seventh so the first corn in see the difference sounds like sounds gives you that emotional thing you can even go as far as going to the ninth or adding the root those are the things that you can add to the song to really bring out the beauty in on the song yes so moving on to the next thing you can add to your chord progression to bring it to life to bring it forward to give it more emotion is to add secondary dominance incorporate secondary dominance to create tension and resolution well some of you might say Chris what is a secondary dominance so in music we are basically building blocks creating blocks of emotions and sounds you know if we want people to be happy we can create it if we want people to be sad to cry you know we can't create it with music the basic and most common stable chord is called a tonic which is what we've been saying since which is what we mentioned and said Triad you know is like like a chord that gives you a sense of resolution it's like coming back from a long journey you know when you land la la la la la so you get so it's like going to a long journey and coming back so when you land oh welcome back so now imagine that you are in a musical journey and you want to create some excitement or tension before returning to your to your wear settlement so what like from sea now want to create a secondary dominance from C to a minor will be E major yes thank you you get to see that so adding secondary dominance to your voicings can help a lot in giving meaning to your next chord progression and that alone itself is already taking your progression from boring to very interesting and this thing all this tip I'm showing you has nothing to do with you knowing how to play the keyboard one of the greatest producer in the history of African music is someone that cannot even play the keyboard you know that has no knowledge about how to play the keyboard but has knowledge on how to arrange a particle how to arrange the sound particularly in the way that he wants the fourth tip to bring your chord progressions to life is to experiment with extended altered chords go beyond Triads and seven incorporate extended chords 9 11 13 add chords at augmented diminished source code to add complexity and freshness there's a whole lot of Musical musical thing going on there so but easiest way to explain it to you is think of the number I showed you earlier think see the Triad that's your roots your third and your fifth your seventh is the number seven To Your Roots your night is the number nine to your roots your 13 is the number 13 to your root change the voicing to get a different character to your music you understand so yes so by addressing the reasons behind borrowing chord progression and implementing this five tip you can break away from the bondage of monotony and explore try out new sounds adding this adding these type of steps will give you the beauty will show you the beauty in your creativity you'll be able to see you'll be able to bring in the right type of emotions that you want to have in your song easily in there if that's what you can use a complicated uh first chord let the second chord be Triad just bring people back to what they are used to hearing then take it to another level again that's not to say I've not made it using just Triad of course I've done that using just try out the filo with belash Mother normally I used just Triads the good thing about using just try this when you use triad you can use another instrument to play you know maybe like a complicated line that you want to add to complement that chord progression so for the filo I used the 808 Conga to add like a hidden message like I like like I told you in the beginning of this video to add a hidden message so yes try this tip today and thank me tomorrow and yes leave your thoughts in the comment section I love what you guys are doing in the comment section let me know you know let me know if you have a best way that you think people can uh try this out leave in the comment section let them learn let's learn is not snowman as an island let's all come together and you know grow the community yeah with that said love peace and I'll see you in the next class [Music] [Music]

Channel: WorldWaveRadio

Views: 4,036

Keywords: musicproducer, mixing, mastering, afrobeats

Id: TyODN4Q2P34

Length: 15min 18sec (918 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 04 2023