wesman88 wrote:
I'm trying to put together an ambient song with the "Aquatic Sunbeam" software instrument. Where is a good place to get started in figuring out what chords sound good together. I was messing with something along the lines of C to G to E to F in a 4/4 beat with a tempo around 100. Any suggestions?
Thanks for your help!
That question is both easy and impossible to answer, for the same reason it would be easy and impossible to answer "I am putting together a story. What would be some good nouns and verbs to use for my sentences?"
You could use any chords you want! As you said, C, G, E, F... or anything! If you are limiting the notes to the white notes, it will be almost impossible to get something that "sounds bad." And of course there's no reason why you couldn't throw in a few black notes as well.
You could also try varying the lengths of the chords. If some last the whole measure, why not make others that last multiple measures, or some that are less than a measure? In other words, don't feel compelled to change the chord on the downbeat of each new measure which may sound monotonous.
Another tip would be to not think of your chords as traditional "triads," each built with the usual intervals that make up what you think of as a C chord, G chord, etc. Especially because you are writing ambient music, why not mix up the "chords" a bit... add some unexpected intervals, or clusters of notes that sound good with each other but aren't necessarily a traditional chord. Think of it more like painting with colors than using prefabricated objects out of a trusty box-o-chords.
The reverberant sound of that patch is quite forgiving, and using non-traditional "clusters" may create more interesting sonorities. If you randomly plunked your fingers down on clusters of notes, I would guess you would come up with a few happy accidents that might work better for you all traditional chords all the time. After all, the musical style and patch are "impressionistic," so why not approach the composition as if you were creating an impressionistic painting rather than taking a picture?
Finally, just experiment. If you don't want unusual chords or that many of them... fine! Many great songs were (and will be) written using just a few very simple chords. Or if you find some cluster of notes that sound good or morph well into another cluster of notes that you like even better than a few simple chords... that's also fine! There are no real rules. Just experiment around and use whatever you like!
If you happen to come up with something you like a lot, notice what you did and record it. Or if you were coming up with stuff you happened to like while improvising, record yourself improvising. You could always go back and select a section that you like, delete everything else, and use the section you keep as the basis for your song.
