In regards to the phrase "why?". I have never found a better response other than "why not?"

In regards to not giving a fuck. "sometimes that's just the way it goes" really calms me down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeFBrO-fy6o
here's a good example, at 0:23 notice how there's the vocal melody and the piano one mixed together, but one doesn't overshadow the other. Counter melodies are a really nice my tip is to not overdo it cus it can sound messy (^.^)

I love that song. This is counterpoint btw.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeSYpjVnKzc

The definition between counterpoint and countermelodies are kind of blurry honestly. It's like trying to define marketing.

Listen to armin van buurens never say never for a good example of countermelody.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVM1-t-jsv8

It's like cryophonik says. There are plenty of big name producers out there who became big and didn't know an inch of theory or have any kind of musical background. It shouldn't drag you down as long as you devote yourself to learning the very basics which shouldn't take longer than a week.

Chord progression #1 - I hear what you’re saying when you said you omit the fifth of the chord. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact when it comes to part writing it was always a guideline that if you were going to omit any note of any chord to let it be the fifth. The reason why is because like you said the third of the chord has more of a distinct push/pull to them. The third of the chord is what determines whether or not the chord is going to be major or minor. What I hear is a chord progression in E minor. It goes like this in terms of roman numeral analysis i>v>VI.

Eminor>Bminor 1st inversion> Cmaj7omit5

One thing that you need to keep in mind however is that although you’re using only a two note chord you aren’t really omitting the fifth and here is the reason why. The melody that you’re playing actually covers the “fifth” of the chord. Even if it’s a different instrument you shouldn’t think of melody as being separate from harmony because essentially they coexist together. This is something that you learn when dealing with part writing which I won’t get into at this very moment. Listen to the first melody note that begins at the beginning of the bar/chord and notice how it actually covers the “5th” of that e minor chord.

Basically think of it like this…

Every time you change a chord the first note of the melody also counts as part of the harmony if it plays at the same time as the chord change.

You also mentioned that you think that hearing it 4-8 times in a row gets stale after awhile. You’re correct and the reason why it gets stale is because at slower tempos it takes a longer amount of time for the chords to change. What you composed is a 4 bar loop which you can get away with if you add more elements into the song to help develop the arrangement. In this case I can’t tell what you did with the rest of the arrangement because you only included twelve seconds of the track. I CAN tell you this though. If you want to learn how to make your chord progressions sound less stale you must master the art of variation. Now how do you create variation?

You create variation by making things sound less symmetrical. If you only change the chord once every bar try changing it twice in one bar and once in the next. If your chord progressions are only 4 bars long then try making them 8/16 bars long instead to create more variation. Your chord progression only contains three chords and yet Jon Hopkins has at least 8-9 in his. That is why you don’t sound like John Hopkins. If you wanna loop an 8 bar chord progression then maybe add some variation in the second repetition by altering the chords a bit. Change the notes in the upper, inner, or lower voices it doesn’t matter.

There are so many ways to create variation but you aren’t going to come across them if you don’t experiment on your own. Some people dislike variation and would rather have things sound much more symmetrical. It’s a matter of taste. You need to identify your taste and zoom in on every little detail until you’re able to find out just how much symmetry you like in your music.

There are literally a limitless amount of possibilities you can create when it comes to chord progressions. Look at what I did to yours. The first 11 seconds is your loop. Everything else onwards are possible variations Granted these are lazy examples but I think it helps serve the point.

https://soundcloud.com/dannystestaccount/variations

If you truly do have a background in melodic/progressive metal then I don’t think I need to explain to you what the difference between a complex chord and a simple chord. Just keep this in mind. Complex chords are HARDER to work with because instead of working with 3 voices (triad) you’re working with 5 (Extended chords) If you don’t need how to voicelead then turning these “complex” chords into great chord progressions is going to be a long process of trial and error.

Besides, after listening to your chord progressions I’m more convinced that the changes you’re looking for has much more to do with making them longer than more complex. In the examples you showed me like the john hopkins song I didn’t hear a ton of extended chords. What I heard was clever voice leading and that’s what you should look into as well.

As far as resources go I’ll admit there aren’t a lot of good ones out there. The way that I learned it is by bugging the users in the musician talks section of the ultimate guitar forum a few years ago. I met a user who was kind enough to teach me. I’d like to pay that forward here.

I can show you a methodical process to writing chord progressions. A forum isn’t the place for it however. As far as things you should be taking note of just reread the first half of this post. If you’d like to learn more just PM me your Skype and I’d be happy to get deeper. Otherwise I hope you found this post to be of some use

Quote from: iamtesko on January 22, 2016, 04:18:25 pm

@Lydian I'll get back to you on that today man, thanks!

I understand when people give the "practice" advice, I get it, but that doesn't really help me out. I specifically asked for resources to help me understand why progressions work, as in why does V resolve nicely into I, why do some chords lead nicely into others (something about voice leading im assuming?), how to properly use inversions, etc.

There's definitely some theoretical aspect here that I don't know that'd help me get a better idea of what works. From there comes something I could actually practice.

Theory wont help you write better chord progressions though. Its, like you stated, more a method to explain why stuff sounds good, especially explaining how to resolve chords. You will always need your ears and creativity to come up with chords. As for the theory part, there's lots of good (online)-books out there and youtube tutorials. I just bought a dutch theory book for piano which explained theory when i started piano but there's probably similar books in english. However, i cannot stress enough that knowing theory will not help you magically make more complex progressions.

I disagree with the first part of this. Learning theory DOES help you write better chord progressions. Yes you're still going to need your ears and creativity to come up with chords. If you hear a chord progression in a song you like at least with music theory you can "analyze" and find out your taste. You can tell yourself "Oh the reason why I like this chord progression is because of the borrowed chord in bar 5". From that point on you can incorporate that into your own music.

With an understanding of music theory you can tell yourself "I feel like writing a classic armin van buuren/gaia chord progression" and then intuitively understand the notes you would have to choose in order to get that sound. You may base your chord progression off of a harmonic minor scale since that #7 really gives you that classical feel.

Not only that but once you learn diatonic harmony you are no longer just "guessing" from a set of 12 notes. All of a sudden you understand that you can base your chords off of scales and assign them numbers 1-7. This is MUCH easier than just choosing from a bunch of 12 random notes and hoping they work well together.

With voice leading you'll learn how to use inversions in order help resolve the chords in a way that is pleasing to the ear. You'll understand that if you have a melody in harmonic minor that's resting on the #7 then no matter what it wants to resolve and you should resolve it. You can break this rule if you want and that's important to. Knowing the rules that way you can break them when you want to be unique.

Maybe you really like the sound of seventh chords but you don't know what they're called so you never really learn to utilize them to their full potential. With theory you understand that there are Maj7 Min7 Dim7 Dom7,and Aug7 chords and you can play with them all relative to the scale to help you come up with chord progressions that suit your taste.

I'm done with my rant. I can come up with a list of reasons and ways that learning theory helps you write better chord progressions. Just PM me OP.

The distance between the bass and upper notes look like this

B 1-7-9-11
G 1-9-10-12
B 1-7-9-12-13
D 1-5-7-9

The first chord is actually an Aadd9 chord but in its 3rd inversion hence putting the B in the bass. (Root position looks like A-C#-E-B)

B-A-C#-E

The second chord is a Gadd9 chord in open position. (Root position looks like G-B-D-A)

G-A-B-D

The third chord is a F#maj11 with an omitted 9th in it's fourth inversion. Hence putting the B in the bass (Root position looks like F#-A-C#-E-B)

B-A-C#-E-F#

The fourth chord is a Aadd4 chord in its second inversion (Root position looks like A-C#-D-E

D-A-C#-E

Here's a quick remake I did.

https://soundcloud.com/dannystestaccount/remake-produerforum

Here's the download to the midi notes.

https://www.dropbox.com/home?preview=Midi+Notes.mid

The synth is just your basic detuned pad. My version contains more bass in it which I should've eq'd out to get it to sound more like the original. I'm not trying very hard though because it's aside from the point of this post.

I'm not to sure what ninth parallel was saying (No disrespect I thank you so much for this forum btw   )

EDIT: I finally understood what he was saying. He was naming the chords if the key of the song were to be transposed into A minor.

Cryophonik was a bit a closer but this is the correct answer. Keep in mind when it comes to weird chord progressions like these things do begin to get quite subjective. You can interpret chords in many different ways based off of there chord formulas.

Send me a message with a recording of some chord progressions you've written. I'll review them and give you feedback based off of where you're at in terms of complexity.

Also... send me some of your favorite chord progressions so I can analyze your taste.