Safe Notes: How to Sound Better with Random Sequences

Did dissonance get you down? Melodies sound like poop? Let's work on that.
Here's some basic music theory exploration to employ when using sequences that are in some way randomized. We'll start in software with Scaler and then deploy what we learned using modular and Rene.

These techniques can be employed using random voltage and quantizers as well.
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Thank you for watching. My name is Jeremy, and this is Red Means Recording. I've been making music for a few decades now, and this channel is a place to make music and to talk about the tools and techniques to make music with. We'll use synths, drum machines, modular gear, and software.

I have music as "Jeremy Blake" on all the major services:

And you can connect with me here:

[VirtualRiot]

lets go over to brads hahahahah I love you

[xyzyzx]

Scaler 2 bangs. It’s my music theory teacher, I use it as a map, for key centres and modulations to practice. The information in this thing, with a good teacher, like “new jazz” channel on YouTube, has massively increased my knowledge of moving round the circle of fifths smoothly and easily.

Amazing tool

[VRLNDR]

Melodies sound like poop ✅

Thanks for remaining one of most useful music producers on YouTube. Hope your first year doing this full time has accomplished what it needed to you, because it sure did for us.

[asoundproposition]

Thanks for this, learned lots, and learned that I might need a different sequencer....

Invoking a little JMJ around 21 minutes was great too.

[coda_the_dragon]

Even as a music major, I loved hearing your little theory explanation. It’s so interesting to hear how different people conceptualize theory in different ways, and how the way they think about that stuff influences the kind of music they make!

[hiding_my_name]

There's a lot of videos like this one out there, but this was explained so well, I found it super easy to digest.

[x-iso]

I started watching knowing about pitch constraints, scales and constraints in general, also splicing repetition to randomness, but you still gave me few new ideas to try. I knew that you could get away with dissonant chords by rearranging them on different octaves, but now I'm thinking of automating this process.
like instead of random goes in and then it just conforms to specific set of notes on any given octave, have several random generators and set up logic to resolve them in 'workable' combos, so if 2 values are too close, shift one to + or - octave, compare next random value if it conflicts with others and either leave as is or flip the octave again, etc. gonna try this approach.

[Toshfunk]

Jeremy, just thought I'd let you know how great this is. On an older video of yours I may have left a slightly spiky comment about how (genuinely) irritated I was by a music theory mix up that was made.... Yes, I am a theory guy, but I really do feel bad about how I communicated my point still. Sorry! Sincerely though, I think this video is amazing. You've honed in on some of the most practical and important talking points about dissonance and harmony in such an elegant way. These are things I always try to communicate to my students so I'll have to study this. Thank you for putting this out. T

[NicChap]

You are such a great teacher! Let that be known.

[calderwood]

I feel like this video was made for me and my Rene v2, specifically. Thank you.

[MisterAJ]

Love this! There’s a lot of guidance out there about dialing in particular tones, but not too much (at least that I’ve seen) on what sounds good to play when you get there. This gave me so many ideas, and I don’t even modular! Thanks Jeremy.

[knobsstrings]

Awesome explanation. I know a little bit of music theory but I never thought about using my Rene 2 this way by now. Always dialed in the complete scale and then tried to "write" melodies with the knobs but this way you can work much more intuitively. Thanks for that inspiration!

[jaygregory]

This is a fantastic breakdown of, for us non-music theory modular people out here, why some shit sounds really good and other shit sounds really wack. THANK YOU! I've been trying not to get a Rene for a long, long time and I think this video turned the tide of that internal struggle; I didn't really understand that it did quantizing like that and was so performative.

[mgscheue]

Great video. Rene 2 makes constraining notes so easy. And what’s especially nice is the z axis can be sequenced, too, with different quantizations on each layer.

[alexbarn]

I thought that first unquantized riff on the Rene actually sounded great! Another great video btw!

[jonaschristensen]

Based on how fun you made this look, I downloaded VCV rack to try some basic stuff, and I think I'm in love <3 keep up the good work :)

[sambeard]

"I don't want to introduce too much probabilistic dissonance, it's kind of how I roll" I feel you man.

[parlefeuproject]

malade! great videos. Much love from Montréal

[bobyatron]

Your professed lack of theory and your fluency with keyboard gives me some hope. Especially because I finally got my Hydrasynth and I just really wanna just go nuts on it but I’m still kind of groping my way around.

Is there any bit of advise you could offer - or exercises you would suggest - to someone trying to learn keyboard to a level where one would be comfortable with improvising?

I have a decent enough grasp of basic theory that none of the stuff in this video was unknown or confusing to me. It’s just that trying to learn an instrument by seeking the information out piece by piece is daunting.

Thanks for all the great videos man. Gonna go re-watch the Hydrasynth stuff so I don’t need to focus on reading the manual quite as much :)

[midsoulmusic]

Thank you for uploading Jeremy!!! Loved this. Also looking into getting my first synth, and your hydra synth videos might convince me to get one