How do we always play music in key in Ableton Live without any music theory knowledge or experience playing the piano? Given that these two apply to me, I am very excited Ableton offers a simple solution that allows me to never play out of key again in Ableton Live using the information right here in this post and the video at the end of it! Would you please see how to do this because after learning music for a year, this is the tip I've got most excited about?
Never Play Out of Key Again in Ableton Live!
What I hope is also useful is to see exactly how I learned this to speed up the learning process.
How to never play out of key again in Ableton?
It's ridiculously simple.
All we do is go over here to "MIDI effects."
We have got the scale over here, and then we can pick a specific scale if we want, or we can customize it if you want just the very most basic.
For example, take the C major, I mean why not have more fun with it?
But just showing how this works down here in the left, "C major scale."
Now, when I hit keys, they will automatically be in the C major scale. I'm just button mashing right now on my MIDI keyboard over here and it is putting them into the scale regardless of what button I hit.
Now, as a beginner musician who had no previous music theory training and who just likes to bang on the keyboard, this is an absolute miracle to help my music sound better automatically.
Then, to add some additional quality or fun to this, we can go put a chord on here. So, we can drag over in the MIDI effects on the left here.
Then, if we want to do something like an arpeggiator or a chord, we can throw on an arpeggiator right before this, and then it will automatically arpeggiate.
I'm just holding one key down now and it's changing the arpeggiator up. That makes a fun sound just by itself. No matter what button I hit it's automatically in key.
If I want to throw in a specific chord, I can make my own chords with this, or I can go pick a specific chord like a major chord.
That's just a beautiful sound with no effort essentially which is ideal. No music theory experience needed.
I hope this has been helpful to see how to never play out of key again. It automatically puts everything into it, just use the scale over here and put this in.
Now, what I think might be much more helpful is how did I learn this?
You could say, "Maybe you are just dumb. You went a year without knowing how to do this already?"
The problem is I don't even know what I don't know. I know so little. I don't even know what would be most helpful for me to learn.
Now, I learned this with my friend Tomas George over here.
Interview with Tomas George of Digital Music Masters
@tomasgeorge, would you like to give us a little introduction about what you do?
Tomas George:
Sure.
Be a bit more creative than C major though, Jerry.
That's just the white notes.
That's easy.
I create courses about music production. I teach music production. I've been talking with Jerry for quite a while. We have kind of isolated the problem that he needs to know about scales and keys.
This is a great way for someone like Jerry to just play music and try some new ideas.
Say, for example, I don't know, C minor. Jerry might not know there's an E flat, A flat and a B flat. So, he could just play some notes, and then it will just automatically, well not automatically, the MIDI notes will only play information that's in C minor.
However, for more advanced people, this scale function is really cool because of the stuff like a Gipsy scale, Hungarian scales, ones that most people would probably never use.
There are some really unique ones as well like the Hirajoshi scale. You might know only tone - tone - semitone tone - tone - tone - semitone makes a major scale flat, the third flat, and the six flat and the seventh to make a minor scale.
Do you remember that, Jerry?
Jerry Banfield:
Not sure.
Tomas George:
Anyway, went a bit quick there.
You might know the notes of a major scale. You might know the notes of a minor scale. However, the scale function allows you to come up with some really cool interesting stuff.
Jerry and I both got Pushes, which are like the controllers for Ableton Live and that allows you to kind of bash in notes and stuff as well. That is different to like a keyboard because a keyboard it's all about shapes.
The Push, you can make some unique shapes to get away from what you are used to playing. Combine this with the Push too is what I recommend, and then you can get some really cool sounds.
Try it.
I don't think you need it for C major personally.
I think you can work that one out.
Jerry Banfield:
Now, Tomas, how do you know all this stuff?
Tomas George:
Playing music since I was a little child.
Going to piano lessons.
Going to a music Conservatoire.
Studying a lot.
The years of trial and error, started out really bad.
Slow progress.
No real shortcut I'm afraid.
Jerry Banfield:
Well, we have found a shortcut actually.
We have located a shortcut because for me the shortcut is just to share what I'm doing with you, and you have been a DJ, you have got a Master's.
Is it in music? What's your Master's in?
Tomas George:
Music production.
Jerry Banfield:
So, you have got a Master's in music production.
For me, the shortcut for this was to talk to you because you have seen what I've been doing with my music over the last year and you looked at what I was doing and said, "Jerry, what you really need is to go into Ableton and to grab that MIDI effect and put it on there and fix that up."
That's why we are here today.
What we hope is the most helpful is to see that if we want to learn a new subject it really helps to have a mentor. It helps to have someone because I can't even comprehend all that experience Tomas just listed: being a DJ, Master's in music theory and playing music since he was a little child.
I can't comprehend how much more @tomasgeorge knows than I know, but one way I can take advantage of what Tomas knows is that he can apply little tiny adjustments to what I'm doing that are hugely helpful for me, that it might take me hundreds of hours of looking through help manuals and documents before I found the same thing.
Today I'm grateful that Tomas has just launched or rebranded his existing University as Digital Music Masters.
I'm one of the first students in this University and I know a lot of us we like to just buy courses or we like to just google and read things for free.
For me, my first year-plus learning music, I can't emphasize enough the value of having a mentor and especially not just back and forth via email, but a Skype call or some kind of one-on-one call.
What I'm excited about is that on www.digitalmusicmasters.com he has an "Academy Term" and an "Academy Monthly" with weekly calls.
Now, my main area of expertise is digital marketing, online advertising, blogging, etcetera.
What I've found is the exact same thing. I am able to help people fantastically who are trying to blog or advertise.
I can draw from all my experience and often apply one or two little tips like Tomas did with music today and it's hugely helpful for me. Tomas has that exact set up now on Digital Music Masters.
A lot of us like to cheap out and just grab a course and think we will do it and never follow up. For learning, it's extremely helpful to have a mentor and Tomas has been and continues to be, is today, an amazing mentor.
I'm very grateful because there is no way I'd have anything, gotten anywhere with my music without Tomas. I hope this is useful to see exactly where there is an outstanding mentorship available at a very reasonable cost.
For $49 a month, weekly calls?
That's absolutely outstanding.
What do you think is also worth knowing about this that I haven't mentioned?
Tomas George:
No, that's it.
You get access to the courses that myself and Christopher Carvalho have created and we have both been involved in the music scene for a long time.
We have been doing music for a while, and then, like you said, if someone knows about this kind of stuff, the other person who's been doing it for a while can just quickly correct them.
It's like you with Steemit. I still don't really know that much about Steemit, but for me, when I talk to you about Steemit, you can just quickly correct a lot of the stuff I am doing, and I wouldn't be anywhere near as successful as I am on Steemit without your expertise.
Find people that are more advanced in certain areas than you and just get the shortcuts and learn from them because they have to put the work in, they have to put the effort in, but it doesn't mean you can't just take those nuggets and information off them.
A few, like you said, it's about internet marketing, it's about blogging, Steemit, cryptocurrency. A lot of people have certain skills and expertise, and it doesn't mean you have to spend the 10,000 hours to get that, it just means you can shortcut and just learn all the stuff and take all the information from them.
It's more like a course or reading a book, that's amazing. However, you can't really ask direct questions straight away and get direct response. Of course, you can send the emails and things like that, but if you want a direct response obviously, face-to-face communication, Skype or Google Hangouts, are amazing things we have got in 2018.
Jerry Banfield:
A huge difference with it is the mutual interest. I've taken a master class by deadmau5, which was really helpful, but at the same time, deadmau5 is unlikely to listen to any of my music anytime soon or to see what I'm doing.
Now, Tomas actually has listened to my music, looked exactly at what I'm doing, and then provided that laser-focused feedback even if sometimes that feedback was "God that sounds awful," then it also came along with "here's a simple way you can make it sound a lot better."
What I've found is the consistency. Tomas told me about this book by Seth Godin, "The Dip."
When we try to learn something new like music, we initially get all excited and idealistic like, "Hey, this is great. I'm going to learn it," and then we get into the reality of starting to comprehend how little we know compared to what there is to know.
For me, to look at someone like Tomas and say, "I'm never going to have, or it's unlikely I'm ever going to have that much experience with music," and there's a tendency to just want to give up and quit then, and having a mentor is helpful to keep going through the dip.
The mentor essentially can keep working with you, and you don't need 10,000 hours of music experience to make a song that people enjoy. In fact, there are probably songs with hundreds of millions of views where the person had very little experience before that and just sung a song or something.
I found that having call after call really adds up too.
Tomas George:
Yes, I completely agree.
Well, Martin Garrix created "Animals" when he was 15 years old and that now has over a billion views on YouTube.
Jerry Banfield:
Wow!
Tomas George:
He's a bit of an anomaly though.
But, yes, if you want to get good at anything, having someone to mentor you is the shortcut to success in any areas of life, not just music, not just online business, anything really.
It's like when you go to the gym, if you want to get a six-pack, it's going to be a lot easier if you have a personal trainer than if you just try and mess around on all the machines.
Jerry Banfield:
Yes, I never got a six-pack messing around on the machines.
The personal trainer did help, but I still didn't get the six-pack yet
One last thing Tomas mentioned that I hope is also very helpful for musicians.
@tomasgeorge just told me today he found a guy that was successful, and that guy said what you basically need to do is upload a song every single day to SoundCloud.
Good luck with that!
Tomas and I are on Steemit, which is on the Steem blockchain at Steemit.com, and there's an app called Dsound, where we can upload our songs, and I've actually earned over $200 for uploading a song.
That's with almost no music experience and I barely know what I'm doing. On Steemit I'm allowed to build a blogging audience, I can upload videos, I can do live streams and upload songs.
Now, I'm not saying that a musician with no following, who has never done anything online and doesn't know, just throws up a song and it's going to make $200. I'm saying this is an absolute miracle for musicians being able to upload on the Steem blockchain, being able to have a blog, being able to put everything we do all in one area.
I'm on Steem, Tomas is on Steem, and he just had a post that did outstanding on Steem as well.
So, Steem is working for Tomas and we think this is maybe one of the best things that can ever happen, especially if you are a beginner, musician, or even perhaps a celebrity.
Tomas George:
Yes, Steemit is just crazy, what's going on right now. I don't really know that much about Steemit, not compared to you, Jerry, and like that video I put up the other day, it was the number one on Dtube.
It was the fifth top trending on Steemit for two days. It can make you some extra pocket money just for blogging, which is pretty cool.
Jerry Banfield:
You know, another good example of just collaborating I gave Tomas, I said, "Here's a good five-minute video you could make. Talk about your experience on Steemit."
He made the video real quick, uploaded it and I think he's getting a payout today for over a thousand US dollars for that video, and that took you like 30 minutes or an hour?
Tomas George:
Yes, 30 minutes.
I don't even know why.
Jerry probably knows, something to do with the blockchain, but for me, I don't know.
That's the thing about Steemit, a lot of it can be quite intimidating for newer people because you hear these terms like "Witness" and you hear like "Blockchain" and that's basically what my video is about, my experience with Steemit for someone who doesn't really know how it works.
I know about blogging, I know about creating content, but when it comes to actual cryptocurrency kind of culture and scene, I'm not really an expert in that, but there is still ways of becoming successful on Steemit by just being a blogger. You don't have to be an investor, you don't have to be a crypto expert, because I'm not.
Jerry Banfield:
Well, I think after 15 minutes we have definitely covered the original intent of the tutorial and what we hope we have communicated is something much more helpful than a quick tip to just fix something or do better in Ableton Live, but a system that works to completely expand learning horizons to just go into outer space.
Tomas, what do you think?
Tomas George:
I'm just laughing.
Jerry does a video about Ableton Live and ends up talking about Steemit.
Always the way!
Jerry Banfield:
Well, if you'd like to find us today you can find me on Steemit here steemit.com/@jerrybanfield or you can go to Steem.guide, which will take you straight there.
If you'd like to find Tomas and learn music with him, I highly recommend Digital Music Masters if you have got this far reading this post.
You are almost certainly enjoying the experience now.
Tomas George:
Must be.
Jerry Banfield:
You won't find many of my courses on music on Digital Music Masters, although Tomas was kind enough to throw our "42 Secrets of Influence" course in there.
If you'd like to continue learning with Tomas, enroll in Digital Music Masters, and maybe you will run into me on one of the calls some week too.
Tomas what would you like to share to let us go here?
Tomas George:
That's it, yes.
Thanks for reading.
Like Jerry said if you want to follow Jerry on Steemit, it's steemit.com/@jerrybanfield/ and if you want to check out my new academy, Digital Music Masters, that we have recently launched so we can help people on a mass scale and also customizable for students, go to www.digitalmusicmasters.com.
Jerry Banfield:
Well, thank you for reading to the end.
We love you.
You are awesome and we will see you wherever you are.
Final words
Thank you for reading this blog post, which was originally filmed as the video below.
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Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk on the transcript from @deniskj
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