Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introduction:
Thank you for purchasing the Unison MIDI Chord Pack.
Many people find the topic of chord construction and chord progressions quite confusing
and technical. Some common questions are:
“What is a chord?”
“Which chords sound good together?”
“What are some time-tested chord progressions?”
“How do I move beyond the basics into more complex and emotional sounds?”
This chord pack will answer these questions as well as provide you with hundreds of
chords and chord progressions that you can drop into your own tracks, instantly creating
a professional sound. Along with the MIDI files, this pack comes with 20 highly usable
presets for Serum that will work perfectly with the chords.
If you don’t care much about the hows and whys, feel free to dive into the pack and start
dropping some MIDI files into your DAW. Just load up one of the included Serum presets
and start experimenting. On the other hand, if you’d like a more in-depth guide to this
pack and chords in general, read on!
Structure:
Folder structure in this pack:
Musical Key
● Triads
● Extended Chords
● Borrowed Chords
● Progressions
○ Diatonic Triads
○ Advanced Progressions
Musical Key:
In this pack, we have created separate folders for each of the 12 keys used in western
music. The keys will allow you to either create songs from scratch in whichever key you
choose or find new chords and progressions that will complement a track you are
already working on (provided you know the key of the track!).
A key, in the musical sense, is a collection of notes that we can draw from to create the
chords, melodies and bass lines that make up a song. In almost every case, a key will
also have a center—a note that feels at rest or settled. The other notes of the key are
derived from this root note by use of a scale formula. For this guide, the terms “scale”
and “key” will be used interchangeably.
In Western music, we rely on two specific scale types to a large degree. The first is called
Major, which is bright or uplifting in its emotional quality, and the second is called Minor,
which is darker, more melancholy or tense. Here are the scale formulas that allow us to
create these patterns of notes:
Major: R + W + W + H + W + W + W
Minor: R + W + H + W + W + H + W
Here, R stands for “root note”, which will be the note by which we name the scale (like C
Major, G Minor or Db Major), the home note of the key.
W = Whole Step (distance from C to D)
H = Half Step (distance from C to Db)
To build a scale using a formula, simply choose whichever root note you want to start
with, plug it into the R value in the formula and begin adding whole steps and half steps
as the formula indicates, taking each new note you arrive at as the next note in the key.
We will build G Major:
Major: R + W + W + H + W + W + W
G A B C D E F#
You will notice that each folder in this pack is labelled with one major key and one minor
key, such as:
1 - C Major / A Minor
This is because every major key has a minor key that is relative to it. Relative, in this
sense, means that it uses the same set of notes. Using the scale formulas shown above,
we can construct the following two scales and compare them:
C Major: C-D-E-F-G-A-B
A Minor: A-B-C-D-E-F-G
Notice that both keys contain the same notes, they just begin in different places. What
this means for us is that the keys of C major and A minor (or any other pair of relative
keys) consist of the same set of chords as well, which is why they share one folder in this
pack. The difference between any major scale and its relative minor (or vice versa) is
where we sense the tonal center of the key to be, or, in other words, which chord feels
like home—the point of greatest rest in the key. To specify this, we use a system of chord
analysis utilizing Roman numerals to denote which chord is the tonal center.
Roman numeral analysis is standard practice in all styles of Western music and makes
looking at, speaking about and thinking of chords and chord progressions much simpler.
Major Keys
This is a screenshot of Advanced Progression #1 in the key of C major as it appears in my
DAW (Digital Performer 9). If you have some experience in working with MIDI, this should
look somewhat familiar to you. We have the piano roll (keyboard laid vertically) along the
left-hand side, the bars 1-4 along the top, and the yellow blocks are the actual notes of
the chords lasting one bar in length each. This is roughly how the MIDI files should look
for you when you view them in your DAW.
I will now show a few examples of rhythmic ideas. To do this, I will simply use my
scissor/knife tool to split the chords into smaller chunks and move them around (see
below):
This is the most basic method of creating rhythms from the chords. As you can see, each
chord has been chopped and moved around to different eighth note subdivisions within
the bar. This can be done by ear while the 4 bars loop around until you are satisfied with
the rhythm you create.
In this example, I have separated the root note (lowest note in the chord) from the rest of
the chord and created a sort of reggae vibe where the root notes are on the beat, and
the top part of the chord is on the off beat.
Now the chords change earlier than they have been in past examples. The 2nd and 4th
chords appear midway through the 1st and 3rd bars respectively. This is to show that you
do not need to keep the chords changing at the same rate they do in the MIDI file.
Sometimes changing chords before the bar creates a more interesting rhythmic feel.
In this final example, the chords are back to changing once per bar, but the notes are
now broken up and played one at a time. When chords are played note by note in this
way, it is called an arpeggio. Your synthesizer may have an arpeggiator built into it which
would allow you to make all kinds of wild patterns by just feeding in the MIDI file the way
it comes originally, with all notes being held for the entire bar.
Final Words:
By now you should be ready to start creating tunes using these MIDI files. Experiment
like crazy; drag and drop all over, combine chord progressions with single chords,
change the order within a progression, link multiple progressions together, etc. Just try
anything that comes to mind. Some of the best music is made through random
experimentation, and the more you mess with the files given here, the more you will feel
you have created something truly original. Luckily, even if all you ever did was drop in
these progressions and leave them exactly as is, simply applying a new sound, a new
rhythm or any other subtle change will create a sense of something fresh.
Many of these progressions (and certainly all of the individual chords) have been used
and reused by masters of music for decades. Why? Because they are effective! Well
chosen chords can take a track to a new level, inspire creativity and ultimately assist in
creating music that is enjoyable to listen to. You have the ability to make the kind of
music you want to make and using tools like this chord pack can streamline the process.
Have fun!
Appendix A: Chord Formulas
Below is a modest list of the most common chord varieties. They have been separated
into the categories of Major (natural third and seventh), Minor (flatted third and seventh),
Dominant (natural third, flatted seventh) and Other (common chords that don’t neatly fit
in other conceptual boxes).
Using this table you should be able to decode the notes of most chords you will
encounter when browsing the internet, theory books, jazz charts and so on.
Numbers in brackets (i.e. #11) denote altered tones—scale degrees that have been
changed from their usual state.
Major Types Minor Types
Maj: 1 - 3 - 5 Min: 1 - b3 - 5
Maj6: 1 - 3 - 5 - 6 Min6: 1 - b3 - 5 - 6
Maj7: 1 - 3 - 5 - 7 Min7: 1 - b3 - 5 - b7
MajAdd9: 1 - 3 - 5 - 9 MinAdd9: 1 - b3 - 5 - 9
Maj6/9: 1 - 3 - 5 - 6 - 9 Min6/9: 1 - b3 - 5 - 6 - 9
Maj9: 1 - 3 - 5 - 7 - 9 Min9: 1 - b3 - 5 - b7 - 9
Maj9(#11): 1 - 3 - 5 - 7 - 9 - #11 Min11: 1 - b3 - 5 - b7 - 9 - 11
Maj13: 1 - 3 - 5 - 7 - 9 - 13 Min13: 1 - b3 - 5 - b7 - 9 - 13
Dominant Types Other Types
7: 1 - 3 - 5 - b7 Sus2: 1 - 2 - 5
7sus4: 1 - 4 - 5 - b7 Sus4: 1 - 4 - 5
9: 1 - 3 - 5 - b7 - 9 Maj(#4): 1 - 3 - #4 - 5
9sus4: 1 - 4 - 5 - b7 - 9 Aug: 1 - 3 - #5
13: 1 - 3 - 5 - b7 - 9 - 13 Dim: 1 - b3 - b5
7(#5): 1 - 3 - #5 - 7 Dim7: 1 - b3 - b5 - 6
7(#9): 1 - 3 - 5 - b7 - #9 Min7(b5): 1 - b3 - b5 - b7
9(#11): 1 - 3 - 5 - b7 - 9 - #11 MinMaj7: 1 - b3 - 5 - 7