 Today, we are going to write a song in a couple of minutes. It is not going to be the best pop song ever, or really anything that decent. But what we're going to do is I'm going to teach you a basic technique that allows you to write a song that doesn't sound like a concophony, doesn't just sound like noise when banging on a keyboard. And what we're going to do is I'm going to show you this, and I write music all the time. If you look at earlier videos on my channel, I used to post music videos on this channel of songs I wrote. I now have a separate channel where I post stuff, and I write music because I like writing music. Not that I think that I'm going to be the top musician in the world, or even make money off of it. I do it because I enjoy it. And I have gotten some compliments from viewers out there that like my music. My kids love my music. They're not teenagers yet. I'm sure in a couple of years they'll hate my music. I do it because I enjoy doing it. But I want to show you that this basic concept of knowing a little bit can accomplish a lot applies to a lot of areas in life. And with the main topic of my channel, which is programming, I've had people say to me, oh, some people just don't understand programming, they'll never understand programming. And I think that's wrong. I think anybody can understand the basic concepts of programming. Doesn't mean that you're going to be the next John Carmack or Alliance Torvels. But if you learn some basic concepts of programming, you can apply those in your life and make your life a lot easier in a lot of ways and not be dependent on other people. It's the same as reading and writing. Most of you out there probably know how to read and write. It doesn't mean you're going to write the best novel in the world or that you're going to publish this book that's going to make you a lot of money, but it's useful to know how to do. And so I just want to show you this basic concept of basically if you know what a chord is, you can write a song. Again, we're going to write a song in 10 minutes. I'm not even going to listen to the song while I'm writing it. I'm just going to lay down notes with this basic concept. And 99% of the time we're going to have something that sounds half way decent. Again, nothing spectacular. You may not love it, but the notes will go together and it's not going to sound just like someone banging on the keyboard. So first of all, I'm going to show you the basic concept of what a chord is and how it works. I have my speaker hook up here just to get a better sound to the camera. It's a Bluetooth speaker. So there's a slight delay from when I press a key to when it coming out. But then we'll hop on the computer and just lay down some notes without even listening to it. And we're going to write a song in about 10 minutes. So again, I have this Bluetooth speaker hooked up just to get the sound closer to the computer or to the camera. But there is a slight delay, but that's just for recording purposes. But basically what is a chord? A chord is when you play a few notes together that go together. And there's many, many different types of chords. But the basic chord that your first chord you'll probably learn is a basic major chord. So let's say we start on C here. I'm going to count up from C, four notes, one, two, three, four. So those are the first two notes in my chord. My C chord, major chord. And then I'm going to go one, two, three. So now I have this. Now these notes will always sound good together because they're a chord. It doesn't sound like a mess. You know? But the thing is you can play them together as a chord. And they don't have to be these exact three. You can move up and down an octave. So I can find this note higher up on the keyboard and play it. Or this note. Or a combination of them. I hit a key there if that didn't mean to. So that's the chord. And you don't have to play it as a chord. You can play those notes anywhere on the keyboard. But you can also play them as an arpeggio where you're playing them up and down. Or in basically any order. I can go. And that's all I have to do. And I can play combinations of the chords and notes over top of each other. And it's going to make a song. So let's look at it in software. Don't worry, I showed you how to make a major chord, which again, you can do with any key. So instead of starting there, I can start here. And I can go up four notes. And another three. That's a chord. I can start here. And I can go. And I can go three. That's a chord. And again, I can play these anywhere on the keyboard. And it makes the same chord. So now I showed you how to make that chord. But your software on your computer can actually make those chords for you. And then you can manipulate them into arpeggios to write a song. So let's have a look. OK, here we are in LMMS, which is a music creation software. My tutorial today, my lesson today is not about how to use LMMS, but basically just how to write notes. And you can apply this to playing on a piano or a keyboard, guitar, or just writing notes on a piece of paper, or any software that allows you to write notes. But let's go ahead. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to go into our loop editor here. And I'm going to pick an instrument. I'm going to pick a few instruments at random. So I'm going to choose that. I'm going to choose this. I'm going to choose this. Those all kind of sound similar. Let's get something that might sound a little different. Sure. Funny-sounding voice there. I think six instruments is good to start. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to go into the piano editor here. Now, we learned how to write a chord, right? I just taught you. You started a note, count up four. Whoops, that wasn't four. Boom. Count up another three. And now I have a chord. But we're not going to write our own chord. There are a lot of chords out there. And let's say we just want to do something new. And if I'm always using the same concept that I know, it's going to sound the same. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to go up to here where it says no chord. This is not the scale one, but the chord one. I can come here and I can choose out of all these chords what type of chord I want to write. I'll choose this M6, okay? And what I'm going to do is I'm going to come down here and I'm going to click it and drag out these notes. And now I have a chord. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to set this back to no chord and I'm going to drag these notes out like so, making sure that I leave them where they're supposed to be. And now I have an arpeggio. Again, I'm not going to listen to stuff as a rank because I'm just going to show you that it's not that I'm listening to what I'm writing, but knowing the concept of what I'm writing, okay? So I'm going to take that, I'm going to copy it. I'm going to go into, I'm going to create a new loop, go to my next instrument, and I'm going to paste in those same notes. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually create another type of chord, which is an octave chord, which is just playing the same note on different octaves. So going up from C3 to C4 and another one is C5. And so now I have that going. Next, I'm going to go, I'm going to create another loop, open up the piano roll, paste in those same notes. I'm going to shorten them up like so, and I'm going to drag this here, here. And I'm just doing basic, basic arpeggios at this point. And now I'm going to copy that. I'm going to create a new loop on the next instrument, open the piano roll, paste this in there. And now I'm just going to actually make this one do the same arpeggio down, and maybe have it go back up at the end there. And next I'm going to create another loop, open the piano roll, paste in that. And I'm just going to shorten these up a little bit and maybe just do two of each. New loop, piano roll, pasting those same notes make them real short. And what I'm going to do here is I'm going to start just laying down those same notes randomly. But I know that they go well together because they're all from the same chord. So I'm going to just lay down a bunch of the C notes. Now I'm going to go put down some of the E notes. And I'm going to put that there, there, there. I'm going to go up here for this one. And here, here, and here. Come down to this one for here. And then let's make this four bars for measures, whatever. See, I'm not a musician and I'm saying the wrong terms probably here. But right now I've stayed all within the same octave. I can go up. I can do these same notes. So like this is an A4, that might be a little high. Here's a D sharp on the there. So I can come up here and I can do the same note here. And then come back down and go back up. Now, I haven't listened to any of this all together and I kind of randomly replaced notes. But let's go ahead and put all our loops together just to hear what they sound like together. I will set this to loop and I will press play. Not great, but not bad either. This wet bass is a little low. I want to use these same notes. So I'm going to copy this, but with a different instrument. Let's see. Something a little less bassy. Sure. And I'll actually make that a whole nother loop. I'll paste this in here. Paste. And what we're going to do at this point is, well, let's add some basic kicker drums. That's always like a nice steady bass drum here. Boom, boom. Now there's a lot more we can do with mixing by panning things out like so. But let's just go ahead and start mixing the song. So I'm going to pull this one out. Move this over here. Let me do this and then have it come back in over here. Bring this one in here. This can come in here and then go out and come back in. Let's bring this one in about here maybe. Do this and then this and then have them both come in together there. Maybe have the drums come in about here. The hi-hats here. And I'm just kind of randomly putting things down again. Somewhat random. Let's hear, let's turn off our loop and hear what our song sounds like. Okay, I adjusted the volumes a little bit while I'm recording theirs because I think it was a little loud at first, hopefully not too much. But again, nothing spectacular, but we created a song. How long have we been recording for? Nine minutes. So we've recorded a song in about nine minutes. Obviously it can be mixed better. There's a lot more you can do. But my point is again, basic concepts you can accomplish a lot. And that's true with almost all aspects of life. So learn the basics. Don't be afraid to try something new. And I hope that you learn something whether you're going to write music or not. But I hope these basic concepts help you understand things and you can apply them to other aspects of your life. I do thank you for watching. Please visit filmsbychrist.com. That's Chris of the K. There's a link in the description. And as always, I hope that you have a great day.